Soundbase Accoustic Festival 2007

There were two music events going on last night that I wanted to check out,  one was Soler's show at the HK Academy of the Performing Arts, the other was the Soundbase Acoustic Band Competition finals (w/ a performance by Ryan Hui):
金曜日晩僕はこのアクーステクバンド試合を行った、ライアン ホイは演奏もした：

Since the Soundbase one was later and literally 3 blocks from the office, it was the natural choice.  I got there a bit late and they told me the only seats left were in the front row.  Luckily since its an acoustic competition I didn't have to worry too much about losing my hearing here! (i hate loud places, i always bring ear plugs with me to wear in clubs and at shows).

The competition was pretty impressive,  it was all amateur bands, mostly doing original songs.  Some were young students, some were older groups (including one group from the HK police folk guitar club).  Some were definitely better than others, and I think the ones that won were among the better groups of the night.   Some of my observations:

1) Groups that used a drummer on the drum set didn't sound good at all (they had a big plastic barrier to keep the sound down, but it didn't fit with the acoustic guitars well)

2) the guy who tried to play the harmonica AND guitar AND sing was trying too much. :-P

3) some of the groups were not very acoustic... (but i guess requiring them to play a double bass instead of a electric bass guitar is a bit too hard though)


Since my camera is broken and I'm stuck using my half-dead, old camera, I didn't take many pictures.  I did want to take a pic of these two guys:

From what I gathered they're non-identical twins... their singing voices were pretty close, so I dubbed them 'Soler Senior'!

Here's the final winners:　勝ちましたの人：

As you can see, my camera's not doing well. :-P　僕の新カメラ壊れましたから、古カメラで撮った、でもこの機も一寸壊れました。

But for some reason it still takes video OK,  so here's some video I took of Ryan's Set at the end.  He had Joseph from Hardpack accompanying him.   It was cool to see some 'pros' to contrast against the amateurs...    It was also cool to see Ryan do an acoustic version of his regular set (I think it actually suits his voice better too).  At the end he did some song i didn't recognize, and the crowd started getting really excited and shouting and chanting and what not.  I'll have to assume that he was playing one of his dad's famous songs or something. 

Watch the video and you tell me:　ビデオを見てください！

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZF8RxUbFm8