Tauranga Music Sux

Just thought I'd share what I was up to on Saturday: attending the 3rd annual Woodcock music festival. A bit of background...

At first there was the Tauranga Music Sux zine/blog, which hilariously cursed and ranted about how terrible the music scene is in the city of Tauranga. The lack of good venues led to gigs being held in tunnels and under bridges. They even went on a 2 day tunnel tour up and down the North Island (spot me in the green t-shirt at the 2nd tunnel):
[www.facebook.com] https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.455423597828083.98002.196544577049321&...

Then they announced that they were putting on a festival at a local drummer's property (not Phil Rudd's, luckily). Woodcock, the penis-themed parody of Woodstock for those sick of 'barbecue reggae' and expensive, pretentious festivals. Somehow there were enough like-minded individuals to rally around and make it happen. This was my report of the first festival:
[forums.punkas.com] http://forums.punkas.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=65414

That winter they hosted a Burning Man parody called Burning Wang where they burnt a giant effigy of you know what, although I didn't go, nor did I go to Woodcock last year. But here's my review of this weekend's festival!
[forums.punkas.com] http://forums.punkas.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=70358

Pretty into the "renegade" show idea with tunnels. One summer we scheduled shows at various parking garages (they always had live electrical outlets.) We did it downtown, which was dead at night, so there were no complaints about noise.

The night of the Rodney King verdict, about 50 cops showed up and ushered us out. That was the last one.

I also did a show once here:
[www.homesforsacramento.com] http://www.homesforsacramento.com/images/sculpture02_1_300.jpg
which is just a random sculpture on the side of the highway. The electrical box may or may not have been broken into to make this work.

Amazing how that sculpture manages to juxtapose the phallic with the vaginal.

(Just kidding)

No, I can kinda see it. It's got nothing on the recent sculpture here though!
[www.dailymail.co.uk] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2948577/Sculpture-sparks-uprising-locals...

The Valentine's Day Woodcock poster was a bit more deliberate:
[www.undertheradar.co.nz] http://www.undertheradar.co.nz/images/showImages/woodcock2015.jpg

Once again didn't go last year, but here's this year's report:
[forums.punkas.com] http://forums.punkas.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=71249

Woodcock in 2018 clashed with another gig I was going to. It was supposed to be the last one, and then later that year there was a much smaller Tauranga Music Sux End Party gig.

But then this year, along comes a festival called Not Woodcock, with the stages at "Not Willie's", across the road from Willie's house. Maybe they tried to go a little too big or maybe there's too many houses developed in the area, but they had to switch off at 10pm due to noise complaints and the last 4 acts couldn't play. I'd left a bit before that anyway as I was feeling thoroughly Woodcocked by then. At least the international headliner was on at 8pm. Here's my photos:
[forums.punkas.com] http://forums.punkas.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=81233