Live Music in the West End and Fright Night at Movie World

Mrs Bob and I went our separate ways at the weekend, only temporarily, of course. Mrs Bob took off to the Gold Coast with some friends and three little girls on tow. Our daughter and a couple of her pals, so two girls aged 10 and one age 8.

They were off to Movie World for the Halloween special…

Fright Night

They didn’t have such a good time. Turns out Fright Night is not really for kids, it’s more for bigger and taller people. A closer look at their website may have given away some clues about the event, for example where it says…

Fright Nights – Live The Terror – The Terror Has Begun” 14+

Or maybe if she had watched the trailer for The Wolf Creek 2 Maze…

No, it definitely wasn’t for kids, they didn’t stay long. On the other hand, I had a great evening, I went to…

Live music in the West End

Me and a couple of friends got the bus into the city and took the short 15 minute stroll to Boundary Street in the West End, stopping off at the occasional pub on the way. We also stopped off at Boundary Street Markets which I really didn’t even know existed.

The place offered food, beer and live music all in a very cool atmosphere…

Boundary Street Market

Boundary Street Market (2)Let’s go inside The Motor Room…

Inside the motor room (1)Hmm, free live music; nice…

Inside the motor room (2)Fed and refreshed we then carried on to our final destination, The Bearded Lady, one of a number of quite small and therefore very intimate live music venues scattered around the city.

Let’s try and peek over the heads of a few standers by and look in through the doorway and large window at the front of The Bearded Lady…

The bearded ladyNo Tardis effect here, the place is just as small inside as it looks from outside…

Inside the bearded ladyTo see the bands though, we needed to go through to the back room, and that cost us an extra $5 each! But if you do want to see a band, this is the kind of place to go. When I say intimate, I mean intimate. We were just about three metres away from the band and we were standing in the middle of the room…

The Peep TempelUnlike my wife, daughter and her friends, we had a great evening. The band that we were there to see put on a great set; extraordinarily powerful stuff for a three-piece.

Who are they? They are The Peep Tempel, they’re from Melbourne and for those who care, they sound like this…

Strange, they looked much younger onstage.

City life

I may have said this sort of thing before and I’m sure I will say it again, but in the relatively short period of time I’ve lived here in Brisbane this city has got a good deal trendier. The nightlife just seems to get better and better.

If you are thinking of moving to Australia and you like to go out often and enjoy a wide variety of entertainment, you really do have to consider living close to one of Australia’s major cities.

In the UK, no matter where you live, you’re never more than a couple of hours drive away from say London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield, Brighton; the list could go on and on.

Here, in Australia, it just doesn’t work like that.

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{ 6 comments… add one }
  • steve December 7, 2014, 2:28 pm |

    Hi Bob ,
    Love the website, very informative and a joy to read. As you seem to like you live music check out the band The Good Ship who are based in The New Globe Theatre in Fortitude Valley. Cracking live shows with 3 albums to boot. Playing there on the 20th of this month. Keep up the good work, all the best. Steve

    • BobinOz December 8, 2014, 5:14 pm |

      I just checked them out on YouTube, quite a fun sounding band. I’ve also never been to The New Globe Theatre, so I’ll certainly be checking that place out at some point, I’ll see how I’m fixed closer to the time although it’s a bit near to Christmas.

      Thanks for the tip Steve, cheers, Bob

  • djmcbell October 21, 2014, 1:12 am |

    I don’t know what Halloween events are like at other Gold Coast parks but we went to the one at Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Florida a few years ago and found it pretty fun – certainly one for the kids (and us adults took advantage of the shorter queues for the rides!). That being said, the other parks (Universal Studios, Busch Gardens) did ones that were more adult-oriented, and I still recall the Universal Studios one scaring the bejeezus out of me as a kid.

    Wonder if SeaWorld at Gold Coast (not affiliated with the American SeaWorld in any way) do an event, and whether that’s better?

    • BobinOz October 21, 2014, 11:50 pm |

      I’m not sure what SeaWorld do here for Halloween, but I did read somewhere that a theme park in Florida, can’t remember exactly which one, have a Halloween night where they chase people around with chainsaws.

      Our kids would have just love that 🙂 I think maybe Halloween is becoming more of an adult thing in some places.

      • djmcbell October 22, 2014, 5:33 pm |

        Yeah, I think that’s Universal Studios – I went to something like that as a kid (well, it was more “scare mazes”) and it really was quite scary for me at the time.

        I was in Florida during Halloween 2012 and most parks run a “limited access” Halloween event (meaning you’ve got to buy a separate ticket). We went to the Magic Kingdom one (which was a cheap ticket and the amount was limited, meaning we went there and got on LOADS of rides from 4pm until midnight – I think 10pm to 12am was constant re-rides on Space Mountain). It’s called “Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party” and they put on trick-or-treat booths for kids, people are encouraged to dress up and it’s pretty family-friendly. Also at SeaWorld (they didn’t have an event, but instead also encouraged people to dress up and had some trick-or-treat stuff) they simply had staff going round dressed up as mermaids, octopus (is octopi the plural of octopus?) and so on, which wasn’t really anywhere near as interesting.

        • BobinOz October 23, 2014, 9:15 pm |

          Yes, they had mazes at Movie World as well. Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party sounds like the kind of thing the kids would have enjoyed, maybe I’ll get Mrs Bob to Google it to see if we have one going on here, or at least something like it.

          I’m guessing, but I think octopus is the plural of octopus 🙂

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