Great Big Sea And The Basement, Sydney, Australia...Throwback Thursday.

Last week Twitter trending informed me that one of the oldest music venues in Sydney, The Basement was closing. The Basement holds special memories for me as a fan.

In April 2012, I was lucky enough to see Great Big Sea perform at The Basement in Sydney. On this night the venue was packed with ex-pat Canadians and Australians ready for a traditional Newfoundland kitchen party. And Great Big Sea did not disappoint. 

Not a lot was shared on social media by the fans who went. There were a couple of fan reviews posted to webpages. Timinator (2012) who wrote "The boys oozed enthusiasm and Newfie charm as they went. This was the first time for some of them in Australia, and there oft-repeated jibes at Sean McCann falling for warnings about drop-bears. Sean also found it bewildering that this use to be a penal colony: if people were sent here for punishment, he wondered aloud, how bad must his ancestors - banished to Newfoundland have been." (Please excuse the term Newfie as I do know it is derogatory and GBS have never like it).

I was able to about to find a couple of some very shakey fan videos with an Australian theme. In the first one Alan Doyle talks about Sean McCann falling for stories about 'drop bears' and then they go on to sing 'Nothing in a Song'. The second video was one of the highlights of this show for me and that was when Sean McCann sang the Men At Work song 'Down Under'. I have shared these videos on my Google + page.

I have also included a couple of my own shaky photographs of Great Big Sea on stage at The Basement, a photograph shared by Danielle Spencer at the venue with Alan Doyle (Russell Crowe was overseas making a movie at the time and Danielle came with friends) and a poster of the Great Big Sea events in Australia. As always no copyright infringement intended.

During this trip I was lucky enough to meet Murray Foster and Sean McCann at the airport on the way to Byron Bay. I saw Alan Doyle sitting on a seat but was too nervous to go up and talk to him. I was lucky enough to meet him in the Toronto airport on the way to St. John's, Newfoundland in 2015. Dreams do come true for fans no matter where they live.

References

Cockburn, P., Gerathey, S. Reddie, M. (2018). 'Sydney live music venue The Basement closing in a week, but offices won't replace it' published in abc.net.au on 27 March, 2018.

Convery, S (2018), 'The Basement 'set to close' within a week in blow to Sydney's live music scene' published in The Guardian on 26 March, 2018.

Schaumann, D. (2013). 'Great Big Sea' published in schaumann.com.au on 2 December, 2013.

Timinator (2012), 'Great Big Sea at The Basement' published at plummetonions.com on 6 April, 2012.