Pub Choir – Raising the Roof

Last Thursday I had one of THE best nights I’ve had in ages – it was such fun! Brisbane Pub Choir was celebrating its first birthday.  A concept so simple, why haven’t we been doing this for years? As the website explains “pack yourself into a pub with hundreds of strangers, learn a song in three part harmony in 90 minutes and perform it twice, and if the publishing Gods are smiling, have it immortalised in video forever!” Simple!

There were eight of us in our group and we made a point of arriving early to secure tickets (a green stamp to the wrist) and to grab a ‘nose-bag’ before exercising the rusty larynx. Of course we had overlooked a table reservation and not a seat was to be had. By the time we’d all decided that we’d be happy to stand and eat, the wait time for food was up to 40 minutes – no worries, just ‘go with the flow’. Queuing at the bar for drinks took an age too (I reckon 20 minutes although I wasn’t keeping time). The venue, the Triffid, was at capacity at 800 bods but appeared not to have factored this in when rostering staff on that night – this was the only downer on the evening.

So, after queuing for drinks, I returned to our temporary perch only to find food had been delivered and mine was going cold. Added to this, I now had only 5 minutes to scoff it down before the choir was due to start – needless to say, I left half of it but I didn’t care tonight.

We had been given 24 hours notice of the song we would be singing which was Powderfinger ‘My Happiness’. You may or may not have heard of Powderfinger, they hail from Brisbane and earned a total of 18 ARIA awards. I was fortunate enough to have seen them perform at Big Day Out one year in Adelaide before they disbanded in 2010.

Pub Choir founder and Director Astrid, did her best to split us into three sections, so all the men and their deep voices on one side, the high lady voices on the other and everyone else in the middle – it was impossible as the place was so packed but it didn’t matter, we were there just to have a good sing-a-long.

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90 minutes and lots of laughs later we were ready to shout-sing the song – kind of… but before we did, Astrid welcomed a surprise guest onto the stage – none other than John Collins, one of the founders and bass guitarist of Powderfinger. The place erupted! We were to shout-sing accompanied by a Powderfinger God – woohoo!

Photo credits – Jacob Morrison

And here is the result of our hard work. Although we were right at the back, you can certainly hear us!