Pe­ter Ray Blood

Starved for live steel­band mu­sic on the long hol­i­day week­end, pan lovers thronged the few events that fea­tured steel­bands.

Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove showed some en­ter­prise by hold­ing its first East­er Sun­day fam­i­ly day. Band man­ag­er Er­rol Sker­ritt said the idea was ini­ti­at­ed by the stage side of the 2013 Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on.

Held at its Hamil­ton Street pan the­atre in Wood­brook, the Phase II get-to­geth­er was a tremen­dous suc­cess as non-stage-side mem­bers in­sist­ed that they get in­volved as well.

Sker­ritt said: "This thing was be­yond my ex­pec­ta­tion. I thought that the stage side would just have a lit­tle some­thing but the fun, which be­gan ear­ly in the morn­ing, went way in­to the night."

Sker­ritt said the event will be held an­nu­al­ly on East­er Sun­day.

To cel­e­brate its 24th an­niver­sary, Smokey & Bun­ty col­lab­o­rat­ed with West In­di­an To­bac­co Co (Wit­co) to have Des­per­a­does per­form on the pave­ment out­side the pop­u­lar St James bar.

With many a pan buff ei­ther abroad or camp­ing at some beach for the week­end, there was still a huge turnout of pan lovers on the West­ern Main Road pave­ment.

Seen among the pan die-hards on Sun­day night were Wood­brook coun­cil­lor Cleve­land Gar­cia and his wife Al­li­ma, at­tor­neys El­ton Prescott and Wayne Smart, Mervyn Cord­ner, Bri­an Rigs­by, Ba­by Headley, Ul­ric Box­hill, Tans­ley Thomp­son, and Clyde Mc Collin.

Al­so drop­ping in, af­ter per­form­ing in Pe­nal, was joint 2013 In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er So­ca Monarch and Road March cham­pi­on Su­perBlue. On his ar­rival, he was mobbed by ador­ing fans re­quest­ing pho­tographs and au­to­graphs.

Des­per­a­does per­formed two rounds of mu­sic, ex­cit­ing the crowd with many pop­u­lar hits from its ex­pan­sive reper­toire, in­clud­ing Or­di­nary Peo­ple and this year's Panora­ma item Ham­mer Time.

Join­ing "Des­pers" arranger Robert Greenidge in en­joy­ing the band's per­for­mance, were Skif­fle Bunch arranger Ray Hol­man and his Ex­o­dus coun­ter­part Pel­ham God­dard.

Stick­ing on a pan note, Pan Trin­ba­go's North­ern Re­gion pre­mieres its 1-2-3-Plus se­ries of con­certs at Phase II pan the­atre this evening, at 7 pm.

Join­ing the "Phase" in this fund-rais­ing ini­tia­tive are 2013 Na­tion­al Panora­ma run­ner-up bp Rene­gades, Sin­gle Pan run­ner-up De­fence Force Steel Or­ches­tra, Sapo­phon­ics of Care­nage, and DJ Cut­ting Crew.

Ad­mis­sion is rea­son­ably priced at $40 (sin­gle) and $60 (cou­ple).

This month marks the start of the "new" Pan Trin­ba­go Pan in de Coun­try­side se­ries, with the first show sched­uled for to­mor­row, at 5 pm, at Table­land Recre­ation Cen­tre, Table­land Ex­ten­sion Road, Table­land.

Ad­mis­sion is free and bands cho­sen to head­line the pre­miere in­clude Rene­gades, Pam­beri, Rio Claro Koskeros, San City Sym­pho­ny and Gold­en Hands.

Like last year's se­ries, res­i­dent disc jock­ey DJ Klass is Class will al­so be in at­ten­dance.

Pan in de Coun­try­side is a na­tion­wide event and is staged in far-flung ar­eas of the coun­try. With last year's se­ries be­ing a re­sound­ing suc­cess, hav­ing got­ten much sup­port from the pub­lic, the 2013 edi­tion will be staged in places like Biche, Fyz­abad, Tabaquite and To­ba­go.

Pan Trin­ba­go has or­gan­ised a shut­tle ser­vice, with a lim­it­ed num­ber of seats, at $125 per per­son, to trans­port pan fans out of the city to rur­al des­ti­na­tions.

For more in­for­ma­tion, call 623-4486 or 625-3556. The shut­tle de­parts Pan Trin­ba­go Head Of­fice, Park Street, Port-of-Spain, at 2 pm.

One more stel­lar Pan Trin­ba­go event is the an­nu­al Paz­zaz Pan Jazz Es­cape, sched­uled for April 27, at Pi­geon Point, To­ba­go.

A fringe of this year's To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence, the Pan Trin­ba­go do will feat Su­perBlue, Roy Cape All Stars, Blaxx, Raf Robert­son, Du­vonne Stew­art, Co­dring­ton Pan Fam­i­ly, bird­song, West­side Sym­pho­ny, Sharon Phillips & Flayme, and much more.