Daniel­la Maraj

Un­cle's on d Bay, an in­ti­mate tav­ern nes­tled in Clax­ton Bay, has been ac­com­mo­dat­ing live mu­sic from some of Trinidad and To­ba­go's finest mu­si­cal out­fits. Host­ing its fi­nal Rock­star Wednes­day show on De­cem­ber 2, Un­cle's on the Bay in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Rock­star En­er­gy Drink gave pa­trons the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sam­ple mu­sic from the wide gamut of rock and roll with live per­for­mances by G-Radd and Big Nick, Sim­u­lacra, Blood Red Clover, Cabezon, The Wich of the Bell­tow­er and Gyazette. G-radd, bet­ter known as Tripped and Falling's gui­tarist Ger­ard J Men­don�a, and Nicholas Marsan opened the show with an acoustic set.

Men­don�a as­serts that this new mu­si­cal di­rec­tion emerged from a de­sire to play songs that he had been work­ing on which adopt­ed mu­si­cal el­e­ments that were dif­fer­ent from any­thing he had dab­bled in be­fore. He says, "I hon­est­ly just had a bunch of songs and I thought maybe show­cas­ing in acoustic would be nice, and I just want­ed to do some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent to every­thing that I've done be­fore, even do­ing lead vo­cals for the first time for all my songs." Armed with new ma­te­r­i­al un­like that which has been heard be­fore, Men­don�a and Marsan per­formed pop fu­sion sin­gles like "I Dare You," "Bit­ter Gar­den" and "Tonight."

The Witch of the Bell­tow­er

Of his genre Men­don�a says, "I couldn't say an ex­act style, but the songs are ba­si­cal­ly con­tem­po­rary Pop, but there's al­so a lot of fu­sion go­ing on in them." The 30-minute acoustic set proved to be a high­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed con­tri­bu­tion. Sim­u­lacra took the stage next for a short spell dis­play­ing what it calls "rock mu­sic with a slight mix of oth­er gen­res." The band's idea of mix­ing gen­res added yet an­oth­er di­men­sion to the night's rock and roll cel­e­bra­tion, and though on­ly per­form­ing briefly for 15 min­utes, Sim­u­lacra en­ter­tained the gath­er­ing crowd at Un­cle's sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly. Sim­u­lacra's per­for­mance was fol­lowed by Blood Red Clover's en­gross­ing en­deav­our.

The band Blood Red Clover, more com­mon­ly ab­bre­vi­at­ed as BRC, has been a mu­si­cal en­ti­ty for the past eight years and played an en­gag­ing full set of their orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions. Its melod­ic ex­per­i­men­tal rock sounds were pro­pelled by vo­cal­ist Neil Thomas' soul­ful­ly ar­dent lyrics that turned the Un­cle's at­mos­phere in­to some­thing re­sem­bling a drinkery or lounge. Band mem­bers An­drew Ho­sein and Marc Chung on gui­tars pro­vid­ed mot­ley melodies while Clint Hare­wood on bass and Joshua Baig on drums kept the back­ing strong to round off BRC's grat­i­fy­ing pre­sen­ta­tion.

Cast­ing spells on Un­cle's pa­trons

Cabezon of­fered its mu­si­cal mea­sure in the night's line up, and the band didn't dis­ap­point. Pi­o­neer­ing its "rock­so" genre Cabezon en­ter­tained the au­di­ence with its so­cial­ly con­scious eu­pho­ny per­form­ing sem­i­nal sin­gles like "Re­verse Back" and "Saly­bia." Front man Dar­ius Bal­go­b­in en­gaged the crowd with his vo­cal quiv­ers and his wit­ty quips which fur­ther em­bell­ished the band's po­lit­i­cal lyrics. Cabezon once again proved to be the band with a mes­sage, and its clos­ing ren­di­tion of Bob Mare­ly's "Iron, Li­on, Zion" end­ed the set with some very in­tense-but-pos­i­tive vibes. The night pro­gressed with The Witch of the Bell­tow­er not on­ly de­but­ing its new line up but al­so ex­e­cut­ing a re­mark­able per­for­mance.

Play­ing its own ma­te­r­i­al, the band's front woman Miche­line Fer­reira cer­tain­ly cast some spells on Un­cle's pa­trons with her eerie vo­cal res­o­nances. With the mu­si­cal con­tri­bu­tions of Ran­go Tan­go's bassist Aaron Ramkalawan, and the per­cus­sion styl­is­tics of Av­ery Heer­alal, The Witch of the Bell­tow­er of­fered its avant-garde aes­thet­ic with fer­vor. Per­haps what was most ex­cep­tion­al about the per­for­mance was the in­cor­po­ra­tion of French Trum­pet play­er Rene Boy­er on the song "Hap­py Di­vorcee" which added a strange charm to the sound. At any rate the band fleshed out its mu­si­cal mod­u­la­tion much to the de­light of the gath­er­ing. Gyazette closed the show with its high en­er­gy ren­di­tions of its rock-kaiso-reg­gae-rap­so songs.

De­scribed by the band as "unique and in­fec­tious" Gyazette proved to be the band with the cul­tur­al back­ing. Gui­tarist and singer Nick­o­lai's Sal­cedo's brusque-but-beau­ti­ful vo­cals re­sound­ed with in­ten­si­ty as he belt­ed out the crowd favourite "Who is the Cap­tain of this Ship." The im­pres­sive line-up back­ing Sal­cedo, in­clud­ing back-up singers and per­cus­sion­ist, cul­mi­nates the band's or­gan­ic sounds that mix­es Carib­ana with Con­tem­po­rary West In­di­ana. Gyazette played its full set in the mod­ern "rock­so" tra­di­tion, and at the end of the show pa­trons and mu­sic ap­pre­ci­a­tors at Un­cle's on d Bay were thor­ough­ly sat­is­fied un­til Un­cle's re­opens its doors in the New Year for more live per­for­mances.