Pe­ter Ray Blood

Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra cel­e­brat­ed 50 years of achieve­ment on Fri­day night at a gala re­cep­tion, held at the House of An­gos­tu­ra in Laven­tille.

Host­ed by vet­er­an ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty Phill Sim­mons, the event was at­tend­ed by sev­er­al spe­cial guests, vet­er­an pan play­ers and cur­rent mem­bers of the icon­ic Laven­tille steel or­ches­tra in­clud­ing Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, at­tor­ney Mar­tin Daly SC, Wit­co chair­man An­tho­ny Phillip, Jean Reid, Danielle Chow, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­di­ent Kei­th Di­az, sec­re­tary Richard Forteau and Massy Trinidad All Stars' Dane Gul­ston.

As guests ar­rived at the venue they were wel­comed by a pre­lude of mu­sic by the Des­per­a­does Youth Or­ches­tra led by cap­tain Ha­keem O'Brien. In his wel­come ad­dress, Des­per­a­does man­ag­er Cur­tis Ed­wards re­mind­ed the gath­er­ing that, "Laven­tille is Des­per­a­does; Des­per­a­does is Laven­tille and Laven­tille is the rock on which we stand. To­geth­er we have had 50 years of achieve­ment."

Awards were pre­sent­ed in 11 cat­e­gories with spe­cial at­ten­tion paid to the band's el­ders and pi­o­neers, in­clud­ing Win­ston Archer, Ralph Guild­ford, Gre­go­ry Per­rotte, Clyde Thomas and There­sa "May May" Stead­man. Eight sup­port­ers were al­so pre­sent­ed with to­kens of ap­pre­ci­a­tion, in­clud­ing for­mer na­tion­al ca­lyp­so mon­archs Bomber (Clifton Ryan) and Karene Ache, foot­baller George Flem­ming and Hol­lis Bark­er.

The Sup­port Cir­cle Award was pre­sent­ed to Al­li­son Hen­nessy (posthu­mous), Roy Cape, Ger­ald "Slam" Charles, Thomas "Thun­der­bolt" Williams and five oth­er re­cip­i­ents. The Mer­i­to­ri­ous Ser­vice Award was posthu­mous­ly be­stowed on the late Clive Bradley, Dr Pat Bish­op, Frank "Crawl" Find­lay, Bertie Mar­shall and Ralph Mac Don­ald.

Though formed in the 1940s, Des­per­a­does won its first Na­tion­al Panora­ma ti­tle in 1966 and giv­ing a com­pre­hen­sive ac­count of the band's achieve­ments was in­sur­ance ex­ec­u­tive Vic­tor Copeland. "Des­per­a­does and the peo­ple of Laven­tille were de­signed by God for achieve­ment," said Copeland.

The evening's pro­gramme al­so in­clud­ed per­for­mances by broth­er and sis­ter pan-play­ing twins De­Jean and De­ja Cain, and Des­per­a­does.

Pots o' Gold

I have at­tend­ed and judged many culi­nary com­pe­ti­tions for more than 30 years but very few have come close to last Sat­ur­day's Pots o' Gold staged at the Queen's Park Oval. Held open air on the foot­ball field, the event at­tract­ed about 300 pa­trons who en­joyed some re­al­ly de­li­cious dish­es.

What be­gan as a friend­ly cook­out at the end of the club's an­nu­al eight-a-side foot­ball tour­na­ment has mush­roomed in­to a very suc­cess­ful fund-rais­er with pro­ceeds go­ing to the Queen's Park Benev­o­lent Fund.

Do­ing yeo­man ser­vice to en­sure the suc­cess of this year's event were the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee, in­clud­ing George Wilcox (chair­man), David Sover­all, Richard Com­mis­sion, Willard Rezende, Roger Wal­cott, Amelia Wal­cott and Marie Mout­tet, bol­stered by new Queen's Park man­ag­ing man­ag­er Tiffany Camp­bell-Joseph.

At the end of the sump­tu­ous meal and live en­ter­tain­ment–be­gin­ning with QPCC Oval Teens Steel Or­ches­tra and in­clud­ing Christo­pher Aird and Mar­sha Ca­ballero, Yohan Chucka­ree and Wen­dell Con­stan­tine–the judges chose Kurt Mc Ivor's Suck ah Duck as the Best Dish and Best Named Dish on the evening.

In to­tal, 36 meat dish­es were pre­sent­ed on the menu, most­ly by mem­bers of the club, but there were al­so "do­nat­ed dish­es" from food havens like T&T Ho­tel School, The Mar­ket Place, Rasam Restau­rant of Grand Bazaar, MST Cater­ers, All Out, Trot­ters and El Pecos. Carl Le­ung al­so do­nat­ed a dish.

Back to the fu­ture in mas

It seems that next year's Car­ni­val will see a quan­tum leap back­wards to tra­di­tion­al mas as a num­ber of bands are not on­ly pay­ing homage to por­tray­als of old but al­so to icon­ic de­sign­ers of yes­ter­year. Maybe the in­spi­ra­tion is com­ing from Massy Trinidad All Stars' suc­ces­sive Band of the Year wins with a sailor band? Sec­tions in Tri­ni Rev­ellers' Wood­brook: Then and Now in­clude por­tray­als of the late George Bai­ley's Tears of the In­dies and tra­di­tion­al sailors.

With sev­er­al band­lead­ers urg­ing Car­ni­val de­sign­ers Pe­ter Min­shall and Bri­an Mac Far­lane to re­turn to mas, at least one vet­er­an mas­man is re­turn­ing to the mas are­na next year. For­mer Bar­barossa leader Richard Af­fong has an­nounced that his new band Frenz N Dem will hit the streets of Port-of-Spain in 2016 with We Like It So, which is ac­tu­al­ly a "truck mas." Iron­i­cal­ly when the T&T Guardian be­gan Car­ni­val's Pa­rade of the Bands in 1918, mas was ac­tu­al­ly played on trucks.

Be­sides Af­fong, the band's com­mit­tee in­cludes Toey du Coudray and George Joseph, and it is hop­ing to at­tract at least 200 mas­quer­aders. The com­mit­tee ex­plained that the con­cept and pre­sen­ta­tion will al­low each mas­quer­ad­er "to tru­ly ex­pe­ri­ence the joy, safe­ty and com­fort on the road while hav­ing the op­tion to play mas both on and off the truck." The truck will be a 40-foot Low Boy Trail­er.

We Like It So will be launched to­mor­row, at Las Lap Restau­rant, at ONE Wood­brook Place, from 8 pm.An­oth­er band launch­ing its 2016 Car­ni­val pre­sen­ta­tion is Wee In­ter­na­tion­al. Led by Ricky David­son, the launch will be held on Sun­day at ONE Wood­brook Place.

Al­so re­main­ing in the tra­di­tion­al mas mould is Bel­mont Ex­ot­ic Styl­ish Sailors (Bess) which will be launch­ing its 2016 mas pre­sen­ta­tion, A Touch of Na­ture, on Sat­ur­day, No­vem­ber 14 at the Po­lice Sec­ond Di­vi­sion Mess, Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James from 5 pm to mid­night. This launch was orig­i­nal­ly planned for this Sun­day at the Har­vard Club. Mu­sic will be sup­plied by road DJ Cut­ting Crew, and ad­mis­sion is free as a gift next year to its loy­al mas­quer­aders and sup­port­ers.

Next year, Bess will be pre­sent­ing at least sev­en sec­tions in­clud­ing But­ter­flies, Sting­ing Wasps, Scor­pi­ons and Bees. Formed in April 2013, Bess will be pro­duc­ing a king, and at least 12 in­di­vid­u­als. It will again vie for Band of the Year (Small) ho­n­ours and will par­tic­i­pate in all com­pe­ti­tions. Over the past two years Bess has placed sec­ond in this cat­e­go­ry in the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

Be­tween Ju­ly 1-5, 2013 the Bess band paid trib­ute to late "mas­ter sailor" Ja­son Grif­fith by dis­play­ing many of his mas pic­tures for bands pro­duced be­tween 1980 and 2000 at Nalis, Port-of-Spain; fur­ther ex­po­si­tions are planned for 2016. Ear­li­er this year, a sym­po­sium on the Fan­cy Sailor mas was held cour­tesy the Na­tion­al Archives of T&T, the fo­cus be­ing on Grif­fith who played sailor mas from 1946 to 2000, pro­duc­ing many mem­o­rable mas pre­sen­ta­tions. Bess con­tin­ues to keep the tra­di­tion of the Fan­cy Sailor alive.

The Bess mas camp is sit­u­at­ed at the cor­ner of Jern­ing­ham Av­enue and Archer Street, Bel­mont.