On the 21st of May, 10 Kaipara College bands and their supporters headed over to Auckland Girls Grammar for the Smokefree Rockquest Northshore heats.
Smokefree Rockquest is a music competition for secondary school students where bands write and perform original music. It has been running since 1989. Out of the 39 Bands from the North Shore who entered, 10 were from Kaipara. This is an amazing achievement, considering that many of the schools who entered are much bigger than Kaipara College.
Kaipara College had a very supportive audience for our bands. Each time a Kaipara College band performed, students raced down to the stage to dance along to the songs.
At the end of the evening, 12 bands were selected to go through to the regional finals. 4 of these were from Kaipara College. These were Collusion and Rusty Van, both year 9 bands, Selohrae, a year 13 band, and Zoned Out, a band with members from year 11-13. These bands need to write a second song to perform at the Regional finals. Getting into the finals is an amazing achievement and shows all the hard work that the students put in.
Since the start of the year, all the musicians spent their Wednesday nights at ‘band factory’, run by the music teachers, Nick Roberts and Greg McLarin. At band factory, the students formed bands or stuck with the ones they already had. Once they had formed a band, they had to work together to write a song to perform at Rockquest.
Some students entered their songs into the Youthtown Songwriting Competition as well. This is a songwriting competition for students. It is run by the Play it Strange Trust. Three songs from Kaipara College students were finalists. These were the songs ‘Officially Trash’ written by the band Collusion, ‘Shining Star,’ written by Kayla Hutchinson and ‘Fly,’ written by Lara Middleton. The finalists will be going to a recording studio to record their songs professionally. Their songs will be on the 2021 Youthtown Songwriting Competition Aotearoa Album.
Before the bands headed off to Rockquest, Kaipara College held ‘Into the Fire’, a gig at Kaipara College to prepare for Rockquest. The night was MC’d by Morgan Costello, the music captain. It was a great night. It was great for the bands and solo-duo performers to practice performing in front of a crowd before they competed. This was the first gig the school has held since 2019 due to COVID-19.
There are still students performing at the solo-duo Rockquest, as well as the bands who are performing at the Regional finals. We wish these musicians the best for their performances.
Zoned Out preforming at Rockquest
