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Thursday, August 14, 2008

Expo. Brisbane Style. Part 3- "I've been to the River Stage too..."

(if you have missed Part 1, Click Here!) (If you have missed Part 2, Click Here)

In case you have not been following along, I said "hopefully" on May 6 for a part three. Two things have happened to make this possible, first has been the establishment (not by me but by a another Brisbane resident) of a Expo 88 Youtube channel with snippets of the Closing Ceremony, as well as descriptions of life on the Expo site. This channel will eventually also go in depth about the rebirth of South Brisbane post Expo as South Bank Parklands. But the channel is a world to itself so check it out! The second thing is the increase of concert clips from Expo on Youtube, in particular from the main concert venue, the River Stage. Then I realised, could the River Stage concerts be effectively part three instead of a standalone segment? Yes it could.

Part 3- "I've been to the River Stage too"
3.1-River Stage specifics
Most people know the term "River Stage" in Brisbane these days for the stage in the City Botanic Gardens (which hosts concerts too), but twenty years years ago The River Stage was a "floating" stage in front of the Queensland,Universal Telecasters(i.e TVQ-0/10's Eyewitness News studio inside the Queensland Pavillion) and Australian Pavillions which could seat 10,000. This capacity was often overtopped by people standing for popular concerts like John Farnham, John Denver, "Brisbane's Band" Wickety Wak and Aussie folk band Redgum. At the heart of the facility was a tower sponsored by FM-104, Brisbane's (then) only commercial FM station (the station is today part of Austereo's Triple M network and the "FM104 RockTower" stands at the gateway to the Stradbroke Island ferry network at Cleveland harbour, 20 km from the Expo site.)
This venue also hosted the opening ceremony by the Queen and the teary closing ceremony with the legendary 1960's Australian performers, The Seekers performing "The Carnival Is Over" to close the exposition...
3.2-River Stage Concerts
The first concert we will bring you is a flashback to the Expo host broadcaster's corporate day on May 6, with the Ten Network's present for Universal Telecasters corporate day being "a live concert of Ten's Young Talent Team from Young Talent Time" on the Corporate Day and a live broadcast of YTT on the Saturday night. We bring you the Young Talent Team, with a focus on Australia's Got Talent judge, and Kylie's younger sister, Dannii Minogue.
Dannii and Natalie Miller duet on the River Stage-http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=e65biJM7GMM
Dannii and Vinnie del Tito duet "Time of My Life"-http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=ht1j1b7zf0w
The Young Talent Team doing some team performances-http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=g6IEclrhbGg
Now we fast forward to June 22, with Australian band Redgum taking centre stage...
And before we get to the final Redgum song, which is "I've been to Bali too!" was not only was lampooned by FM104 as "I've been to Expo" but it represents a innocent time before the masses of security after 9/11, where Bali was thought of as a safe hideaway from the worlds troubles by Australians.
The Australian National Day at Expo culminated in what else but a two day concert series featuring Aussie band, The Divinyls (which is featured here) and Joe Cammilleri and The Black Sorrows (which did a encore performance at the 20th anniversary celebrations on May 10 this year)
The Divinyls-Pleasure and Pain/Only Lonely-http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=37fQV0DsB9E
The next part?
Wait and see. Brisbane's finest hour may have more tales to tell.

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