NEWS ITEMS
2013 - Gondoliers to reunite, 45 years on
A favourite local band of the mid-1960s will reunite for the Back to Gulgong weekend.
The Gondoliers, consisting of Dave Brooker, George Vukovich, Wayne Jones, Bob Carpenter, Neville Roach and Peter Harkins, will play at the Prince of Wales Hotel on Friday and Saturday nights, as well as performing on the back of a truck in Saturday morning's parade.
It will be the first time the band has played together in around 45 years.
The Gondoliers began in the early 1960s with Peter Harkins, who now operates Tamworth's Cheapa Music, and George Vukovich, who is now a station manager in outback Queensland.
The duo was dubbed The Gongdalairs by Frank Halloran, a journalist at the Mudgee Guardian, where Harkins was an apprentice letterpress printer.
As the band grew, new lead singer Dave Brooker said the name didn't sound sophisticated, and the group developed into The Gondoliers.
Brooker, the band's blind sax-playing frontman, came from Muswellbrook, and worked at 2MG as a radio announcer and ad salesman.
He and Bob Carpenter lived in Mudgee, and would jump in Carpenter's MG to join the rest of the band in Gulgong for rehearsals.
The Gondoliers played B&S balls, weddings, dances and corporate events from Mudgee and Gulgong into the Hunter and as far west as Warren, and early in their career travelled to Canberra to take third place in the country championships of the 'Battle of the Sounds'.
The owners of the Prince of Wales Hotel invited the band to re-form for this weekend's reunion, and for the first time all six members - including drummers who served at different times - were brought together.
'I'm excited about getting together again,' said Carpenter, who hadn't picked up his bass guitar for 45 years until three weeks ago.
'Who would have thought there'd be an opportunity for the band to get together, not just to see each other, but to play together'?
He said his playing skills were coming back 'surprisingly well' - the brain knows what to do, and the fingers just have to catch up.
Carpenter said audiences could look forward to plenty of classic rock and roll from the '50s and '60s, with Brooker doing great versions of Roy Orbison's songs, as well as tracks from groups including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
Band members began arriving in Gulgong on Thursday, and while Carpenter said the town had changed for the better, Harkins easily recognised his mother's old house and said Gulgong hadn't changed at all.
Source: Mudgee Guardian, October 3, 2013
