“A little while ago a mate that’s involved with art upstairs at work and one of the DJs were diagnosed with cancer pretty much on the same day,” Jarrod Moore, one of the organisers of Cancerpalooza begins. “Our group of friends found out that two of our good mates had been diagnosed within about 24 hours so that hit us pretty hard. We decided to come together and use our contacts in hospitality and music and raise some cash for the Peter Mac Cancer Centre where they were both getting treated.”
While the event is focused on getting money for the Centre, raising awareness about the need for money in the first place is just as important. Moore is amazed at the response the organisers have had so far from everyone involved in this event. “It became something that just grew from a small thing and into something a lot bigger,” he says. “I remember everyone we talked to about it in the beginning had their own story about it; they had a relative or a friend or something like that and it just grew from there. It went from being a music and hospitality thing to something a lot more extensive. We suddenly had people from the arts community saying that they’d love to be a part of the show.”
And it didn’t stop with the art’s community. “We’ve had people from so many different walks of life wanting to help with this,” he continues. “We’ve had art galleries and musical equipment specialists all asking if they can contribute to the day while putting forward their own stories about how this has personally affected them as well. It’s turned into a community support network as well as trying to raise funds for the hospital which pretty much everyone we talked to who has been affected by cancer has had something to do with the Centre.”
The whole idea of the day is to make it as appealing and eclectic as possible. A full day of live music and DJs will be punctuated by art auctions and raffles as well as some tasty food and beverages (of both the distilled and non-distilled variety). “It started off with a core of guys, mainly from the Pinky Beecroft band, they got things going,” he says, explaining how the lineup fell into place. “Other than that it’s just kind of built on itself. We had way more bands than we could possibly put together for one day so we had to cull it a bit and make it cross over a whole lot of genres. We’ve got a little bit of blues, a little bit of hip hop, DJs – we’re trying to create a party atmosphere.”
Diversity of entertainment seems to be the order of the day. “Because it does affect almost everybody we didn’t want to exclude anyone just because they mightn’t be into ‘x’ type of music or anything like that,” he says. “Even if you’re not into hip hop, or folk or blues, you can come down just for a couple of hours, have a few beers and help raise some cash.”
With any charity event, it is expected that there’ll be some financial outlay but every person, at every step, has been so generous as to make the job of Moore and co. a lot easier. Apart from raising awareness, they want to be able to give as big of a cheque as they can to the Peter Mac Centre so dissolving any initial financial contributions has been vital. “We’ve also got some liquor companies that have donated some stock so we’ll be doing some stuff with that, we’ve got some great cocktail guys coming down making some awesome cocktails up,” he says. “All of the artist who’ve donated art and all money from that auction will go straight to Peter Mac. Everything for the day is donated as well, all of the sound equipment of other physical equipment. We’re really lucky to have the support we’ve had and we pretty much have zero out-going costs – whether it’s time, or equipment or art, it’s all been donated. So hopefully, all we need to do now is get the people there to give their financial support.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
