It was called big metropolitan rock festival, which became the final of a series of qualifying "Rock Maneuvers", held during the second half of 2000 - the first half of 2001 in the Minsk "Rock Cafe". The Rock League under the leadership of Igor Zhukovsky undertook to organize such a laborious and lengthy process.

 

    Monthly events (kind of preliminary mini-festivals in which finalist candidates are selected) were held under names corresponding to the style of their music.  For example, "Metal Maneuvers", "Punk Maneuvers", "Folk Maneuvers", "Blues Maneuvers", etc. The selection was carried out by voting of the audience.

    The White Night Blues group, according to the logic of the development of events, turned out to be in the blues direction they needed. Having made their debut at one of the combined concerts in the Rock Cafe in September 2000, already in October WNB became the winners of the Blues Rock Maneuvers.

By the way, the September concert was the band's debut in the capital - the musicians had never played in Minsk before. It was a very useful experience, because the level of performances of rock bands in the capital was head and shoulders above the average for the country - this applied to both local musicians and visitors (for more details on performances at the Rock Cafe, see the History section). Therefore, there was someone to listen to, there was something to see, and, of course, acquaintances began with colleagues from different cities.

    At the autumn selection of "White Night Blues" they performed as follows: Alexander Shilin on bass, Stepan Bobkov on drums, Yuri Nesterenko remained on guitar and vocals. However, after  this line-up won in its nomination, at the end of the year the rhythm section in the amount of “both-two” left the group together. A year later, Shilin and Bobkov reunited with Nesterenko in his parallel project Nestor Band (later Nestary Band) with WNB. But for the period of the beginning of 2001, the leader   "White Night Blues" had to look for another bass player and drummer to perform in the finals of the grandiose rock action conceived by the "Rock League".  

    The session musician from the group "Egoist" Valery Padukov turned out to be on bass. The place behind the drums was taken by Aleksey Polovchenya (who at the same time tried himself as a percussionist in the folk project of his brother Andrey Polovchenya called "Free Art District").

    More than thirty bands performed on two stages during full festival days. Finalists on the Big Stage of the Concert Hall. And on the Small Stage (“Rock Cafe”, one floor below) - groups that previously participated in concerts and events of the Rock League.

 

    The quality of the photographs leaves much to be desired, but, nevertheless, they survived.