2006-11-28 Begin The Begin

We played 2 gigs last week - one at the Bentley Stadium Bar, and the BOTB.

The Bentley Stadium gig was a disaster, and let this be a lesson to any band! Firstly, none of us invited anyone, second, the venue was set up so when one band was playing on one stage, the other set up on another, etc. so the crowd was forced to move from one stage to another, and guess what? They didn't. Oh, and Steve was late by about 15 minutes, which meant half our set, which was, let's face it, not surprising. So we were twiddling our thumbs, while the sound guys told us to start without or guitarist. He turned up finally, minimal sound check, and we played our set. On top of that, our guitarist's strings broke in the middle of the set, so everything thing from then on sounded out of tune. 2 guys came in, and really enjoyed the music we played, but that was it. We did ourselves no favours, the venue was limited, and it was awful. Good job I'd stopped caring a couple of weeks ago...

Now to the BOTB at 12.20am- there was no feeling before the gig, and that is always a bad sign. I felt we were just going through the motions, and it did not feel at all like a comp. Anyway, we got on, played our set, we were not together. Casualty was by far our best song, and it was a fairly deflating experience. Suffice it to say, we did not get anywhere - most probably because we didn't practice for weeks beforehand. Guys still came up to us and told us we had an excellent set - one guy actually had earplugs in! Hilarious!

We stayed for some drinks, listened to the results which surprised no one. Duffy followed me out, and then said to me that he didn't want to play in the band anymore as he wants to play more rock - I asked the others, and they more or less said the same - Kyle said it was not as fun as it used to be - hmmm, perhaps if people practiced a bit more and put in more ideas it would be more fun, eh? Anyway, I told them I'd already written an e-mail saying the same thing, and I wished them luck, and now I can get some real people together who want to make music, not a bunch of people who are more attracted to the idea of a band than actually being in one.

On reflection? I got a mobile phone out of it, and a string of new songs, which is great! Played a few gigs which is always good experience, and now I can get a bit more serious with the music. One disappointment is losing Duffy, who I thought wanted to get more serious, but the sparodic efforts of the other two just let everyone down. He wasn't perfect, as his lack of doing Weapon showed, but wanted to have more of a go. The others just didn't appreciate having a set of original songs written and recorded for them, and expected to get better by just owning an instrument, not playing it.

A big weight has been lifted...

I would have been very lucky to get it right first time. I didn't, which is cool.

The line was too fine...

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