19:57, 28/10/2006

morninafter

The first setlist

First of all, I must apologise to the tall person in the long coat who talked to me during the second band. I really couldn't hear what you were saying but I think you are someone who reads this blog. I went upstairs to take some equipment away and was going to find you when I came back down in the gap before the third band, but you'd gone. Sorry. It must have seemed very rude :(

Nerves are a funny thing. Neither Jennie or I really suffer them as we both love performing live so much. But in this case I guess we both felt there was a bit at stake. This is for both of us much more our band than the previous ones. As you know, I joined Six Inch Killaz months after they originally formed, and with Electic Shocks, Jennie joined us half a year after we formed, and I was a relative latecomer too.

But Deathline is ours. 100%, unqualified our band. So I guess nerves were to be expected. And by hell I was nervous.

Jennie and I arrived separately from shitty work days, about half an hour before our soundcheck time and swiftly downed a couple of drinks with our friend Erika who was being our front of house agent, distributing flyers to the people drinking in the bar upstairs and making sure they came down to see us. As usual, the soundchecks were running late and our 7.30 soundcheck became 7.45, became 8pm. The venue's door time is 8pm so we were rapidly running out of time to set up our sound which was alarming.

Soundchecks, for the uninitiated, are a way of ensuring that a band sounds like they want to (and that they can hear enough on stage to play). It's particularly important with a band like ours, who use a drum machine, to get the levels right out front and onstage. A drum machine has completely different sonic qualities to a live drummer and kit. There's no actual presence to the sound at all, and often onstage it can be a weird experience playing without the physicality of someone hitting a big drum kit behind you. With live drums, it's almost impossible to lose your place in a song because of this physical presence and loudness. With a drum machine, if you can't hear the sounds clearly in the monitors (the wedge shaped speakers pointing towards the band) then you're basically fucked. Similarly, if the mix out front is too weedy, then the whole thing can sound an indistinguishable mess.

(This has happened to me once before at the same venue and I never want it to happen again)

The sound man was obviously keen to rush us through when we finally started soundchecking just after 8pm, but we tried to slow the pace and set things up properly without being rushed. Thankfully it all went without a hitch and the sound felt pretty good both onstage and out front.

We barely had time to have a wee before going onto play. The promoter told us to get our audience in as quickly as possible then get on.

This was good in a way as we didn't really have time to get the nerves properly. After a confusing ten minutes of milling around trying to get people to come down into the venue, blimey, I hit the footswitch that started the drum cues on my Powerbook and we were off!!

What can I say except it was great. We probably had fifty people out front when we played, which is very good for an opening act (and actually makes the tiny Hope & Anchor look reasonably busy). Having an audience composed mainly of friends (including the rest of our previous band, Electric Shocks, now the nucleus of the superb Animal Maths - thanks chaps) helps, but from the opening beats of We Took Paris to the feedback that closed C'mon C'mon, it all went pretty flawlessly from upstage. I hope it was good out front too. Evryone we talked to after was very enthusiastic and pointed out bits of the set that they liked especially, which means that they were listening. Yes!

The audience noticably thinned after us which always gives you a bit of a buzz as well, though some of the other bands were from out of town so I guess audiences are harder to come by.

Because we don't, in Britain, have the awful system called "pay to play", promoters take more of a risk with bands and we're happy that Bugbear, who promote The Hope & Anchor and Dublin Castle in London made their guarantee on us. In fact, we actually made a reasonable bit of money on this gig. So special thanks to everyone who came and paid and told the door that they'd come to see us!

We do it all again at the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town on Thursday 9th November. Please please come if you can. We live and die by the audiences we get and we are very good, honest!

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morninafter

In /music/deathline