Wednesday, June 02, 2004
What I did over the Bank Holiday by Mike
I was going to write this yesterday but I saw that AK had written that gigantic post and I thought I'd save something interesting (yeah right) for today instead.
Friday
Senser at the student union then the After Dark. Senser were absolutely brilliant, the guitarist rocks really hard whilst hardly moving. He's playing these huge riffs and barely even moving. The place was pretty empty but everyone who was there was standing in front of the stage dancing. Which is something you hardly ever see in Reading. The less said about the support band the better though. Terrible mediocre drum and bass with a bit of live guitar and violin. Really, really crap. I'm not massively into drum and bass but I've been to enough D&B nights when it was huge to know how lame this stuff was. They played Helix at the After Dark again, which was great.
Saturday
I turned up at Impact for a rehearsal at midday having had about 5 hours sleep, the best nights sleep of the weekend as it turns out. My housemate and her boyfriend had decided that early Saturday morning was a great time to have a huge row. Ben Marwood, who had been guest DJ at the After Dark the night before, sorted us all out with tea and coffee but it wasn't ever really going to cut it. After two hours rocking, I was surprised we could play at all, we started packing up early. Got out of the rehearsal to see most of Yankee Nine-Niner waiting to rehearse. Not AK though, apparently he's always late.
After a quick nap I headed into town to meet some friends who were going to see The Ukranians. I had been planning to go but it was £8.50 and my finances had been devastated by the preceding couple of weeks. Apparently they were great. Instead we headed over to the Afro Bar to meet AK and the rest of the Niners. For some reason I thought Tequila was a good idea. As AK mentioned below we then went back to my house and I played him all the crazy tunes that I have on my PC. It's becoming quite a collection!
Sunday
I didn't need to be up early on Sunday but ended up being awake early (again) anyway. We had the Newbury Fringe Festival gig in the afternoon but decided that there was still enough time to pop to Guitar Heaven in Wallingford. Which we did. Played a couple of guitars, looked around, bought some strings and a strap and headed back to Reading. Soon after we got back and had lunch Chubby from S4G turned up with his van and some crazy punks from On Trial and associated friends. We had a rocking time listening to Pantera on the way up there, drove through a huge rainstorm which luckily had already passed Newbury, and
generally had a great time on the way. When we got there at about quarter to four it wasn't long until we had to load in. First impressions were that it was a bit quiet and full of families. By the time we came on the crowd had filled out a bit and we had a pretty good gig I think. At one point there was some kind of squeal that stunned Nik temporarily and stopped him playing but all in all it went really well. It was an extremely well organised and efficient gig set-up and great sound considering there wasn't time for proper soundchecks or anything. It was weird but good to just be able to turn up, plug in and play without having to hang around the venue for hours before hand, and it was really cool playing outside... actually it was really hot.
Apparently a little kid in a batman costume kept getting up and dancing to us but his parents kept making him sit down. When I heard about that it was probably the best SU related thing I'd heard. I wanted to go and find him, give him a chimp mask and tell him never to let his parents stop him rocking out. We also sold a CD to a girl who said she was singing at a friend's wedding the next day and wanted to sing Zombie Wedding. It's the little things that make it worthwhile. The rest of the day is a bit hazy. We went from having no beer to suddenly having loads and outside afternoon drinking can be quite... effective. I enjoyed the rest of the bands and talked a lot of rubbish to a lot of people. After that we went home, Dai (who was mentioned previously by AK) ended up going to a party with Chubby and the On Trial guys despite having never met any of them before.
Monday
I'm woken up at 7:30 by Dai returning from the party with a bag containing 20 cigarettes and 4 Strongbow. I decide to leave him to it and go back to bed. Manage to get up in reasonable time to get to the pub for lunch and a lemonade (ok, and a beer) and can't decide if I feel better or not.
Later that day it's time for the gig at the Student Union. What a brilliant, relaxed gig. It's the same sound guy who did the Josaka launch party and the sound system is excellent. We are the only band on and have a really cool relaxed soundcheck. We get everything sounding really good on stage, it's probably the best soundcheck we've ever had in terms of lack of stress and effeciveness. It does help not having other bands standing around watching. When we played at the King's Head in Fulham they had a policy where each band had an hour slot to arrive and soundcheck, which worked brilliantly. Much better than all the bands turning up at once and hanging around bored.
By the time the gig came round the place was still relatively empty. I thought we played really well though, quite a lot of mistakes which were mainly due to us not having had any sleep for a few nights but I think we covered them relatively well. Everything was pretty tight which is easy having played together the two days before and having really good monitors. I really got into it. Personally it was probably the gig that I've got most into what we've been playing. It'd be good to be able to play every night.
A couple of people we didn't know bought our CD, one of them was in a band that was called (or used to be called) Fisted Foetus which is cool. Barney from Caged Baby even said he really enjoyed it which was something I wasn't really expecting. It was a pretty subdued crowd though. At the end of the day I had a great time and that's all that counts.
What a weekend.
Friday
Senser at the student union then the After Dark. Senser were absolutely brilliant, the guitarist rocks really hard whilst hardly moving. He's playing these huge riffs and barely even moving. The place was pretty empty but everyone who was there was standing in front of the stage dancing. Which is something you hardly ever see in Reading. The less said about the support band the better though. Terrible mediocre drum and bass with a bit of live guitar and violin. Really, really crap. I'm not massively into drum and bass but I've been to enough D&B nights when it was huge to know how lame this stuff was. They played Helix at the After Dark again, which was great.
Saturday
I turned up at Impact for a rehearsal at midday having had about 5 hours sleep, the best nights sleep of the weekend as it turns out. My housemate and her boyfriend had decided that early Saturday morning was a great time to have a huge row. Ben Marwood, who had been guest DJ at the After Dark the night before, sorted us all out with tea and coffee but it wasn't ever really going to cut it. After two hours rocking, I was surprised we could play at all, we started packing up early. Got out of the rehearsal to see most of Yankee Nine-Niner waiting to rehearse. Not AK though, apparently he's always late.
After a quick nap I headed into town to meet some friends who were going to see The Ukranians. I had been planning to go but it was £8.50 and my finances had been devastated by the preceding couple of weeks. Apparently they were great. Instead we headed over to the Afro Bar to meet AK and the rest of the Niners. For some reason I thought Tequila was a good idea. As AK mentioned below we then went back to my house and I played him all the crazy tunes that I have on my PC. It's becoming quite a collection!
Sunday
I didn't need to be up early on Sunday but ended up being awake early (again) anyway. We had the Newbury Fringe Festival gig in the afternoon but decided that there was still enough time to pop to Guitar Heaven in Wallingford. Which we did. Played a couple of guitars, looked around, bought some strings and a strap and headed back to Reading. Soon after we got back and had lunch Chubby from S4G turned up with his van and some crazy punks from On Trial and associated friends. We had a rocking time listening to Pantera on the way up there, drove through a huge rainstorm which luckily had already passed Newbury, and
generally had a great time on the way. When we got there at about quarter to four it wasn't long until we had to load in. First impressions were that it was a bit quiet and full of families. By the time we came on the crowd had filled out a bit and we had a pretty good gig I think. At one point there was some kind of squeal that stunned Nik temporarily and stopped him playing but all in all it went really well. It was an extremely well organised and efficient gig set-up and great sound considering there wasn't time for proper soundchecks or anything. It was weird but good to just be able to turn up, plug in and play without having to hang around the venue for hours before hand, and it was really cool playing outside... actually it was really hot.
Apparently a little kid in a batman costume kept getting up and dancing to us but his parents kept making him sit down. When I heard about that it was probably the best SU related thing I'd heard. I wanted to go and find him, give him a chimp mask and tell him never to let his parents stop him rocking out. We also sold a CD to a girl who said she was singing at a friend's wedding the next day and wanted to sing Zombie Wedding. It's the little things that make it worthwhile. The rest of the day is a bit hazy. We went from having no beer to suddenly having loads and outside afternoon drinking can be quite... effective. I enjoyed the rest of the bands and talked a lot of rubbish to a lot of people. After that we went home, Dai (who was mentioned previously by AK) ended up going to a party with Chubby and the On Trial guys despite having never met any of them before.
Monday
I'm woken up at 7:30 by Dai returning from the party with a bag containing 20 cigarettes and 4 Strongbow. I decide to leave him to it and go back to bed. Manage to get up in reasonable time to get to the pub for lunch and a lemonade (ok, and a beer) and can't decide if I feel better or not.
Later that day it's time for the gig at the Student Union. What a brilliant, relaxed gig. It's the same sound guy who did the Josaka launch party and the sound system is excellent. We are the only band on and have a really cool relaxed soundcheck. We get everything sounding really good on stage, it's probably the best soundcheck we've ever had in terms of lack of stress and effeciveness. It does help not having other bands standing around watching. When we played at the King's Head in Fulham they had a policy where each band had an hour slot to arrive and soundcheck, which worked brilliantly. Much better than all the bands turning up at once and hanging around bored.
By the time the gig came round the place was still relatively empty. I thought we played really well though, quite a lot of mistakes which were mainly due to us not having had any sleep for a few nights but I think we covered them relatively well. Everything was pretty tight which is easy having played together the two days before and having really good monitors. I really got into it. Personally it was probably the gig that I've got most into what we've been playing. It'd be good to be able to play every night.
A couple of people we didn't know bought our CD, one of them was in a band that was called (or used to be called) Fisted Foetus which is cool. Barney from Caged Baby even said he really enjoyed it which was something I wasn't really expecting. It was a pretty subdued crowd though. At the end of the day I had a great time and that's all that counts.
What a weekend.
# posted by Mike @ 12:31 
