Last week we played our third gig. It was at the Watershed in Wimbledon, supporting Chik Budo and Acoustic Ladyland, and it was an experience.
We found out about the gig through the Watershed's mailing list; here was a great opportunity to support a really good band in a decent music venue. We replied to the Watershed and were put in touch with the promoter, Hamish Macbeth, who explained the deal to us. We would have to buy the first 20 tickets at £10 each, essentially guaranteeing to sell them on to our friends/fans. It was a gamble, paying a £200 deposit to play a gig was not something we had ever considered before. We weighed up the potential loss and gain, and decided it was worth it. An aggressive online guilt campaign thus followed, with Marc and Pete convincing everyone they'd ever known and everyone they'd never known, to come to the gig.
Meanwhile, deep underground in the Flags studio (whose secret location cannot be revealed), I was slaving away at the mixes of our three tracks, with no company other than the whiteboard caricatures and the occasional constructive criticism from Pete when popping his head around the door; "The snare sounds like a wet fart.", "Make the cymbals stand out.", "It doesn't sound good. It sounds bad.". The aim was to get a three-track version of our EP made in time for the gig, and after copious amounts of caffeine, despair, and hope, we did it. However we had one awful moment just hours before the gig. Marc and Pete had been burning and packing the discs, and had got up to the fiftieth, when they sold the first one to Kim, Marc's Mum. Eager to hear the culmination of months of hard work, she rushed the CD over to the HiFi, loaded it up, hit play, and heard absolutely nothing. "Marc it's not working!" - "Mummy You need to press play!" - "I did!". It was at that point they realised no music had been burnt onto the disc, and that potentially none of the 50 discs had been properly written to. With no time left to burn any more discs, the situation seemed grave. Fortunately, it turned out that only the last eight discs had been wasted, and the rest were fine. We learnt a valuable lesson from this; don't remove the USB key containing the files you're writing to CD during the burning process, or in other words, don't let Pete near computers.
So with our 50 CDs, we drove our overloaded cars to Wimbledon, and got there just in time for the sound check. We were at last at the gig we had been preparing for for so long.
After the sound check there is always an awkward period of waiting around, where there is nothing to do other than worry that we haven't practiced enough. Marc and I tend to go through a particular thought process, where in the build up to the gig, we wonder why are we putting ourselves under the pressure of performing, and whether or not we really want to do it for the rest of our lives. This concern is then destroyed in the instant we start performing on stage in front of a room full of people. It is thrilling, exciting, and it makes us feel really alive.
I had a weird unearthly moment when playing a piano solo in the final song of our set. I was so in the zone that my body started doing strange things. My feet started to mirror my hands, and seemed to have a life of their own, tapping, stamping away at ridiculous speeds. I think I looked like a some sort of puppet where my feet were attached to my hands by invisible wire. In fact, I later found out that people thought I looked like a thunderbird. Despite that, the whole gig went really well, and the crowd seemed to really like our stuff which was reflected in our EP sales.
The agreement with Hamish was that the cash for the first 20 tickets sold would go to him, the next 10 would go to the venue, and any tickets sold after the first 30 would go to us. We were quite shocked when he approached us after the gig, demanding another £40 as we had only sold 26 tickets. We had just performed, had produced £260 in ticket sales for the venue, as well as drinks sales, and here he was demanding that we pay him! Pete politely told him where to shove it, and Macbeth quickly backed down.
We got a lot out of the gig. We supported some really good bands, got to play in front of a large crowd, won over some new fans, and got some good publicity in the local press. However, we won't play at the Watershed again, at least not on those terms. There are venues out there where you don't have to pay to play, and that are willing to support unsigned bands, not rip them off. It's just a case of finding them.
Thanks to everyone that came out that night to support us, we had a great time, and we hope you did too.
