I have never been a great fan of Halloween. Its not that I am against it on a major religious conviction even though I am a Christian, its just that I think the whole concept of ‘Trick or Treat’ is a polite way of mugging people on their doorsteps; and in that we are being expected to tone down Christian festivals the concept of Halloween niggles a bit……..and there he goes, he fell off his soap box.
Anyway, The Mudheads were asked to perform at an alternative gig to Halloween in a huge old church in Bristol, and thinking that it might be fun we accepted.
We knew that all was going to be hard work when we arrived and the place was crawling with small children all dressed as witches and a variety of demons and monsters.
The look of horror on Aaron’s face said it all “were not playing to this lot are we”?
Thankfully we were not playing to the ‘little horrors’, but it did mean that we had to set up two bands in total silence without the aid of the partition we had been promised.
The Mudheads were also responsible for supplying and setting up the PA, something that we were happy to do. That was until the other bands sound guy arrive and on shaking hands pronounced his professional credentials “I of course spent two years being professionally trained on a PROFESSIONAL engineering course, not one of these crappy ‘Music Tech courses’. I could sense Aaron’s hackles rising. Not only had he gone to University to study ‘crappy music technology’, but this usurper looked like he was 12 years old.
From that point chaos ensued, mainly because nobody knew who was in charge and the 12 year old was marching around and announcing to everybody that he was ‘professionally trained’ and not actually doing anything and this was creating a little tension amongst the troops.
Oh, and had I mentioned that we were setting up in the dark? (Or as near dark as I can cope with as I am as blind as the proverbial bat in poor light).
All in all we struggled to get the kit up, and a job that normally takes us an hour, took two and a half!!.
We were still sound checking as the doors opened….and I hate that.
Mind you, we needn’t have worried, only 25 people turned up.
Picture this, a HUGE gothic church hall…..echo that would have made Brian May envious. Months of active promotion from the poor old promoter who had put his heart and soul into this gig, and two bands prepped and ready to rock…and 25 people.
Sometimes I ask myself why we do these things!!
Ah well, the show must go on, and we went for it! And I have to say, I really enjoyed myself as we performed to the void (the 25 hugged onto every bit of wall space they could find). It was a nice big stage area that gave us plenty of room to rock!....bless the man that invented guitar transmitters.
CJ’s two young daughters enjoyed themselves happily, as they ran around the room in their funky t-shirts that said “I’m with the band”.
Perhaps we should have played to the kids party after all.
3 comments:
I wish I could come up with some words of comfort at this point, like "It could be worse..!" but actually, it can,t. Sorry.
Bass Bin
Oh but it can and it has been! I thought that your worst experience of all time had to be playing in a huge sports hall in Brechin Scotland. As I recall we had promoted the unplugged concert in at least two school assemblies. On the night we were all set up and ready to go and no one came!!! You opened the event by quoting the bands rule of never playing to an audience which was smaller than the band. Unfortunately there was only one of you and about five of us so the show had to go on. You were however magnificent!
The daft thing is....I keep on doing it!!
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