Review: Carlisle@The Brickyard

It's a six hour drive up to Carlisle and whenever I bring this up I tend to get asked, "Is it worth it?". In another world, I became a banker working 9 to 5 in the City but in this world, we'd jump at the chance to do it again. It wasn't the best gig ever - unfortunately the student bar around the corner was shifting the last of their stock for ridiculously cheap prices before they closed for the summer, so turnout wasn't as great as we'd hoped.

We were the only live act and the Urban Natives DJs played before and after. The dead-time before we went on was fairly painful due to the performance time being pushed back twice (waiting for more people to turn up). There's nothing worse than psyching yourself to get on stage only to then have to wait another half hour and go through the whole process again. Especially when there's nothing to do except read all the ink-stains left on the walls by previous musicians and minds deranged from going through the same waiting dead time.

The set was smooth and the small-but-intimate crowd were very appreciative. We spoke to quite a few of them afterwards and we got the impression that aside from Kieretsu (who we played with a few months back in Wimbledon) seemed to be the only people doing this kind of stuff in Carlisle. We promised we'd be back soon and made our way to the hotel to watch some addictive cable TV show that involved strapping a camera to the front of a German train and letting it record for two hours. Unfortunately I missed the end, so if anyone happens to have it recorded, please let me know.

The Brickyard is a great venue (unlike the Leeds Northwest Liberal Social Club) and one of the hallmarks of a decent venue is a decent soundguy. Soundguys are often overlooked and maybe you'll have heard them being thanks by a band towards the end of the show but not really taken much notice of them. They can make a band sound brilliant or shite and if they're arseholes, they can really demoralize the band. (Think of them like a temporary 5th band member) Anyway, Bez was awesome - good sound, great sense of humour and nice guy all round - he was the promoter for the night too.. good job buddy. Look forward to coming back in the not too distant future.

Pic: Neil

Neil hungover at rehearsal, sitting in his drum case. He vomited shortly after this photo was taken.

Neil

I don't know where or how I'd start introducing Neil. Mentioning that he's the drummer is the easy bit and then it just gets plain tricky after that. Needless to say, he's great at what he does (and you'd have to be to be to hold down some of the grooves on our tracks.

At times, disogranised, late and generally a bit of a mess (like the majority of drummers) - this particular specimen of the drummer species adds colour to the group's personality through his clownish antics and comedic (and usually offensive) behaviour. If you were to liken Subsource to the A-Team, Neil would clearly be Murdock and the rest of us fighting it out for BA's medallions.

I could tell you about the time he stacked his car (white Chav-like Nova) after a rehearsal or how after waiting about 3 months for his laptop to be fixed, he promptly decided to spill beer into it on its much-awaited return. I suspect however that there is a much better Neil story just around the corner awaiting to be published here.

Even though I don't really trust him where I can't see him, I'm definitely proud to have him at the back holding down those meaty beats.

Six hour car journey to the Carlisle gig tomorrow. We'll be put up at a hotel, which is a first for a Subsource gig. Been looking forward to The Brickyard for a while, should be a good crowd.

In Diesel

Well, whaddya know, Diesel are playing one of our tunes off their website. We threw 'Parasite' at them ages ago for their Diesel music competition and it's downloadable off their website. It's one of our favourite tunes (and our set-opener) and we don't offer on our site so go and download it whilst you can. (If we get lots of hits there, it might make them sit up and notice us a bit more)

www.diesel-u-music.com: head over to the international part, check out the music section, and we're in the drum'n'bass/breakbeat category.

The only reason we knew we were there was because some bod told us he loved the track and wanted to get our permission for considering it being on the Adidas World Cup 2006 website that was going up soon. Shoe-tastic. One more small step, but the first where we're having some sort of contact with a corporate non-music-related brand, so in a few years time when we're posing naked over a Big Mac we can all pinpoint today as when we first started selling our souls to the corporate machine.

Down to business

There exists a notion that being in the music profession is somewhat glamorous and somehow romantic and whilst I wouldn't like to dissuade anyone from the fact that might well be the truth at times, sometimes it's just plain frustrating hard work - and sometimes with little reward. A lot of the time we find ourselves not necessarily making things happen but trying to set-up opportunities for things to happen and then you just cross your fingers and hope they work out.

Today, Stuey and I found ourselves at the 'London Calling' dance music conference. No real game plan, but people are there to shake hands and do business so we took a bunch of CDs along and checked it out. It was touted as something pretty big but it was a lot smaller than expected. This is the first year its been run and I can see it becoming something much bigger, but at least we met some like-minded people and the A&R advisor guy (Justin somebody at Positiva) didn't say anything bad about us or our approach to trying to get a deal. Like the employee of the month award, both encouraging and disparaging at the same time.

On other fronts, it looks like Paul is moving out of London to be much nearer to the rest of us, which is going to make life a little easier for everyone.

Noooooo...

It was probably too good to be true anyway. Unfortunately, the Liverpool gig at The Barfly was cancelled, due to the bill getting too big. Still, playing alongside Meat Katie, Stereo MCs and The Stanton Warriors etc etc. would have been a dream gig for us at the stage we're at.

Oh well, just The Brickyard in Carlisle (looong drive, no van shennanigans this time either because we can't afford to hire it for two days and just one gig) next week. This one should be a good one anyway. Liverpool will just have to wait a little longer for our arrival..