Gig Review: Wednesday 12th April - On The Rocks

Being a promoter is not a pretty job. It sees you as the intermediary between the venue (who exist to make money mainly off selling drinks) and the acts performing on the night and the role not only relies on your love of music but requires the organisation in order to make the night run smoothly and a business sense in order to sell it to punters on a night out.

The pre-gig emotional rollercoaster that a promoter would go through is, without a shadow of a doubt, far, far worse than for a performing artist. On the realisation that there will barely many people turning up at your night which you've spent hours and hours organising, advertising and planning, there is the worry that the few people that have paid to come to your night will have a disappointing time. Not to mention the fact that the bands could get arsey about wasting their time too and to rub salt into the wound, you've lost money too. Even though you haven't taken much money at the door, you still have to cover the cost of the band. Especially if they're going to drop sneaky hints about them being owed money on their blog.

I had always thought that this would be as bad as it gets for promoters and as a performer, I can only imagine what the promoting crew for the night (No Rest For The Wicked) felt when they turned up at the new venue that they'd been forced to change to by the venue management. They'd turned up there to find builders still at work with power tools, putting the stage together in a claustrophobic little tunnel with acoustics like a bottomless well. Things got worse when the venue manager came in threatening to shut the night due to lack of people (and therefore drinks sales). And things pretty much hit rock bottom when the sound engineer was ejected from the club by the bouncer when he (quite rightly) challenged the manager to keep the night going. (The drunk and probably coked-up manager decided to respond physically. Apparently this has been caught on camera so if I'll let you know if this footage is made public.)


The Zinga Warriors

The Zinga Warriors (pretty cool if you like your live dnb - check em out if you're into that) were quick to jump up on-stage at this point to get the momentum of the night rolling to a point where it would have taken quite a bit of brute force to stop the proceedings and we did a cut-down 20 minute set after them. At this point we were pretty determined to put on a really good show for the promoters, so we had a good one, full of energy, to an intimate 20-strong audience.

Setting up a dedicated night for live drum n bass will no doubt take time to establish itself properly and all at 'No Rest For The Wicked' are doing an amazing job so far - hopefully they'll continue to do what they're doing, regroup and find a better venue to keep going. Their passion for music is blatant and I sincerely hope that in ten year's time when the live dance scene which they are pioneering has grown far in excess of it's current embryotic stage into a prominent part of music history, that I'll be able to watch some documentary about it's growth and how 'No Rest For The Wicked' were a part of it.

http://www.nrftw.com - for live drum'n'bass. Check their podcast and get signed up to their mailing list.
I should also add that we're not really a drum'n'bass band - we're more a dance/electronica/breakbeat act.