Gig Review: Sat 25th November - The Boileroom, Guildford

Subsource and limiters (devices that reduce the amount of noise coming through a PA in order to stay within council-imposed volume limits) do not make good partners and we were worried about not being quite as loud as we'd like to the audience.. but was all fine thanks to Matty B jumping on the desk and working his magic mojo. On-stage was a different story.. it was eardrum-poppingly loud (I had a monitor speaker next to my head), and I was having visions of me having to lip-read my mum telling me off for not wearing earplugs.

A brilliant capacity crowd braved the miserable weather to come and see us, made plenty of friends and the least said about what happened after the show the better. But Nelly gets the crown for vomiting 6 times the following day.



Oh, forget what I said last time we were here about the place feeling a bit too clean - it's definitely getting grimier. (Definitely not somewhere you'd want to lick the floor of). The lights are now dimmer, the smell of new wood is disappearing and any place that has tea-making facilities backstage gets an automatic 10 out of 10 in my book.

Contracts

Signing contracts is not something any musician should ever take lightly, and as our potential returns and rewards increase from each deal we do, also the fear of commitment increases too. If we hang on a little longer, we might be able to get a deal that moves us further towards our goals. Yes the grass is always greener, but we have to compromise with the fact that we can't wait forever.

Last Thursday we reached a happy medium with the peeps down at Spinout Records and signed a licensing deal for 'This Town', which will have a vinyl/digital download release towards the end of February now, with some kicking remixes on the B-side.
Above: Stuey looks with disbelief at the contract that he's just managed to sign in the wrong place.

Further drama in the day unrolled as our new van broke down on the way back from rehearsal. Diagnosis: clutch.. (yes same thing happened to the old van 8 months ago argh, we've been unlucky with that.)

Gig Review: Friday 17th November - Whitechapel Factory

Hidden down a tiny side road in Whitechapel, there's a rundown empty building. It doesn't look like it's going to be much more than a well-organised squat party and the barely functioning soundsystem casts doubts about how well we're going to be able to entertain, but the easygoing vibe of those that have gathered and the spirit of the evening doesn't let us get too precious about it. Ultimately, you just have to do your thing and hope for the best.

This is a fundraiser for a charity that works to head out to wartorn parts of the world (Palestine and Iraq so far) with circus artists to bring smiles and hopes to children of these nations. These performers head out to areas with risk of gunfire/bombing activity to entertain kids grown up in poor conditions and extreme poverty forced upon them by political conditions. Suddenly, traipsing into London in the rain to play through a dodgy PA doesn't seem so bad. Besides, I felt like we were the ones being entertained. (By the poledancing roadkill rabbits just a foot in front of the stage.)

circus2iraq.org

The Littlest Subsource Fan

Meet my niece.. Leilani.(Under 3 weeks old) Awwww!

Gig Review: Monday 13th November - Concorde 2, Brighton

The road into Brighton is an entirely different journey to the one into London. Maybe it's just because we're hitting it at the right time, but the roads are fast and traffic-free.. and there's a tranquil effect of knowing that the sea is approaching. The Concorde 2 venue itself looks out over the sea (but maybe not for much longer because it looks like they're building something in the way) and no doubt about it, this is the best soundsystem we've played on.

After a little bit of tension on first arrival with the question of which act is headlining being undecided, we settle into the luxurious dressing room and grab some local Brighton cuisine (of course fish and chips). This is a Monday night and we're not expecting much, but still, 100 or so people turn out mostly to see the brilliant 'classic rock' act, The Stirring.

We're not really a band that you can fully appreciate on a Monday night, but we came to impress a handful of promoters, which we did, so job done. Thanks to tonight, we'll be back in December on a Wednesday and if that goes well, maybe we'll get the weekend slot. Best position is right next to the bass bin.. where we'll see you stylin'..

Also, I got a given a set-list that belongs to Jarvis who played here last week, so if there are any fans of his reading this, get in touch, it's yours. I couldn't be bothered to eBay it.

Gig Review: Thurs 9th November - Cargo supporting The Egg

Sometimes you come off stage feeling like you're invincible. Other times like this one, you feel a tad frustrated that there's a room full of people not moving about as much as you'd like. Fair enough - we're on early, we're supporting The Egg and it's their show. Enough people signed up to our e-mail list to indicate they appreciated what we did.

Typical support band gig, which we've had surprisingly few of: we turned up on time but had to wait 2 hours for the main act to turn up. We barely get a soundcheck, and then we get rudely ejected from the backstage area by their manager. Job done. Careful discipline prevented me from accidentally sneezing into their rider backstage, which appeared to include this fresh brocolli.

The actual band turned out to be friendly enough, though I didn't realise two of them were twins until later on, and I'd already spent a while talking to the wrong one.

Gig Review: Sat 4th November 2006 - The Workhouse Fireworks Night, A Field in Wales

The Workhouse organisation did a great job of pulling together this fireworks party with a one-day festival vibe, and it was a privilege to play after some more established acts such as The Sunshine Underground and The Blood Arm. They seem to have pulled together a fantastic crew and have a lovely, dedicated crowd to their events. Hopefully we'll be making it for their main festival in the summer to see some of the friends we made on this night.

One benefit of a festival-style set-up is the larger stage, part of which was commandeered by some of the more extrovert/messy members of the audience. They were behind me so I didn't get to see much of what was going on, but reports suggest that extroversion and grace don't correlate at all. I met one of the dancers the following morning with her son (probably around 14 or so). He eyeballed me with a sense of knowing embarrassment.

Making it back to the yurt (posh tent) to dig in for a cold night with just a small electric heater to fend off the weather, there were notable escapees... Kimba disappeared at around 3am and emerged back at the van near 7am.. if anyone has any stories and evidence about what he got up to, please let us know, we've been kinda curious about his night-time excursions for a while now. Also, I decided to head to the van for sleep, for the debatable comfort and certainty of a snore-free environment. I may have inadvertently tripped over the electric heater and broke it on my out of the yurt, but have decided to keep this quiet on hearing the complaints about how cold it was and how little sleep was had by the others.

Neil provided some drama on the way home by hurling a torrent of abuse at nobody in particular after an apologetic Welsh guy had the misfortune of driving over Neil's foot whilst crouched down pumping up the van tyres.

Gig Review: Thursday 2nd November - Farnham Arts College

Even worse than playing to an empty room, is playing to a full room who don't seem to be noticing you. On the other hand, it's not so bad with channel strips on the main mixer going down and other technical issues cropping up... the crowd's totally oblivious.

Some great costumes in the crowd as you can see but some of them were a little questionable about how they related to Hallowe'en (at least when I was a lad, girls walking around in their thongs didn't fall into the category of the mystical and occult). Nobody's complaining.

Friday is a day of rest and preparation before the trek over to Wales on Saturday for what sounds like a huge show. This week it has gotten to that time of the year when gigs become more physically testing due to the bollockingly cold conditions in travelling and setting up and speaking generally, harder to entice crowds to come out too. 

Gig Review: Weds 1st November - The Rhino, Southampton

Our debut down on the south coast and we hit with as much impact as a damp squib that fell off the broken squib truck. With an underpowered sound system and an underknowledgable sound guy, we did our best to entertain/bemuse a few of the more curious onlookers. After a run of some fantastic gigs over the past few weeks, this one definitely managed to knock us back to what I'd call reality, and others in the band might describe as a more pessimistic state.

The truth is that we are still an unknown act and we still have some way to go. This isn't a plea for encouragement or sympathy, it's a mantra for digging deep, working harder and wanting it even more.