Gig 3, Planet 9, O2 Academy, Sheffield.

Entry 3

O2 Academy, Sheffield, 12th May 2012

This was Secret Romance's third gig. We supported Planet 9. Other bands included; Undercurrent, Revelations, and Sleep Athena. Undercurrent and Revelations were good, from what I can remember. I'll speak about the other two later, in more detail.

So, as at previous gigs, we arrived early-ish. It was 3:30 and I was dropped off on a lay-by outside the O2 Academy. I grabbed both guitars, my amp and the rest of my stuff and walked in the front door of the huge building, asking the woman at the desk; "Where do people in the bands go?"

She took me upstairs to the stage we would be playing, and I left my equipment in a corner. A band was already rehearsing/sound-checking. (I think it was Planet 9). Josh Kubon (bassist) arrived and we spoke a bit, and we found out we had dressing rooms upstairs.

Now, from past experience, when someone has told me "awesome dressing rooms to ourselves!" we actually got a room which stank of urine, we shared with 4 other bands, and which had no lighting. (See my previous entry.) So naturally, I have learnt to not get my hopes up at all when someone tells me something exciting.

Well, I was speechless. There were two doors in this well-lit corridor. The first door had "Undercurrent, Revelations, Sleep Athena" on it. The second door said "Planet 9, Secret Romance". I opened the door and Adam Elliot was there, and I laughed.

It was amazing! (Well, amazing compared to what I've had in the past and what I was expecting that day). An actual dressing table with a mirror, a table with a kettle and tea-bags/coffee. We had our own toilet and shower, and also our own fridge! Straight away I put my Relentless energy drink into the fridge. Adam and I spoke of how amazing it was. It turned out Planet 9 chose us to share that room with them, so we felt honoured. The rest of the band entered and shared the same "Oh my God!"-ness as we did, before we each slumped onto our leather sofas. Adam Elliot had a bit of Sourz Apple in his bag, so he poured us each a shot into some plastic cups. Now THAT is how you start off a gig day!

We tuned up the guitars, and spoke. Taking pictures of the room, and ourselves. (To add to the epic feeling of having such a cool room, I recently heard Generation X played here. I am a Billy Idol fan, so there is a chance he was in this very room. If not, certainly that building. Over-excited about a room, perhaps. But it's cool.)

Anyway, our sound check was due soon, and suddenly, something went wrong. Very wrong.

Cameron went into the ensuite bathroom and locked the door. A few minutes later he went to unlock it. He pulled the door open. The last sentence was part-true; except, the door didn't open. He tried pulling it harder, rattling the handle, turning the lock on and off. Still, he was locked in.

We decided to use this time effectively, by laughing at him. Adam even fed some tea-bags through the crack of the door stating "There, make some tea for yourself!" I tried to kick the door down, but had to stop for two reasons; one, because "we'll be billed for it if it does break", and two; because my leg doesn't have the power of a hammer. A big hammer, anyway.

It was time to sound check, and we were still drummer-less, so we went anyway, saying our goodbyes to Cameron, who was VERY mad, and shouting. (We were still laughing).

Anyway, we were on stage line-checking when he came downstairs to the stage to our applause. We ran through Teenage Kicks twice, and eventually the sound was sorted, and my solos were actually hearable this time.

We went back upstairs, and decided it was "party time". The bands next door were listening to loud music and getting drunk. So we decided we wanted to buy alcohol with Planet 9 and have our own party.

On the way downstairs, to head out to the shops, our "supervisor" crossed us. He was pulling one of those sort of trailers; used to carry things.

"Things" in this case was a few crates of lager!

So, that cut our journey short. We went back upstairs, and we had about 30 cans between us.

(I actually on had a total of about 1.5 cans. There were so many cans laying about, no one actually knew which can was which. I had a party the night before so didn't want anything else to drink anyway.

We went outside and offered two cans for free to two lucky girls. There were 10 to choose from. (The two we chose actually came to us after the gig when we were going to our vehicles and asked what our band was called because they enjoyed it.)

Nothing else particularly memorable happened before the music. We basically took all the equipment to the balcony overlooking the main stage. (We were playing the smaller stage).

The audience entered the building, there were about 100 people at a rough guess.

The first band played, and the second band played. Can't remember much of them. They were good from what I do remember.

Then it was us. We walked onstage to a few cheers and claps, set up the stuff. We had two rows of people actually stood at the barriers. The rest were not that visible due to the lack of lighting.

We opened up as usual to Teenage Kicks. We played it very well with lots of energy. Andy's voice was good today.

Then Psychoville.

Then Song 2.

And then, yes, that's right! One of our new songs. As Andy said; (He spoke to the crowd more confidently too), "This is one of our new songs! Well, it's an old song, but it's our newest old song!" It is called "I Can See You" and it is very Nirvana-inspired. The song consisted of 3 chords. The introduction is open chorded (for example, in the pattern of Nirvana's intro. to Rape Me), then the verse I play it more stabby. (Now I think about it, that's similar to Rape Me's verse.) So yes, I Can See You is Rape Me, with different chords, and a guitar solo.

Then we switched guitars, to the Drop D guitars. (I took a while; I took off my long shirt due to feeling hot; so now my Megadeth shirt was visible. (Product placement.) Also, I had to take my strap off of the Eclipse and put it onto my V. Adam Elliot, whilst everyone was waiting for me, said "Look, it's Kurt Cobain" again. I said; "where?!"

The back of the crowd, the crowd we couldn't see, (I've been told to say this as nice as possible) weren't as enthusiastic as our previous 2 gigs. They didn't clap along or cheer. Maybe we played crap. But we were told by the other bands we were very good, including by a few new "fans" who stood at the front with some of our regular "fans". And I think we sounded a lot better than usual, too.

We played Viva La Revolution.

Then Fight For Your Right to Party, (I was going to say R.I.P MCA, due to the rapper, MCA, from the Beastie Boys passing away the previous week, but the majority of the crowd didn't appear to be listening, anyway).

Then another new "old" one, Vanity. (By "old" I mean, we had them ages ago, but not completed, we only just got round to finishing them off and added them to our Set List.) In this one I have a nice, melodic, slightly lengthy solo in G Minor. Unfortunately, the pickups in my V guitar are apparently not as picky-uppy as my Eclipse, so my solos weren't as hearable as the first 4 songs, so my finger energy was pretty much wasted. They looked fancy though.

Finally, Last Stand. At this point, I had lost the will to live. (Not like that, I am exaggerating). I wasn't enjoying the set that much, because the majority of the crowd didn't seem to enjoy us as much as before, so I felt I was doing something wrong, playing out of tune, or something. So I wasn't playing as enthusiastically as normal. Headbanged a lot, but didn't move much.

It got to the solo, my favourite one, the only one I don't improvise and already pre-made for that song, and half way through it, my high-E string snapped. I was like "Oh... crap."

In hindsight, if any had to break, that would have been my 2nd choice. (The B string would have been my first.) I finish off the solo with that one string exclusively, tapping down it, so yes, the ending of the solo had to be improvised and sounded bad to me as I like the original one I made for it so much. But otherwise, the rest of the song doesn't use it, so therefore, it wasn't a complete disaster.

We finished, packed up, went back upstairs. Most of us felt miserable, thought we had done something wrong. But I'll stop talking about that here. We were grateful for the people that joined in and enjoyed us. So thanks to those people.

My mum's friend, Laura, was in the crowd to watch me play. She used to go to all the gigs in the 90s. Nirvana included. She said "Wow you guys were amazing! I was expecting you to be crap, but I'm so proud! Great band, **** name though."

Haha. Agreed.

Sleep Athena went onstage, and wow, they are amazing. I went downstairs after hearing the "next band" were playing.

I could hear vocals, but could only see musicians onstage, with no one's mouth moving. I noticed a large crowd had gathered on the floor, and there he was, stood in the middle of the crowd, screaming away aggressive vocals. I'm not usually into that sort of stuff, (with the acception of Children of Bodom, Machine Head and Slipknot), but the atmosphere was incredible. He said before the last song; "I don't know if you've heard the rule, "No Clit in the Pit", but we don't believe in that ****, so now, we want it to be entirely a Clit Pit! All you girls, in the middle, show us what you've got!" They started their last song, and wow. There are some aggressive girls out there! About 20 girls flailing arms at each other. It was incredible.

To finish the night, Planet 9 came on. I stood at the front and showed my enthusiasm, clapping along, jumping, dancing, whatever. They then did a cover of "Down" by Jason Derulo, a popular song on the radio at the moment. I loved it. I started jumping a bit more, not quite daring to jump into a pit. Suddenly, Josh Kubon came and pushed me, playfully, I pushed back, and I just went for it, dived straight into the pit. Instantly, my head was crushed by two people's bodies. I pushed around, got pushed etc. The bassist, at the end of their set, jumped into us, and I held his leg as the crowd moved him about. He was getting squashed against the roof! 'Twas fun.

So I finished the night off with a high. They show us support, we showed ours, and I loved them. 3 gigs, and 2 of them have had them headlining. So; thanks to Planet 9.

We left the building, and went home.

Overall it was a great day. Thanks to everyone who came, and thanks to all the bands.

A. Walton.