Gig 7, Secret Romance (Headlining), DQ, Sheffield

Entry Six

It's been a while since my last post, I apologise!

There is a reason that this is entry six and gig 7, and that's because our last gig wasn't worth a whole entry to itself, so I waited 'til this one, and I'll write briefly what happened at gig six.

Gig 6, The Ocean's Eyes, Corporation, Sheffield

After how well the last gig went at Corporation, supporting Room 94, our hopes were all way too high for this gig. I was at college throughout this day, meaning I couldn't get to Corporation until about an hour before we played, which meant me packing my things the night before, and getting ready on the journey there.

The R94 gig really hyped us all up, and set our future gig expectations really high, and so this one really dragged us back down to earth from the high that the last gig, over a month ago, was still producing for us.

I got to Corporation and finally got all of my equipment inside. This time, we didn't just have the stinked-out room as a backstage, but the main-stage dressing rooms were available to us, so it was nice to finally see them and use them. They were almost as good as the O2 Academy dressing rooms, except there was no free beer. It was nice to think of the amount of successful bands that will have walked them corridors; Anthrax in particular, apparently.

We got ready a little bit more, a few shots, tuning guitars, me doing my nail polish, and then headed back to the stinked-out room ready to go on stage. We looked through the door to see what the turnout was like.

Ok, so we were prepared for a low turnout, as it was Tuesday evening, but there were about thirteen people stood about the floor.

Thirteen people.

We sold about 18 tickets between us, not to mention the tickets the other bands had sold. The funny thing is, the crowd got thinner further towards the end, so we pretty much had the biggest crowd of the evening.

We got on stage, and I thought, "Well, OK, there's a few, but maybe they will be energetic and enthusiastic!"

We asked them about five times throughout the evening to come to the front/middle, and they just looked at us. At least there were a few claps and "Woos" at the end of every song. But when I play, I usually feed off the crowd's enthusiasm, and amplify it back at them, so as you can probably imagine, I struggled to look like I was having fun. In every solo, I thought "What's the point?" It was the wrong attitude, and I know we'll have more like this, but as I say, the last time we played that stage, the room was full and the ends of our songs were followed by screams and cheers, not quiet clapping.

Afterwards I was in a bad mood, but eventually cheered up as I went and got to know the whole of the audience, which was rather productive in the end.

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Gig 7, Secret Romance's first Headline Gig

For this gig, we were meant to have had about three new songs to play, but due to time being shorter than expected, (not as many practices as we anticipated), we had no new songs that were ready to play, (one is close to completion, and I have a full song to show them (again)), so just brought back Teenage Kicks and Song 2.

Originally, I wasn't particularly keen on the idea of headlining. We've done 6 gigs, and our small (albeit good!) following are scattered around the country, and Wales. So I said I would be surprised if 15 people turned up.

However, I was proven wrong, as we sold about 80 tickets, plus the other bands sold quite a lot of tickets! So we estimated a turnout of about 100 people. That's a good feeling.

I decided to invite my best friend, Keegan, to this gig. I wanted him to come backstage to see what it's like and everything, and so he agreed to become my roadie. If he enjoyed it, he could be full time. We had to be there for 3. So, I got ready at home, and arrived there at about 3:10.

There was a lot of jungle-like scenery from the night before, as it was a club night, and the DJ wasn't aware that he had to tidy up for a band the next night, so he took about an hour and a half to tidy up, so we were a little bit worried about not getting time to get the sound right. I personally wanted to keep the scenery, but the DJ had to take it and leave, so we didn't have it.

Andy Hudson (our lead vocalist) has recently started bringing cameras to gigs, so not only do we have a written diary of the gigs, but a cool video is made for them now too, our "debut" video being based on the last gig, with our single, "Holy Oath", playing over the top. It is a funny video, and I think this one could be even funnier due to the better enthusiasm.

Soundcheck

We were first to soundcheck, of course, being the headlining band and all. Cameron Murray had to set up his drums, and we all set up our equipment as usual. When I was asked to play, I did my usual showing off, but the sound sounded really clear, and so I sounded even better than usual, receiving a few claps from the bands sat around the venue. I love that my soundchecking is equivalent to a performance, it's almost like my proof that I am worthy of being on stage amongst the other bands.

The problem with DQ however has always been the sound, and though we were told it would be better this time, it wasn't much of an improvement. No, we didn't have to stop half way through our set to sort it out again, but I was quiet again throughout the show. Thankfully, the sound desk has been moved off the stage, so we had more space on the stage to move about, and it was just less messy. So I sounded loud and clear (or, clarion...) for soundcheck, and we sounded good together when we played Just A Boy and Teenage Kicks for soundcheck, so we looked forward to having a good gig with good sound.

So now, instead of preparing to play almost immediately after soundcheck, we went back to our seating area, and started the wait.

The crowd started to enter through the doors, and quite quickly, the venue was getting quite full. I started drinking, and my friends I had invited turned up. I could tell it was going to be a fun evening.

The first act was some guy with an acoustic guitar. He was really good, it was a nice acoustic set to ease everybody into the loud night ahead. He did many covers from bands like Guns N' Roses, Green Day and The Killers. He had a good voice, and the crowd seemed to like him, many loud claps and cheers and singing along.

He walked off, and more people started to enter the building. The next band took too long to come on for my liking, at least 30 minutes, and there didn't seem to be an apparent reason for why they took so long. The funny thing was, this band is the band our old bassist left to join, so he was there. He seems to have held a grudge against all of us, I used to consider him a good friend, but he clearly didn't want to talk to me, so I just stayed out of his way and looked forward to watching his band The Filthy Cavaliers. They played thrash metal/old-school metal, my favourite genre of music, so of course I was looking forward to watching them.

The frontman, (rhythm guitar-not a bad guitarist, and singer, classic metal frontman), had a really good voice, went quite high pitched. Overall the band were enjoyable to watch, amazing bass playing and vocals too!



After...

The next two bands I didn't watch, I was restless now and quite frankly bored. I wanted to be on stage. When I saw that a few people were leaving, and the crowd was slowly thinning away, I got worried.

I had one more drink, and started speaking to more people in the crowd to pass time. They were nice people and it was fun, but I suddenly got a painful stomach ache, and so I didn't enjoy it as much. I didn't think it was nerves, because I didn't feel nervous. I was ready to play, but it was probably concealed nerves mixed with hunger. (I hadn't eaten since about 1pm, it was now 9:30pm.)

Finally, it was time to take to the stage.

I hugged all my friends who all wished me luck, and they went to stand on the dancefloor, forming a large chunk of the crowd.

As I set up my guitar, I looked at the crowd and my heart slightly sank that our crowd wasn't as big as it was for our support acts. It was later than we expected, around 10:15, and so many people had to leave to catch last buses home, or because they had lifts that were planned earlier than we played. (I had been telling people we would be playing at about 9, so I was clearly very wrong. There were too many support acts.)

However, I didn't let this get to me, I was still happy with the 30 people around the room, and aimed to give it everything I had.

We started playing, and got people clapping along and stuff like that, and it was good fun.

Unfortunately, I couldn't hear myself, or see my guitar very well due to the dim (but effective) lighting. Therefore, I felt a little bit like my efforts were being wasted in my solos. The crowd apparently couldn't hear me very well, or see me, (which is part of what I do, I move my fingers extremely fast, and people like that, but if they can't see it very well, it's a bit disappointing), and I even walked off the stage a little to put my head against the speaker to see if I was loud. The sound panel was at full volume, and my amp was full volume, so again, there was no way up, so I had to deal with it.

Now it was time for the halfway point of our set, where we switch to our Drop D guitars. However, as planned, and as I was extremely excited for, I got a solo to myself. It was meant to fill in the time for Kriss Stainton and Adam Elliot to switch their guitars, and so Andy didn't have to speak to the crowd (he had felt ill all week, so wasn't particularly ready for the evening, and it affected his voice a bit too, but still a good performance considering this). However, being me, I didn't just want to be a filler. I wanted it to count. I wanted every note, (all 547 of them, or something), to count. So every night that week, I had practiced...

I've always had a warm up routine, where I would pretend I'm playing in front of 100,000 people at Donington (as most guitarists do, right?) and I use my Wah-Pedal to play a riff I made, and then play an E Chord, switch off the Wah-Pedal, and start shredding. It's always improvised at home, but for the gig, I decided to have a little bit of structure, just in case I had an off day and didn't have much inspiration for playing. The majority is improvisation, but I at least had structure so it didn't get lost or boring.

Thankfully, I was on top form that night, and played it really well, holding my guitar into the air when I played the last chord, and Cameron even slowly brushed the cymbals to add a nice effect to the ending.

I call the solo The First, because it is my composition, it's 2 minutes long, and so it deserves a name. My friend/roadie Keegan filmed it for me, and though it's dark, the sound quality is still good. Check it out below. (If that fails to work, which it seems to be, just click the Facebook link).

http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?v=10151243528936941

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There was a funny drunk guy in the crowd who kept high fiving me after every song, saying how good I was, letting me drink his beer, and I remember before I played The First, he said "you should have a right big solo on your own it'd be right good!" The rest of the band hated him, but I loved him!

We started playing the last half of our set, and we played really well. Everyone sang along to Fight For Your Right by the Beastie Boys, and a group of girls were dancing along, so I walked off the stage and danced with them whilst playing. That felt quite good, dancing to the music me and my band were producing.

It got to our last song, Last Stand. We were playing it well, but what annoyed us was that the lights came up halfway through. Yes, we were on later than expected and the DQ were ready to close up, but they could have had the courtesy of letting us finish. We made them a lot of money, it's called manners. Quite ridiculous really, but oh well, we had fun.

We received a few compliments, but the audience quickly disappeared ready to catch their lifts home, so not as many compliments as usual. There was me hoping for an after-party, the DQ is a nightclub, so I presumed they just shut late. I guess they have beddy-byes themselves.

Overall, we all had a great night, and we had a fantastic first headlining gig, promising the chance of more in the future!

Thanks for reading,

Take care,

Adam 'ARK' Walton