When A Failed Gig Goes Well.

We played a gig last night at the Red Lion in Reading (of course), there were a few bands lined up including us. We were headlining so we had to supply the gear, this always means I have to take it all up from my parent's house, my drum kit, the bass amp and anything else stored there, this fills up my car completely, although I did manage to squeeze a Rachel into the front seat this time. We headed up to Reading after a Chinese take-away and met Jof at his flat, packing more into the car we headed for the venue, situated on a three lane one way street heading onto a rather large roundabout, hell to stop on, it's a "mount the curb and stick your hazards on" job, you can never get in trouble if you've got your hazards on, this is something I've learned from gigging in Reading.

We loaded in and I parked the car in the Oracle car park, nice and cheap in the evening it seems, then headed back to set up the kit. To my dismay I found that another one of my tom holders had snapped a bolt and was failing to hold up the floor tom, so I had to ring the warehouse (aka the parent's house) to ask if they could bring up my other snare stand. They did and I stuck my high tom on that, worked a treat. But that's another £20 I need to splash out on another tom mount. Great.

The promotor, Mr Hallett, told us that the other acts had pretty much fallen appart and that he had no idea how the night would work out, but it was turning into a jam session with some Reading regulars, including Liam of "Jets Against Giants" fame and a few of his mates. It started off a bit shakey, just a mess of guitar and bass but soon it started to form a few good jams an a couple of covers, mainly Kasabian and Kings of Leon, obviously favourites of the guy playing acoustic guitar and singing. There were a few random hints of some ace Nirvana songs but they never came to fruition, unfortunately.

As the night was so unplanned I was the only one who brought any drum stuff (it was all my gear, cymbals, snare, everything) which struck up a problem when people wanted to jam. I wasn't happy sharing all of my kit, some of which was inhereted from Geoff, I also only have one pair of sticks, so if someone broke them I wouldn't be able to play a set. I let Liam play with my brushes, I figured they couldn't do any damage and indeed they didn't. But then some other dick I didn't know sat on my kit, complained about the brushes and picked up my sticks. I jumped in, claws out, teeth bared and... asked him kindly not to use sticks. I didn't know him, he didn't even ask to use my kit and he had the worst technique I've ever seen, luckily he didn't stay on for long. I started to feel bad about it but then I thought no, sod it, it's my kit, they didn't bring anything, if they wanted to play they should have brought their own breakables, that's general law in gigging circles, how would they like it if I sat on their kit and smashed the shite out of it without asking? Gits.

I jumped in and played a couple of tunes (with sticks of course) with some strangers and it was great fun, I never jam like that anymore, I used to do it all the time, at Calibre practices and even in secondary school in the drum room at lunch times with a couple of guitar-weilding mates. We stopped and had a break, I had a drink and we decided to play our set next, the standard half an hour set of tunes, the ones that Nick knows basically, we should really learn some more for our next full band gig. August 27th I think that is, plenty of time!

The set was ace, such fun, sticking a few improv jams in the middle to fill up some time, Me and Jof always seem to come up with some ace tunes when we improvise, must be a cheesy brotherley bond of some kind. I did quite a bit of backing vocals in the songs I could do, I seem to be getting better at playing drums and singing, it must be all the practice I'm getting in the band, I feel like I used to in Calibre, I'm a lot more confident in my playing these days, over the years I've been at the ACM all it seems to have done is make me less confident playing in a band but I'm slowly getting back on top of it. Jof's voice did the usual dying by the end of the set so we gave his voice a rest with an instrumental jam and then headed off into the realms of the last song. Walk Home. I love that song, especially the ending, where we tend to go a bit mental sometimes, it's such a great ender, it's our Everlong, a complete stadium gig ender!

There were a few more jams after us, and another annoyed drummer relegated to brushes. I think this was an advantage for us as when we played it must have been a lot louder and bigger than the jams, unplanned but good :-D The jams finished off and I went and got my car, loaded up, with even more this time and drove back to the parent's to unload. Not before a rather essential petrol stop, my car was struggling to start on the fumes it had left in it's over-stretched tank.

Got home around 1, went to bed. The end. What a night though. I think the promoter is thinking about doing that kind of thing more regularly, an open jam session, it's a good idea, some of the tunes that came out were ace and no one knows what's going to happen next, much more interesting that just having three bands play, much more social too. The dawn of a new era in gigs in Reading I think, and we were there at the dawn of it, awesome.

In other news, Rachel and I have found a house to rent next year (and hopefully longer) in Hawley, near Farnborough. It's a lovely little 1 bed house in a quite cul-de-sac for just the right amount of money. We move in in September and we are just working our way through the miles of paperwork that comes with property these days. Badly worded, irelevent and needless questions on page after page of beaurocracy. Fun. And being a student always seems to kick up problems. Nevermind, it'll be over soon and before we know it we'll have a brand new home, we're both rather excited!

See you next time.