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Choas in a shack April 19, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Life, Music, Rants , add a comment

So yeah, first band night style gig last night. We got there at about 5, arriving at a wooden building with Thurgarton village hall written on the side. Things got even better (/sarcasm) when we got inside to see what looked more like a southern American’s house’s veranda as a stage, complete with my first drum kit by Tomy. Seriously. Really. Tiny. Drum kit. 2 toms and two cymbals, with a bass drum that was probably smaller than the size of one of our drummer’s larger toms on his own kit. This was of course the point where we understood why we couldn’t take our amps, there just wasn’t enough space on that stage. There was barely room to move never mind have more amps than the two Marshall half stacks.

I was kind of just in hysterics at this point, the whole thing just seemed so silly. There was essentially no lighting, only a tiny stage complete with tiny drum kit and at this point my amp hadn’t arrived yet. Oh yeah, the “backstage” (really more to the left of the stage) was basically a cramped room filled with stacked chairs. After having dumped our stuff we were essentially just hanging around until we found out some friends were on the bus and were gonna be getting off at the pub so we all headed down there which is also when our singer arrived. We were actually one of the few bands that actually arrived on time in a complete fashion, with one not fully arriving until a while after we had come off.

After waiting around for a while we headed back to the hall leaving a couple of people behind (non band members) to stay lookout. We gave our opinions in the sound check and were told that no one was allowed to change any of the settings on any of the amps. Hooray for every band’s every song sounding the same! With that in mind there was very little point going out and testing things for myself. We had also been informed that anyone wanting to set up their own effects would have time taken out of their set (wtf?) and initially decided to go without them because they weren’t that important.

Then we remembered the killing in the name solo.

Shiiiit.

So our lead guitarist hurried to get his multi effects plugged in. I had been informed that it was starting at 7 but 7 came and went with not much of a crowd built up yet. I think we probably went on about quarter past. We had been told that we had 20minutes for our set, which was fine since our songs average about 4 minutes each and if you chuck in a bit of time for tuning up between our first 2 songs then that’s fine.

We are announced by a maths teacher at our drummer and singer’s school, who we decided when looking from the back looked much like two children standing on each other’s shoulders. It was the long coat that did it, and probably the young looking face. It was a slightly lackluster announcement but we went out fine with some applause and everyone plugged in. So far everything was pretty much fine, we go into our first song, Killing in the Name. I think we played mostly fine, a few small mistakes from me but Tubb (lead guitar) nailed the solo. I quickly whipped the tuner out of my pocket after the song was over and returned to standard tuning whilst the singer was doing a bit of introductory stuff for members of the band (as you do).

Problems arose when I plugged myself back into the amp only to find myself muted. I quickly warned the drummer not to start the song whilst I started jostling with the lead to make sure it was plugged in. I eventually jostled it into a position that worked but it was not a pleasant experience. Anyway, we went into Apple Tree and everything went well, I got into the song more than I did with Killing in the Name with some headbanging at certain parts.

Of course, there were still more surprises to come. After finishing the song we were informed from those offstage that we could only do one more song, despite the fact we had only about half the time we were promised and had a small argument over the song to play last. We chose not to do Ace of Spades simply because Nick (the bassist) is quite bad at remembering the rhythm to the intro (and actually I don’t blame him, it’s quite tricky to remember it even though it’s so recognizable) so we did Cavemen Rejoice instead.

We went into the song fine and played fine up until the bridge where I used my whammy bar on a held chord and of course…my lead cuts out. I’m then left trying to play the bridge and fiddle with my lead to get it to work which eventually succeeds and we finish the song and go off stage.

We were all royally pissed off at being cut short and generally the way we had been treated but our drummer took it one step further (drummers, what are ya gonna do with em eh?) and confronted one of the organizers which lead to a bit of pushing after which our drummer stormed out and punched the wall.

Twice. He left some skin behind too.

He then left with a couple of others to go to a nearby friend’s house to put a plaster on his now bloody knuckles whilst we hung around a bit, eventually choosing to follow their route to try and find them. At this point two random members of the audience shook my hand and congratulated me. Dunno if they were taking the piss but who cares eh.

After eventually finding our drummer and him having a chance to talk over his motivations with the guy he confronted they shook hands and that was pretty much the end of it. I actually think he handled the situation quite well really all in all, we were all annoyed and he articulated our feelings very well.

We basically just hung around for the rest of the evening, which was pretty fun in itself. I actually really enjoy the company of a lot of the people who were there, they are generally very friendly and likable and I had a good time doing that.

We did sort of have the last laugh in a way because the organizers (not particularly popular people it would seem, probably reasonably like us y’know) put themselves last in the running order, behind all the bands filled with popular people. Essentially, after the second to last band finished there was something of a mass exodus outside with only about half the original crowd hanging around to see the final band of which most of them were just milling about chatting anyway. They also played a really really long set, like 40minutes or so, filled with typically bland songs to a rather lackluster audience.

Although some audience members returned everyone was rather apathetic towards the organizers and even with the length of their set they still finished 20 minutes early. Essentially there is no way that our <4 minute song needed to be cut out and that was basically the icing on the cake.

Oh, did I mention, one of our friends was trapped outside almost the whole night because they wouldn’t let him pay on the door. The woman in charge of that also did a terrible job, apparently band members were supposed to have something written on their hand to be let in but she never even informed us of this and she did have a chance to because she came and spoke to us directly at one point. The whole thing was a ridiculous show of how not to run one of these things and that has left us very determined to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

Wow that’s a wall of text. It’s probably riddled with mistakes because its taken so long to write that I really don’t have time to check it over, I need to be getting on with coursework.

In summary: We played well and I’m pleased with that, it was just everything else that badly organized and executed.

Proper Gig Incoming - Eep April 18, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Music, Scraps , add a comment

We have our first proper gig (ie a band night) today.  Just to make things a bit more nerve wracking we’re on first and of course the final song we’re playing we started learning last night.  Just to add to the calamity we weren’t allowed to bring our own amps due to space issues, annoying for me after the terrible tone/sustain I got last time and that was using the same type of amp as I have at home.  As usual I also have very little idea of what’s actually going to happen tonight, I guess I’m just going to have to go along with whatever happens.

I have a few subjects to document soon but this post is just a quickie, I guess I’ll have a report on how well it went in the next few days.  One thing I have been doing over the past few days is getting wordpressses online for a few other purposes which will become linked to when ready.

Opium Toad night two April 9, 2008

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Last night we played our second set, this time at the very beginning of the show.  It was nerve wracking mostly because lots more people that we know came last night (parents and friends).  Going on first really didn’t help with that either.  At least we had our real singer.

The sound check/practice went well and I felt excited about performing our own song, in which I had two solos.  After a lot of hanging around (having quite a good laugh with all the people there I might add) it was finally starting.

We were told to set up whilst being introduced, which was a bit weird but we got a nice introduction (and of course we have an awesome name) and we started playing.  Everything seem to be going fine up until my solo.  I played the first note (a big bend - come on, it’s gotta be done), I played it fine but I didn’t like the amp sound, it was generally lackluster and have enough sustain.  Now my guitar doesn’t have much sustain because of the trem but I think a slightly over enthusiastic noise gate was just making things worse.  It also meant every time I didn’t hit a note perfectly it really showed.  I did my best to keep a straight face through a pretty much uncountable number of errors, which was all I could do really.

Those mistakes really shook me and although I finished the rest of the song fine including the harmonized solo it just left me feeling crap.  We then played cavemen rejoice which I think I played flawlessly, I don’t think I made any mistakes but when we went offstage we were all still pissed off with our own mistakes of which we all had a few under our belt in some form or another.  It was basically the opposite feeling of yesterday.

We basically just sat around for the rest of the evening moping with some friends/relatives getting annoyed with us because they said it was fine (and that was the general consensus of everyone we spoke to, the musicians and more attentive people noticed the mistakes but still thought it was good) and we really should take solace in that.

It has essentially just made me even more determined, in fact it’s made us all much more determined to get better because that first night was good and we can do it but it’s a matter of practice and in future, using our own equipment as we all felt the borrowed stuff added extra stress and problems that we just didn’t need.

Personally the best part of this experience was to take me out of my comfort zone, which it pretty much has been for the last 3 days going to a whole new place, meeting loads of new people (friendly people as well, which is great) and generally having a pretty good time even if I did fuck up my solos…

(Most of) Opium Toad’s first gig! April 7, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Music , add a comment

As I mentioned in the earlier post, the majority of Opium Toad played live for the first time today.  We were playing right after the interval, which was great because it gave us a chance to set up, particularly for our lead guitarist who has a multi effects that needed to be plugged in and such.  The real quirk of the night is that because our singer couldn’t make it (his original excuse being to do with his parents I think we may have discovered he was sciving off to spent time with his girlfriend, psshh) we had a stand in.  We had one practice run of one of our songs with him and that was it.  He didn’t properly know the songs or the lyrics.

Given those facts, it went very well.

We waited just outside a little door going into the performance area (only the drums where on a stage but the audience were in raised seats so the lack of a raised stage didn’t really matter) all pretty petrified.  We had earlier received encouraging words from another band who were in our position about a year ago that the audience are generally very forgiving.

So we heading out, as I looked up at the audience I couldn’t really see much of them since the lighting was too bright for any of that.  I quickly picked up my guitar from where I had left it and got it ready as quickly as I could, playing a couple of notes to check that it was all working ok.  And there it was, into the first song.  I messed up by missing the first chord (literally - I strummed but missed the strings) but then got into the swing of it.  The singer was doing it a bit slower than we normally would but we simply adjusted for this and played on.

Soon I was just taken into the mood of it all and just got into it, our singer worked the crowd when he didn’t know the words and the audience were very receptive.  On our last song our drummer stood up and moved round the drum kit continuing to play which added a bit of flare and we finished it fine.  As I walked off the stage I gave the audience a bit of the ol’ metal horns.

To summarize the experience - I may now have something to seriously practice for…

Eep

Posted by Sharny in : Misc, Music, Scraps , add a comment

We’re getting collected to go to our first ever gig, disorganized as it is, in under 50mins. Now that’s one scary prospect…

This is bearing in mind that we only found out about it last Thursday evening, we’re only playing two songs and our singer couldn’t making so we’re essentially borrowing someone else.  If this is anything less than abysmal I’ll probably be happy, given that we’re going back tomorrow to do another two songs…

It has been decided - Opium Toad March 26, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Life, Music, Scraps , add a comment

Yes, Opium Toad is the name of our band. This post is kinda to see if google will finally index myspace.com/opiumtoad and opiumtoad.com but it acts as an announcement.

We have one song complete, a few covers we can play solidly and a lot more of our own material in the works. I’m pretty confident that we can get somewhere as I really like some of the stuff that we’ve got so far. Our completed song has been received well by everyone that has heard it (and no, it wasn’t just our family members). We may well have a couple of gigs lined up for the coming months, we’re gonna approach them with a sort of try our best but if it fails we don’t care very much if it fails as it is early days.