Gig No. 4, Proud Gallery, Camden, 25 March 2010

Tonight I started to write a new song for the first time in ages. Although it’s far from finished and I’m a bit stuck as to where it will go, it has reminded me that I should really have written a review of the last gig a few weeks back. Life has a habit of taking over and all too easily the things we do to support what we love soon become the things that demand all our attention and we forget what we loved in the first place. In short, I have a job.

After a successful pre-Christmas gig I was offered a slot in trendy Camden of all places. More than that, it was at the Camden Stables Market, perhaps the centre of all things painfully cool and hip. I am neither cool nor hip. I have never even tried on a pair of skinny jeans. So I thought that Camden would be a bit of challenge for me. As it happened, the Haiti earthquake wreaked its havoc and the good people of Camden decided to host a fundraiser on the night my promoter was due to stage the band night. I was more than happy to postpone my gig for a good cause and because it would buy me some time. It also reminded me to dig into my pockets for the appeal.

As tends to happen when I’m not entirely enthusiastic about something, I chose to simply ignore the fact that the next gig was booked and didn’t really promote it with anything other than word of mouth, which went some thing like,

Loyal fan/weary friend: “So Phil, any news on the next gig?”

Phil: “Oh, I’ve got a something coming up at the end of March. Nothing big. Don’t worry about coming along, it’s a bit out of the way…”

Friend: “No, let me know when it is and I’ll be there”

Phil: “Well, ok, it’s… but really don’t worry. They’ll be plenty more gigs in the future”

My reluctance to promote the gig could be traced back to the same old problem of worrying about getting a band together, choosing the right style and getting a good setlist. I’m sure that if I knew all these things were organised for me I would be much happier to just turn up and play. But that’s not the point. These things are supposed to be a challenge.

As time ticks on and we are left with but distant memories of the gig I will try to pick out the main points. Tek wasn’t available this time, but the absence of a lead guitar allowed us to explore other options. We changed the set up of the band to me on guitar and vocals, Rich on keyboard and vocals, and Stu on cajon (a cajon is a percussion box that you sit on and hit. Like many instruments, it’s easy to play but hard to master). The room of the venue was a gallery space and bar, with a small stage set up at one side. The space wasn’t huge but sounded vacuous. Pieces of foam had to stuffed into the windows to keep the sound in.

It was about this point that we realised we were missing a vital component of the keyboard, namely the power lead. Very very luckily a band called Lucid Jake were on the bill to play and they kindly lent us their keyboard (complete with ironing board stand) for out set. I’m not just saying this but Lucid Jake put on a fantastic show later on in the evening.

I began the set with a song I had only just shared with the band two hours earlier, and they were also the first people besides me to hear it. It was called “Losing my faith” and was an attempt at a political song as we were approaching a general election. Who says it should all be about love and heartbreak? The rest of the set had a lot of the usual songs but with a different approach given the line up change. I was told afterwards that it was the best gig yet. I should certainly give my compliments to the sound man for balancing everything and again to Lucid Jake for the keyboard. Friends were also very kindly in abundance and made the whole thing very enjoyable! I hope they were entertained as well.

I am determined to write these reviews much sooner after the gig in future as I recollect far more interesting anecdotes and witty observations! Still, Gig No. 4 is done! I learned a lot about adapting to a new sound and venue, and most importantly I did not get ejected from Camden for being too uncool.

Gig No. 3, Punk, Soho Square, 12 December 2009

I plunged right into this Christmas gig, thinking it would be bigger and better without ever thinking why. When it came to it I really didn’t want to get up that day. But by the end of the night it was the best gig so far, but for all the different reasons than I imagined…

The feedback from the October gig was great. Everyone seemed to love it and generally have a good time. But I knew I could do better. For one thing the sound could have been better – my voice couldn’t always be heard over the instruments. And the effort that the band had to go to in getting there and back far outweighed any real benefit to them. But I immediately accepted the next gig that was offered to me.

This one was to be at Punk, Soho Square, right in the heart of London’s decadent party district. I had heard good things about this place and had seen in the papers several celebrities stumbling out of its doors early in the morning. I knew it was another winner in terms of venue and location. And what would be the selling point of this one? Well, it was the “Christmas gig”!

Now, I’ve never been particularly proactive in anything but my inactivity. I had over 6 weeks to prepare for this gig, but the most I managed to do was create an event on Facebook and invite a bunch of my friends who had been to the last couple of gigs. Worse than that, I tentatively asked the band if they would be able to do the gig and then left it for a while. Doing nothing when you know you should be doing something has a wonderful way of getting you stressed.

As it turned out, Richard the bass player and Stuart the drummer were able to do the gig. Tek the guitarist was not able to do it. This was a problem. He knew the songs from last time and was really brilliant, and now I had to start all over again to find another guitarist. If one memory sums up this gig in years gone by it will be my stress at trying to find someone, anyone, who could play lead guitar for me. I looked around for people who played in other bands. I had someone confirmed but he soon realised he had double-booked himself. I was all ready to go on stage with just acoustic guitar, bass, and drums. As they say, “the show must go on” and I would do it however I could. In one last effort, Rich checked with Tek the week before the gig and he was able to do it! I never knew what palpable relief was before, but I felt it for sure that day.

Owing to my uncertainty about having a full band, I held back on promoting the gig to the point of trying to discourage people. I don’t really need to say this, but it’s a bad idea to discourage people from your gigs when you’re trying to play in the front of the president. I thought I would let the fates (and my friends) take care of themselves. Whoever turned up would be welcomed with open arms. I had to concentrate on practising now.

Personally, I managed to lapse somewhat with my practising in the weeks leading up to the gig. I will blame it on a house move and a holiday to the States, but there is a general theme of laziness developing every time I write this blog. My fingers had lost their calluses and my voice was wobbly. I had one Christmas song that I wanted to do, Fairytale of New York. But I couldn’t play it just how it was done on the record. I decided to keep it in 4/4 time throughout the song, which basically took away the Irish folk lilt as I just wanted to give it a different spin. And I practised another new song written by somebody else, Blues For Elise. This was an interesting take on Fur Elise by Beethoven mixed with a bluesy song called “Elise” written by a guy called Jim Reynolds who I met on MySpace.

The benefit of having a Saturday gig was the extra time it gave everyone to get to rehearsal and soundcheck. After the fiasco of the studios we practised in last time, I decided to hold our only rehearsal (on the day of the gig) at a decent place, The Joint in King’s Cross. The band turned up and were their usual brilliant selves in picking the songs up right away and playing like professionals. From the studios we loaded things into our cars and headed off to Soho, where we managed to park right outside the stage door of the venue with plenty of time for our soundcheck. The soundcheck went very well, and I we finally felt confident that things would sound good. The venue itself was smaller than Sound, but had more of an atmosphere. It was a brilliant little place tucked away through a small door off a side street. One corner of the bar even had a tiny little annex called the “Pussy Parlour” – I didn’t want to dwell upon the kinds of things that happened in there.

We had lots of time before we were on and were quite hungry, so where else to head but Chinatown?! Having quickly established that we really didn’t know which restaurant we wanted to go to (all-you-can-eat-buffet or real food?) we finally jumped into a non-descript restaurant that Rich had been to before, but only while he was drunk. The food was good and I learned a lot about nutrition from Tek, who is a personal trainer. After talking to Tek, from now on I try to only eat meat that looks like it used to be alive at some point! Paying was quite fun, as we were almost certainly overcharged, but of course the bill was all in Chinese. So, we had to get someone over to add everyone up again and go through a list of what we all ate. We finally agreed on a price and headed back to the bar, fighting our way through a street filled with Santa Claus’ (what’s the plural of Claus?!)

The time came for the gig and we even had a little backstage area (granted it was the kitchen but I’ll take whatever I can get). A good number of my friends had turned up by the time I went on and the set went quite well. The Christmas number went down well but I was a little disappointed that no one sang along. I think the key to audience participation is either alcohol or number of people. It’s probably easier to get people drunk at this stage, and maybe that’s a plan for the future…

Throughout my set I could see a girl hovering around the front of the stage taking photos on a rather professional looking camera. After the gig I managed to track her down, and it turned out she was there to photograph the band that played after me. But during my set she was “testing the light”. She managed to get a few good shots that she very kindly emailed a week later. Photographic evidence is very important if I’m to give the impression that I am a proper musician, so I put those photos up on Facebook and elsewhere!

The rest of the night was good fun. The guys in the band had to leave straight away, which was a shame, as I would definitely have bought them a few drinks for playing so well. After the band night had ended, the bar slowly turned into a cheesy nightclub. By the time I left early into the morning, the place was full of people dancing to the likes of Whitney Houston and even Will Smith. I hate to admit that it was a nice way to end the night. All my friends who stayed seemed to have a good time, with some even losing all memory and wandering off into the cold night air. And at £8 for a vodka and coke how can you blame them?! But it’s London, baby!

Overall verdict: put in the work, trust, and things will turn out great. The band will always be brilliant. Friends will always be supportive.

Biggest challenge for the gigs ahead? Keep it fresh and interesting, but never ever do any dancing until I’m off the stage and in a dark room full of people who can’t see me.

Gig No. 2, Sound, Leicester Square, October 9 2009

Nicholas, the promoter at Dead or Alive, must have liked the first gig. It was down to the quality of music or the number of people I got along. Hopefully both. Either way, we had a long chat on the phone the next week and he offered me a slot at one of his regular band nights in central London.

Now this was a tough one. Instead of just turning up at a venue with a guitar slung over my back, this time I had to organise a band. And by the end of Gig No. 2 I had a newfound respect for hard working gigging bands.

In short, I was so happy to be offered a gig in Piccadilly Circus of all places that I accepted before I even had an idea of who could play in the band. Then a couple of days later God, chance, or Fate arranged for me to bump into my old school friend Rich Norris. Whereas I can only claim to be a musician in the loosest possible terms (holding a guitar seems to just about fool people) Rich is a true virtuoso. He studies, teaches, and breathes music and when I mentioned my gig he instantly said, “when is it?” and “how can I help?”. He plays with a bunch of similarly talented guys and he arranged for us all to get together for a couple of rehearsals. A word must be said about rehearsal studios in London. First, there are surely hundreds of amazing bands out there practising every night because finding a good place to rehearse at short notice is… harder than trying to think of a god analogy. Second, don’t be fussy about the kind of place you get at short notice. I managed to get us time in a studio in Shoreditch for our first rehearsal, which had the worst smell of damp and mould I have ever experienced. It was like practising in a dungeon. And the microphone they provided must have had swine flu, SARS, and the bubonic plague all living happily as some big family. The second place we rehearsed the next week had some sort of electrical short that kept putting us into complete darkness. And for the rest of the time there was a constant buzz through the sound system that only stopped when I put my finger on the microphone. Worrying.

Anyway, we didn’t need much practice as the guys in the band were pros. The rest of my time in the evenings was taken up with promoting the gig, mainly through Facebook. It really became like a second full time job. In fact I spent more time “managing” myself than actually practising.

A couple of weeks before the gig, I got word from the promoter that the venue had just changed hands to become a “Tiger Tiger” bar, and they didn’t want live music anymore. This was a really central venue and I was looking forward to telling people I would be playing in the heart of London. I needn’t have held my breath for long though, as the replacement venue was “Sound” right in Leicester Square. This was perhaps even more central and seemed like a dream come true. Reality caused a few problems though.

The day of the gig came around and we were asked to get to a soundcheck by 4pm. What with people working, studying, or coming from miles away this was a little hard to do, and we all turned up rather late. Too late for a soundcheck. So we just took a chance. The next problem was the location, which was a blessing and a curse at the same time. If you’ve ever tried driving around London at any time of the day, you deserve a medal. But if you’ve ever tried driving up to Leicester Square at 7pm on a Friday night when you don’t really know where you’re going and you’ve got to unload a carload of instruments then you’re the star of the evening and lead guitarist Tek, who deserves a knighthood. I won’t even mentioned how far away he had to park, or how long it took to bring the car back to load up again at the end of the night. He is a true star.

Slowly but surely many of my friends turned up, some bringing with them more friends. The word was beginning to spread, which was quite exciting.

So, the time came. We were all set up and ready to go. I turned around to face an empty dance floor, with everyone hidden on the edges. What with the lights it was a little hard to see people but I knew they were all looking at me. My newly acquired checked shirt was hopefully impressing with its geek chic (I had narrowly avoided buying a t shirt for £75 the previous day). The first song was Girl With The Flower in Her Hair, which I started with last time but somehow didn’t feel right. This time, when I got to the chorus and the band kicked in I knew it was right. I won’t go through each song but we started off upbeat, slowed it right down (and sat down) for Smile, and picked things up with a cover of Gimme Some Lovin. The band play a lot of weddings, so consequently know a lot of covers. This was one I thought would go down well, but no one danced! I had even put my guitar down and was doing my best front man swagger. Half way through that song I jumped off stage, pulled a bunch of glowsticks out my bag, cracked them, and threw them on the floor. (I have no idea why I do the things I do, and perhaps I looked a bit silly but right then I didn’t care – afterwards people commented that it was a nice touch, although I think they were being polite). Throughout the rest of the set the glowsticks disappeared to tables and into people’s hair but no one seemed to be staying on the dance floor.

The set was over in what felt was record time. I could have continued, but I didn’t have any more songs and my voice was starting to give out. It was job done. Success!

Chatting to people afterwards it seemed they thought the set was quite short and at times they couldn’t hear me over the band. This was a little annoying in that I had spent ages trying to get the words right for Gimme Some Lovin’ before finally getting them completely wrong. At least no one noticed.

I stuck around until much later and it gradually turned into a trendy hip hop club. Someone actually shook their head at my Converse shoes in the toilets. I later found out that my new friends Vanessa and Melissa (who came all the way from Canada, although not just to see me) had spoken to someone about the venue earlier in the day and discovered it mostly plays urban music. Who knows what they were expecting, but I’m certainly no Eminem.

Overall, for my first ever band gig I was really happy. People were beginning to see that I could do these songs live and loud. And I think I won over a few more fans. Word soon got around to people at work the next week, and I started getting questions about my next gig. Everything was going as planned. However, it was so much effort organising rehearsals, promoting the night, and playing that I was pretty sure I would need some help if things got any bigger. But that didn’t stop me immediately accepting the next gig I was offered for Christmas.

The next day was my birthday, and I had a plane to New York to catch. It was time for a break. Except that for the whole week I was thinking about how I could keep things going. This was quite an addictive game to play! A final word is reserved for the guys who made that night happen – Michael, Stuart, Tek, and Rich OUTSTANDING.

Gig No. 1, The Old Queen’s Head, Islington, August 16 2009

“Fear. The uncontrollable feeling of inevitability that something is creeping up on you and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s a weight, or more than that a dull pressure on your chest perhaps signalling the first throes of an adrenaline rush. But it’s not quite there yet and you can’t speed up the passing of time to just get it over with.”

I booked my first gig a month before it was due to take place on August 16. It was to be my first gig in nearly two years, and more than that it would be a solo acoustic gig. Just me and my guitar to entertain people for a full half hour. And I hadn’t done any warm up gigs or open mic nights to prepare. Just a few snatched moments in my room alone, and a couple of times down at the rehearsal studios by King’s Cross. Going on stage the following day would be a baptism of fire. Worse than that it was not as though I could run away if it all went wrong. A lot of people very kindly said they would come to support me. I think seeing me up on stage was to be a bit of a novelty but they would also see for the first time what I was really like live. And so would I.

The next day came and I went to work as normal. On arriving home I dashed into my room, shut the door and grabbed my guitar. Fresh strings were still in tune. On tips of fingers calluses had been hastily formed. Capo still clamped on guitar head. In all my preparation I hadn’t thought for a moment about clothes. I confidently turned down an offer of make up from my housemate Rachel, settling instead for a smidge of wax in the hair and an extra squirt of Hackett.

I headed off down the street, guitar slung over my back. It was only a ten minute walk to the gig venue. The Old Queen’s Head on Essex Road, Islington, was to be the place it all began. I arrived there to find a few of my old uni friends already at the bar, including Chris and Dibble. Chris has brought another friend with him. I took a quiet moment to think how brilliant it was that people were bringing their friends to my gig. More people gradually arrived. My boss Sarah brought her fiancé and her brother. My other friend Sarah brought her sister. And some friends came alone, which was just as fantastic.

We were stuck in the “holding area” downstairs waiting for things to get set up in the room above. I was called upstairs by Nicholas, who manages the night under the guise of “Dead or Alive” promoters. I arrived to an empty room. It was a large Victorian-looking room with very high ceilings, raised stage on one side, the bar to the left, and enormous bay windows with light pouring in the other side.

I sat down on the stool, adjusted the mic, and plugged in my guitar. So far, so good. A quick rendition of “Ain’t no sunshine”. Voice sounded ok. Levels were balanced. This could be alright. I was to be on first and went to collect my friends from downstairs. One by one, up they came, were stopped at the door, paid their money (they were actually paying to see me!) and took their seats. An amazing 25 people in all came through that door. There was one conspicuous person missing from this group – the lady behind the bar. I had been hoping that people would have had at least a couple of drinks but the bar was still closed and we were all sober!

I’m still trying to remember the setlist. In future I’ll make a proper note of it. But I know I started with “Ain’t no sunshine”. There’s something pretty cool about that song and I think the familiarity sets everyone at ease. Applause and smiles. Good. Next up was “Girl with the flower in her hair” – a song that I hadn’t recorded and not many people knew. Again applause. I was really beginning to enjoy things, but was ever mindful of what it would be like it I was in the audience. I had to keep it interesting but it was just me and my guitar and not an awful lot of skill. In other words I wasn’t going to break out into a screaming guitar solo.

If this bit seems a bit vague, it’s because I can’t remember too much about it. The two things I do remember are that everyone listened intently for the full half hour, and they looked like they were enjoying it. For the rest of it, well, I guess that’s why people don’t write their own reviews. I do know that somewhere in all that I took a moment to quickly explain how I wanted to play in front of the President in less than 100 gigs. It’s safe to say that the looks I got were similar to all the others I get at the moment. But more on that another time.

Stepping off stage I had more than a couple of drinks bought for me. I’d like to think I persuaded the bar lady upstairs with my dulcet tones but it was probably the captive audience that did it. It was great to chat with everyone later as I made my way round friends and colleagues. I was still surprised that a. I knew that many people, and b. that they made the effort to turn up.

A word of advice if you ever perform – don’t alienate the audience. A couple of artists later a very normal looking guy got up on stage. It quickly descended into a farce as he told us all off for talking more than once and generally made a big arse out of himself. He had chosen to write a song about each colour of the rainbow but had forgotten to learn the songs. It ended up with him flicking through his notebook to find lyrics mid-song, having sent most of the audience downstairs in an outburst because they weren’t giving their full attention. I learned a valuable lesson that night to not leave my guitar on stage and get stuck listening to crazy, rude people who dedicate songs about pink pig shit to rainbows.

So gig number one was out of the way. I’d proved myself in front of the people that knew me best. Surely I could handle anything now?