Aki Maera's first gig. This one had been a long time coming... and I also forgot to blog it. Now, I didn't really analyse the band's performance, only my own, so this time I'm just going to write out the set list and comment on the whole thing. The songs we played were:
Valkyries
In the Attic
Blissful Moment
Until Then
Shy
Drifted
Rise
Monday It's Too Late (encore)
We had some quite positive feedback from this, given that it was our first gig, and to be fair we played the songs pretty tightly. There were mistakes, there always are, and there were definitely some points where Cj was running out of steam on those drums and playing the songs a lot slower than we rehearsed, but this is all part of the learning curve. Marcus and Ian did very well indeed, considering neither of them had played a gig before. And the promoters seemed to enjoy it as well.
However someone who wishes to remain anonymous (I don't know who it is) provided us with some constructive feedback. Our biggest issue at the moment is the transition between songs; we use 3 different tunings in the band and having to change them between 4 out of the 8 songs we played deprived the set of any momentum. The way around it is basically to arrange the set more efficiently; some songs are better grouped together than others. It will blunt the impact of the set somewhat, because with the exception of Monday It's Too Late (this was an unplanned addition) that was the best order the songs could have gone in. But unless we can get a guitar tech to help us out, plus another 2 guitars for Marcus, we should try to rearrange the set. Constantly having to retune our guitars is more trouble than it's worth.
The other problem was our levels were out. Well, it's all very well people saying that after the gig when we can't do anything about it, but we were never going to notice during the show. Cj hadn't got a monitor, we could barely hear anything but ourselves, and even if we could, we know enough about playing live to know that the sound we get on the stage is nothing like how it sounds at the front of the house. One of the promoters needed to tell us that our levels were out and how to put them right; there was nothing really we could have done about it.
There were also apparently some less-than-kind comments about Marcus' voice. I haven't read them. I'm not going to worry too much about this, though. For one thing, I've seen a marked improvement in the whole band and particularly his voice over the last couple of months. For another, someone signed Kings of Leon and that guy's got a very rough voice. So if it's going to get better like it has been doing, and doesn't really matter too much anyway, then there's no problem!
We have no more gigs booked yet and I don't know when we're practicing next so watch this space...
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