Hi there ladies and gents,
Important milestone for me, this. As the Facebookers among you will have all seen, my New Year's Resolution for last year was to play a gig every week. And Dec 30th, 2011, I played the last 2 gigs that saw me play a gig every single week of 2011, apart from the 2 weeks I was on holiday. If you don't believe me, read the rest of my blogs!
The first of the gigs was actually quite special. This was a fundraising event for Cancer Research, put on by Prickly Music Promotions at the Royal Oak in Amblecote. I opened the event, (right up until the last moment this was subject to change, but anyway,) and played 5 songs, as is usual with Prickly gigs. The set list was:
REM: Man on the Moon
Slade: Merry Xmas Everybody
Amy MacDonald: Let's Start A Band
My Chemical Romance: Cancer
Elbow: On A Day Like This
In the spirit of the event I decided to do the set entirely made of covers. Some worked better than others, but the highlight of the set was most definitely Cancer. There weren't many people at the event at this point but I expect they had all either been affected by cancer, or someone with cancer, at some point, or had heard my story of how that song strikes a particularly poignant nerve with me. I probably won't play it again, certainly not in any other environment, but it served it's purpose for what I needed it to do.
Then I scurried over to the Rose and Crown in Wordsley to open for Recollection, thanks for giving me the gig guys! I played a set largely comprised of covers, though I did throw a couple of my own songs in there as well. The set was:
REM: Man on the Moon
Slade: Merry Xmas Everybody
Bitterness
Amy MacDonald: Let's Start A Band
Feeder: Yesterday Went Too Soon
A Lonely Night
Erasure/Wheatus: A Little Respect
Storm from the North
It went OK, I managed to get through the gig without messing up too badly. I do think, though, that I need to be a little more careful with what covers I'm playing in an environment like that. I started out OK but when I started playing the more contemporary songs like Feeder and Amy MacDonald the audience - who specifically asked me for things like Black Sabbath, Led Zepplin, Deep Purple - basically lost interest.
However, that ties in to my New Year's Resolution for 2012: Learn a New Song Every Week! Looking forward to the next few gigs... see you soon! And Happy New Year!
Showing posts with label Royal Oak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Royal Oak. Show all posts
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
November Gigs
Once again I find myself behind in my blogs, and I've got a whole months worth of gigs to talk about and another two to go. Trying to blog them all individually would of course be more work than fun, apart from anything else some of it was weeks ago and I literally can't remember what happened, so I'm just going to give a quick run down of each one:
5/11/11: The Royal Oak, Amblecote: Another Prickly gig, thanks to Joy for booking me for this one! My guitar actually doesn't sound too bad through an amp. Didn't play so well, unfortunately. I think probably I was distracted with the thought of the fireworks display that I was going to afterwards, and I was on first which would never be my, ahem, 'first' choice. It wasn't bad... but by no stretch of the imagination was it my best one. I said to Amy afterwards, I think I was mistaken in my assumtion that I can play a reasonable show (I did Katies a couple of weeks before,) not play my guitar for a week and a half and expect to be able to play just as good a show when I get it out again. Something to remember for the future, though it will be a while before my next scheduled acoustic gig.
6/11/11: 82s at Just Kroozin Fundraising Event, Four Ashes: Nearly forgot about this one! This was the time where we were trying out our new bass player West. He seems to fit the bill OK and having the keyboards there does fill out the sound quite a bit. We played OK, as ever I did make some mistakes but I was rather more concerned about being upstaged by Almost Easy who were on before! Terrific fundrasing event to raise money for research into Lukemeia, so I was glad to have been a part of it, though it was freezing cold!
12/11/11: The Wharf Bar, Walsall: Regular readers of my blog will know that it is a rare time indeed when I speak kindly of The Wharf Bar. There's never usually anyone there, the whole place smells of sick (which comes from the canal, by the way; it's not actually their fault) and the only people to watch me tend to be the other bands who are either leaving the venue or counting down the minutes until it's their turn to go on. Quite often, the best I can say about it is that at least they do still book me for gigs. So imagine how pleased I was when not only were the modest audience actually listening to me and, as they told me afterwards, enjoying it, but I actually found myself enjoying it as well! That was certainly the best I'd ever played at the Wharf Bar, I've got another one there on the 10th so I'm actually looking forward to it. That's almost unheard of!
16/11/11: 82s: Cover Band Showcase in Cannock: We have - not a deal - but a good working relationship with some booking agents in the area, who invited us to play this showcase to several booking agents who may or may not want us for gigs in the future. We got all our big guns out, which were Word Up, Trick Me and Sound of the Underground. Quite far removed from what we orignally put the band together to do, and I think there is a concern that it's not representative of the set, so you may see some changes with this in the future.
22/11/11 Recording Christmas Song with Sam Draisey: Sam's putting together another Christmas album of original material and I went up today to record mine. I hadn't rehearsed it nearly enough and I know it, the guitar took a few goes, but my vocals I did pretty much in one take. I don't know whether I like the song or not; it's hardly full of Chirstmas Cheer and lyrically it's very lazy, there isn't a single line I haven't copied off someone, not least of whom myself! Still, it will hopefully work for the album, and it will be interesting to see what the other guys come up with this time.
So, there you have it! Aki Maera's first gig is coming up next Wednesday, which will be... interesting. See you all there!
5/11/11: The Royal Oak, Amblecote: Another Prickly gig, thanks to Joy for booking me for this one! My guitar actually doesn't sound too bad through an amp. Didn't play so well, unfortunately. I think probably I was distracted with the thought of the fireworks display that I was going to afterwards, and I was on first which would never be my, ahem, 'first' choice. It wasn't bad... but by no stretch of the imagination was it my best one. I said to Amy afterwards, I think I was mistaken in my assumtion that I can play a reasonable show (I did Katies a couple of weeks before,) not play my guitar for a week and a half and expect to be able to play just as good a show when I get it out again. Something to remember for the future, though it will be a while before my next scheduled acoustic gig.
6/11/11: 82s at Just Kroozin Fundraising Event, Four Ashes: Nearly forgot about this one! This was the time where we were trying out our new bass player West. He seems to fit the bill OK and having the keyboards there does fill out the sound quite a bit. We played OK, as ever I did make some mistakes but I was rather more concerned about being upstaged by Almost Easy who were on before! Terrific fundrasing event to raise money for research into Lukemeia, so I was glad to have been a part of it, though it was freezing cold!
12/11/11: The Wharf Bar, Walsall: Regular readers of my blog will know that it is a rare time indeed when I speak kindly of The Wharf Bar. There's never usually anyone there, the whole place smells of sick (which comes from the canal, by the way; it's not actually their fault) and the only people to watch me tend to be the other bands who are either leaving the venue or counting down the minutes until it's their turn to go on. Quite often, the best I can say about it is that at least they do still book me for gigs. So imagine how pleased I was when not only were the modest audience actually listening to me and, as they told me afterwards, enjoying it, but I actually found myself enjoying it as well! That was certainly the best I'd ever played at the Wharf Bar, I've got another one there on the 10th so I'm actually looking forward to it. That's almost unheard of!
16/11/11: 82s: Cover Band Showcase in Cannock: We have - not a deal - but a good working relationship with some booking agents in the area, who invited us to play this showcase to several booking agents who may or may not want us for gigs in the future. We got all our big guns out, which were Word Up, Trick Me and Sound of the Underground. Quite far removed from what we orignally put the band together to do, and I think there is a concern that it's not representative of the set, so you may see some changes with this in the future.
22/11/11 Recording Christmas Song with Sam Draisey: Sam's putting together another Christmas album of original material and I went up today to record mine. I hadn't rehearsed it nearly enough and I know it, the guitar took a few goes, but my vocals I did pretty much in one take. I don't know whether I like the song or not; it's hardly full of Chirstmas Cheer and lyrically it's very lazy, there isn't a single line I haven't copied off someone, not least of whom myself! Still, it will hopefully work for the album, and it will be interesting to see what the other guys come up with this time.
So, there you have it! Aki Maera's first gig is coming up next Wednesday, which will be... interesting. See you all there!
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
24/9/2011: Royal Oak with Mezzotonic
Fallen behind a lot with this, and the problem with writing gig blogs a week and a half after I've done them means I can't remember what the hell I actually played. But hey, here goes...
I do seem to remember varying my opening songs with this one, kicking off I think with Girl's Names and Get Out Of My Head. The knock-on effect of both this and the fact that I wasn't really concentrating on my set list was to have consequences later, but for the moment this seemed to be a solid performance.
Next came the song that I'm pretty sure now is called Always Remember Me. I've been playing this quite a bit lately and people seem to like it, I'm not sure how fond I am of my guitar playing on this one as I tend to either rush the verses or not articulate all the sounds in the chorus when I know I can do better. That's something to practice, but to be perfectly honest I'd rather get my own material down to a T...
The rest of the gig went by in something of a haze, except that I remained on the stage for longer than my usual 7 songs. At one point I did High by Feeder while a Commodores video was showing on the screen above, made a snide comment about Lionel Ritchie's haircut beggaring belief (It was 3 Times A Lady if you want to have a look) and forgetting the words, which shouldn't really have happened but comical observations are something I have been trying to do lately and the lads from Mezzotonic, who's gig it was, at least found it funny...
Of course, I ended up using all my mid-paced songs up and putting my 3 fastest ones towards the end, which would have just been dull. While this did result in a rare and not-altogether-welcome outing of Prisoner of my Mind, it shouldn't really have happened and added to the idea that tonight I just wasn't concentrating. Next time I do a full gig (I've got a couple booked for the Wharf Bar,) I will have to think about that a bit more; I don't want to fall flat on my face for not being bothered to write a set-list!
Kudos to Mezzotonic, though. The gig itself suffered from a poor turnout - the night started with about 15 people in the room, half of which walked out just before I went on, and the rest of them walked out just before the band went on. It's never easy to play a gig when there are less people in the audience than there are in the band, but it meant the band got to try some material and covers that they wouldn't normally play, and I felt quite privelidged to see that. There were some other lads who showed up at one point, but there was football on in the other room, so, you know...
I do seem to remember varying my opening songs with this one, kicking off I think with Girl's Names and Get Out Of My Head. The knock-on effect of both this and the fact that I wasn't really concentrating on my set list was to have consequences later, but for the moment this seemed to be a solid performance.
Next came the song that I'm pretty sure now is called Always Remember Me. I've been playing this quite a bit lately and people seem to like it, I'm not sure how fond I am of my guitar playing on this one as I tend to either rush the verses or not articulate all the sounds in the chorus when I know I can do better. That's something to practice, but to be perfectly honest I'd rather get my own material down to a T...
The rest of the gig went by in something of a haze, except that I remained on the stage for longer than my usual 7 songs. At one point I did High by Feeder while a Commodores video was showing on the screen above, made a snide comment about Lionel Ritchie's haircut beggaring belief (It was 3 Times A Lady if you want to have a look) and forgetting the words, which shouldn't really have happened but comical observations are something I have been trying to do lately and the lads from Mezzotonic, who's gig it was, at least found it funny...
Of course, I ended up using all my mid-paced songs up and putting my 3 fastest ones towards the end, which would have just been dull. While this did result in a rare and not-altogether-welcome outing of Prisoner of my Mind, it shouldn't really have happened and added to the idea that tonight I just wasn't concentrating. Next time I do a full gig (I've got a couple booked for the Wharf Bar,) I will have to think about that a bit more; I don't want to fall flat on my face for not being bothered to write a set-list!
Kudos to Mezzotonic, though. The gig itself suffered from a poor turnout - the night started with about 15 people in the room, half of which walked out just before I went on, and the rest of them walked out just before the band went on. It's never easy to play a gig when there are less people in the audience than there are in the band, but it meant the band got to try some material and covers that they wouldn't normally play, and I felt quite privelidged to see that. There were some other lads who showed up at one point, but there was football on in the other room, so, you know...
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