Tweet
The Support Band From Hell
London, Kings Cross, Saturday 15th July 2006.
Destination: The Water Rats pub on the Grays Inn Road.
On the Bill : The Rum Circus (headlining), Diner (1st support, (my band)), and The Support Band From Hell (2nd support - can't remember their name, and they don't deserve the distinction anyway. I shall call them SBFH)
The 2006 heat wave is at its peak, and the traffic jam around Kings Cross that started some time in the seventies is blooming under the strain of two sets of roadworks. First, the long-awaited Eurotunnel train terminal development, and second, a desperate attempt to stop London running out of water by digging up and replacing all the leaking Victorian-era pipes - almost simultaneously. Luckily I know the area so my GF & I cut up a side-road, double back and round in a circle towards Islington, and approach Kings Cross from a quieter direction.
I finally reach the pub which is impossible to unload next to (Red Route = no stopping), but I can park round the corner and only have to lug my gear a hundred yards or so. Not ideal in the 35 degree heat, but still better than sitting in a traffic jam.
Soundchecks are tedious things. You have to get there maybe five hours before being due onstage, then wait around for your slot, put up with other bands taking too long, and not having their own gear, and worry about how many people are going to turn up for the gig. Usually the shell of a drumkit is shared between the bands, as it takes too long to set up and break down a whole kit for each act. Each drummer always brings their own snare drum, cymbals and pedal, as these are very 'personal' items and the most easily damaged part of a kit. Amps are sometimes shared, but this should be arranged in advance. Guitars are never shared.
On this particular occassion, while our drummer (Dan) was sitting in the traffic, the drummer from SBFH had texted him asking to use his snare, pedal, and cymbals, which you should never ever do. He'd already been rightly refused by the drummer from The Rum Circus, and was now after Dan's. Dan arrived, flustered at this (as if the heat and traffic wasn't enough), and I think he texted a 'No' in reply. It was especially annoying as all bands had been informed that it was their responsibility to either bring their own gear, or make arrangements well in advance with other people if they wanted to borrow.
When the SBFH drummer finally turned up he started piling on the pressure on Dan to allow him to use the drum-bits-that-should-never-be-shared, making Dan out to be the bad guy who would stop them playing the gig, rather than accepting responsibility himself. The thing is that although we have a superb following in terms of energy and enthusiasm, we always want to play to other band's punters as well as our own, as winning over the neutrals and giving them a free demo CD to take home is very much part of the plan, and winning over the neutrals is something we're proud of being able to do. SBFH were a bunch of college kids, and college kids can often get half their year out for a night out, however crap they are as a band, so they tend to have quite a few punters. This factor lead Dan to the decision to allow them to borrow his gear, as their public would probably have all left otherwise.
So SBFH did their soundcheck, and eventually we did ours before setting off for another pub over the road where they did meals. The girlfriends were already there getting pissed and making merry, and we joined them for our ritual pre-gig ham, egg and chips (yum), substantially less merry, (though cheered up by the food) and not really able to drink away the anxieties because we were driving.
Then it was back over the road to wait for SBFH to finish their crap set, where I noticed the bass player was playing a beautiful green-yellow sunburst Rickenbacker which was far too good a bass for such an inept player. Eventually their too-long set ended and we started to set up. Fortunately Dan's drum parts were all still OK, but there was a row going on the 'dressing room' (actually a tiny room for storing the gear in).
"You never do that! You just don't do that! In all the years I've been playing gigs no-one has EVER done this before. It's a disgrace! How DARE you!!".
the sullen reply came back :
"well if you're going to be like that we'll take our crowd home"
"Good! Piss off. Take them with you!"
So it turned out that SBFH had nicked that £2000 vintage Rickenbacker from the Rum Circus bass player to use in their set without asking. Unbelievable! I said above about certain drum parts that you just don't borrow. Well, borrowing guitars is the same, if not more so in some ways.
By now SBFH were getting seriously unpopular. It turns out that because they fancied a night out after without gear & transport worries, some of them had the brilliant idea of turning up with no gear of their own and demanding to use everyone else's. Where that failed, they'd just steal it, and act like other people were trying to ruin their night if they had a problem with that.
So we started our set and two bars in something was wrong. My bass sound wasn't my bass sound and as I turned in horror to the amp I realised that SBFH had been playing with MY amp and messed up MY settings and OUR sound for OUR paying customers! I struggled to keep my composure, as the worst thing to think about when playing a gig is anything other than the song I'm playing. Throw in some emotion and I could run wide at the first corner, spinning out of control, completely losing all track position (excuse the motor racing metaphor, but it works). Fortunately I held on, and we got through the first song, when I turned wild eyed to my colleagues hissing "They nicked my amp too! They've ****ed with the ****ing settings and ****ed up our ***stard sound".
I rounded on the amp and furiously fiddled with the settings. My amp (a 70's Hiwatt) is a sensitive beastie, not only does it it require subtle EQ-ing in every different room its in, but changing it to completely alien settings and then putting it back to where it was doesn't always give the same sound as you started with. That sound is a subtle balance of top end for bite and strang, and bottom end for thrum and vroom. I use both the EQ and the two linked pre-amps (one bright, one bassy) to get this balance, and suffice to say, I couldn't quite get the sound I wanted between songs - that's what soundchecks are for. That's what I sat in the afternoon sun in traffic jams for, and waited around all evening because of. For where I was at that moment, I must as well have not done a soundcheck and just hopped in the car at 9.00pm, got to the venue and plugged in with a random sound.
So I did the best I could in the few seconds available (SBFH had already got everything running late) and got on with the set. It went quite well under the circumstances - our public enjoyed themselves, and we won over lots of neutrals, and giving away plenty of CD's, but Dan & I had a tough evening, and for our closest regulars the sound suffered a bit. One last slap in the face though from SBFH before we finished our set - because they had overrun, we were told we had to cut our set by five minutes - losing one song which our people had paid to come and hear.
So this has obviously hardened our attitude against lending our gear - and especially to people who turn up expecting to use other people's stuff to save on their own transport costs & hassle. Terrible too, for the Rum Circus bassplayer to have it his beautiful guitar basically stolen for an hour, as guitar-share just never, ever happens on a circuit like that. Between friends maybe but not strangers.
On the bright side, The Rum Circus were a good band, as we watched them after us, and we built a cordial friendship with them through our shared experiance and mutual enemy. Their singer works at the Bull & Gate in North London, where we also play, and my GF and I met up with her for a good chat when seeing a band there last week, and hopefully our two bands will do some gigs together in future, as we seemed to go down ok with each other's punters.
And that's it, the story of the Support Band From Hell. We did get a feeble apology email from them the following week, and the promoter apologised too and I got a free beer at the end of the night (which I couldn't drink because I was driving), but hopefully this Rock'n Roll Tale will have at least provided some entertainment or amusement for the readers here.
Maybe I'll post another story here soon.
London, Kings Cross, Saturday 15th July 2006.
Destination: The Water Rats pub on the Grays Inn Road.
On the Bill : The Rum Circus (headlining), Diner (1st support, (my band)), and The Support Band From Hell (2nd support - can't remember their name, and they don't deserve the distinction anyway. I shall call them SBFH)
The 2006 heat wave is at its peak, and the traffic jam around Kings Cross that started some time in the seventies is blooming under the strain of two sets of roadworks. First, the long-awaited Eurotunnel train terminal development, and second, a desperate attempt to stop London running out of water by digging up and replacing all the leaking Victorian-era pipes - almost simultaneously. Luckily I know the area so my GF & I cut up a side-road, double back and round in a circle towards Islington, and approach Kings Cross from a quieter direction.
I finally reach the pub which is impossible to unload next to (Red Route = no stopping), but I can park round the corner and only have to lug my gear a hundred yards or so. Not ideal in the 35 degree heat, but still better than sitting in a traffic jam.
Soundchecks are tedious things. You have to get there maybe five hours before being due onstage, then wait around for your slot, put up with other bands taking too long, and not having their own gear, and worry about how many people are going to turn up for the gig. Usually the shell of a drumkit is shared between the bands, as it takes too long to set up and break down a whole kit for each act. Each drummer always brings their own snare drum, cymbals and pedal, as these are very 'personal' items and the most easily damaged part of a kit. Amps are sometimes shared, but this should be arranged in advance. Guitars are never shared.
On this particular occassion, while our drummer (Dan) was sitting in the traffic, the drummer from SBFH had texted him asking to use his snare, pedal, and cymbals, which you should never ever do. He'd already been rightly refused by the drummer from The Rum Circus, and was now after Dan's. Dan arrived, flustered at this (as if the heat and traffic wasn't enough), and I think he texted a 'No' in reply. It was especially annoying as all bands had been informed that it was their responsibility to either bring their own gear, or make arrangements well in advance with other people if they wanted to borrow.
When the SBFH drummer finally turned up he started piling on the pressure on Dan to allow him to use the drum-bits-that-should-never-be-shared, making Dan out to be the bad guy who would stop them playing the gig, rather than accepting responsibility himself. The thing is that although we have a superb following in terms of energy and enthusiasm, we always want to play to other band's punters as well as our own, as winning over the neutrals and giving them a free demo CD to take home is very much part of the plan, and winning over the neutrals is something we're proud of being able to do. SBFH were a bunch of college kids, and college kids can often get half their year out for a night out, however crap they are as a band, so they tend to have quite a few punters. This factor lead Dan to the decision to allow them to borrow his gear, as their public would probably have all left otherwise.
So SBFH did their soundcheck, and eventually we did ours before setting off for another pub over the road where they did meals. The girlfriends were already there getting pissed and making merry, and we joined them for our ritual pre-gig ham, egg and chips (yum), substantially less merry, (though cheered up by the food) and not really able to drink away the anxieties because we were driving.
Then it was back over the road to wait for SBFH to finish their crap set, where I noticed the bass player was playing a beautiful green-yellow sunburst Rickenbacker which was far too good a bass for such an inept player. Eventually their too-long set ended and we started to set up. Fortunately Dan's drum parts were all still OK, but there was a row going on the 'dressing room' (actually a tiny room for storing the gear in).
"You never do that! You just don't do that! In all the years I've been playing gigs no-one has EVER done this before. It's a disgrace! How DARE you!!".
the sullen reply came back :
"well if you're going to be like that we'll take our crowd home"
"Good! Piss off. Take them with you!"
So it turned out that SBFH had nicked that £2000 vintage Rickenbacker from the Rum Circus bass player to use in their set without asking. Unbelievable! I said above about certain drum parts that you just don't borrow. Well, borrowing guitars is the same, if not more so in some ways.
By now SBFH were getting seriously unpopular. It turns out that because they fancied a night out after without gear & transport worries, some of them had the brilliant idea of turning up with no gear of their own and demanding to use everyone else's. Where that failed, they'd just steal it, and act like other people were trying to ruin their night if they had a problem with that.
So we started our set and two bars in something was wrong. My bass sound wasn't my bass sound and as I turned in horror to the amp I realised that SBFH had been playing with MY amp and messed up MY settings and OUR sound for OUR paying customers! I struggled to keep my composure, as the worst thing to think about when playing a gig is anything other than the song I'm playing. Throw in some emotion and I could run wide at the first corner, spinning out of control, completely losing all track position (excuse the motor racing metaphor, but it works). Fortunately I held on, and we got through the first song, when I turned wild eyed to my colleagues hissing "They nicked my amp too! They've ****ed with the ****ing settings and ****ed up our ***stard sound".
I rounded on the amp and furiously fiddled with the settings. My amp (a 70's Hiwatt) is a sensitive beastie, not only does it it require subtle EQ-ing in every different room its in, but changing it to completely alien settings and then putting it back to where it was doesn't always give the same sound as you started with. That sound is a subtle balance of top end for bite and strang, and bottom end for thrum and vroom. I use both the EQ and the two linked pre-amps (one bright, one bassy) to get this balance, and suffice to say, I couldn't quite get the sound I wanted between songs - that's what soundchecks are for. That's what I sat in the afternoon sun in traffic jams for, and waited around all evening because of. For where I was at that moment, I must as well have not done a soundcheck and just hopped in the car at 9.00pm, got to the venue and plugged in with a random sound.
So I did the best I could in the few seconds available (SBFH had already got everything running late) and got on with the set. It went quite well under the circumstances - our public enjoyed themselves, and we won over lots of neutrals, and giving away plenty of CD's, but Dan & I had a tough evening, and for our closest regulars the sound suffered a bit. One last slap in the face though from SBFH before we finished our set - because they had overrun, we were told we had to cut our set by five minutes - losing one song which our people had paid to come and hear.
So this has obviously hardened our attitude against lending our gear - and especially to people who turn up expecting to use other people's stuff to save on their own transport costs & hassle. Terrible too, for the Rum Circus bassplayer to have it his beautiful guitar basically stolen for an hour, as guitar-share just never, ever happens on a circuit like that. Between friends maybe but not strangers.
On the bright side, The Rum Circus were a good band, as we watched them after us, and we built a cordial friendship with them through our shared experiance and mutual enemy. Their singer works at the Bull & Gate in North London, where we also play, and my GF and I met up with her for a good chat when seeing a band there last week, and hopefully our two bands will do some gigs together in future, as we seemed to go down ok with each other's punters.
And that's it, the story of the Support Band From Hell. We did get a feeble apology email from them the following week, and the promoter apologised too and I got a free beer at the end of the night (which I couldn't drink because I was driving), but hopefully this Rock'n Roll Tale will have at least provided some entertainment or amusement for the readers here.
Maybe I'll post another story here soon.
If it´d been me I´d broken some bones after the show! 
Although not being a musician myself, I have arranged my fair share of concerts. And if there´s one thing I hate it´s ****ing free-loaders! 
Comment