Memepunks anniversary gig
On Saturday night, The Memepunks played our sixth gig at the site of our very first one a year previously, The Shaftesbury Tavern.
We did it as a joint "Simon Landmine birthday party" event, mainly because we'd booked the gig and then booked a paid-entry gig at Mother Live, so agreed to the promoter's reasonable request not to announce the free gig until after the paid one. In the interim d_floorlandmine had attempted to bagsy the 8th December date, so I contacted him with the obvious solution of combining the two. This also saved us the hassle of having to book DJs ;)
All I can say is that, a few technical niggles aside, I can't imagine a better gig ever. Because it was "home turf", I wasn't nervous at all, other than in those few panicked moments that happen about 30 seconds before I have to play something and have that momentary flash of "Oh crap, what if I forget the riff? What note does it begin on? ARGH!" Psychetron played up a bit, but the vast majority of our 16 songs sounded really good. And talk about well received! People got up and danced! Every song seemed to bring bigger cheers. It was thrilling getting that kind of positive audience reaction. We played two sets, then Simon took to the decks for the last hour and played a storming set that had people (including me) dancing enthusiastically. And the coolest thing was that origamitiger made us all sock puppets! Mine has purple and blond yarn hair and an eyebrow piercing! How cool is that!?!?!
And after the gig, just when I thought things couldn't have been better, Paul played back the recording we made using our new 16-channel mixer. I walked into the room and heard music, and it took a moment to register that that was us. And we sounded good! Since the first Shaftesbury gig, there haven't been any usable recordings -- and we definitely have improved. It was amazing hearing my own piano playing, monted's and Red's voices, hughe's accordion coming out of a laptop at a party. I was mesmerised, my guests practically had to drag me home! We'll pick the best ones and get them ready for online download and burn some to CD. We'll also record versions in the studio, after Ed gets back from Australia. I am so excited! I'm actually in a good band, and we are actually going somewhere! With recordings like this, we'll get booked at Whitby for sure. There are just not enough superlatives to express how awesome it all is. I am so lucky to be in a band with such talented people, and to be having so much FUN! :-D
We did it as a joint "Simon Landmine birthday party" event, mainly because we'd booked the gig and then booked a paid-entry gig at Mother Live, so agreed to the promoter's reasonable request not to announce the free gig until after the paid one. In the interim d_floorlandmine had attempted to bagsy the 8th December date, so I contacted him with the obvious solution of combining the two. This also saved us the hassle of having to book DJs ;)
All I can say is that, a few technical niggles aside, I can't imagine a better gig ever. Because it was "home turf", I wasn't nervous at all, other than in those few panicked moments that happen about 30 seconds before I have to play something and have that momentary flash of "Oh crap, what if I forget the riff? What note does it begin on? ARGH!" Psychetron played up a bit, but the vast majority of our 16 songs sounded really good. And talk about well received! People got up and danced! Every song seemed to bring bigger cheers. It was thrilling getting that kind of positive audience reaction. We played two sets, then Simon took to the decks for the last hour and played a storming set that had people (including me) dancing enthusiastically. And the coolest thing was that origamitiger made us all sock puppets! Mine has purple and blond yarn hair and an eyebrow piercing! How cool is that!?!?!
And after the gig, just when I thought things couldn't have been better, Paul played back the recording we made using our new 16-channel mixer. I walked into the room and heard music, and it took a moment to register that that was us. And we sounded good! Since the first Shaftesbury gig, there haven't been any usable recordings -- and we definitely have improved. It was amazing hearing my own piano playing, monted's and Red's voices, hughe's accordion coming out of a laptop at a party. I was mesmerised, my guests practically had to drag me home! We'll pick the best ones and get them ready for online download and burn some to CD. We'll also record versions in the studio, after Ed gets back from Australia. I am so excited! I'm actually in a good band, and we are actually going somewhere! With recordings like this, we'll get booked at Whitby for sure. There are just not enough superlatives to express how awesome it all is. I am so lucky to be in a band with such talented people, and to be having so much FUN! :-D