GIG - The Shed, Leicester 11th Oct 04

Bill:

Flare
Stole The Show
Liquid Mojo
Grinn
*no show*

Bit of a mission to get to this one - with Paddy starting the Day on the South coast and the rest of us at day jobs scattered around West/South Yorkshire. Still we managed to pull it together and get there for 6:00 as requested - shame some of the other bands couldn’t get their shit together.

So, decent little venue this (Winner of "Safest Club in Leicester" Award?!?) - enough room on stage and a fairly decent sound (thanks Paul, the sound guy). We've talked to the owner/manager Kevin a few times on the phone and he seems like a thoroughly decent sort of chap.
They put on Saturday matinee gigs so a younger audience can get to see live music - fantastic! For the record we are still trying to sort something similar in Huddersfield.

The headline act 'Flare' from Norway were loading in as we got there. Flare are nice guys on their second UK tour - I hope we can stay in touch. Their sound check sounded good and they might make a decent support act for the Smurphs sometime if we can make the timings work.

Anyway, out hearts sank as we saw their drum kit. When ever we gig we tend to carry all our gear - we don't take a drum kit only if we have been assured that the kit being provided by the headline act is a full kit - which we were, but it wasn't. At first it looked like there wasn't even going to be any rack toms, though a single teeny hit tom arrived later.
We can't blame Flare for this, they are a foreign band touring the UK in a tiny van as best they can, but we could so easily have brought out kit.
Promoters really don't seem to grasp the importance of providing a decent or at least full drum kit - its kinda like providing guitars with 3 strings.
Any hoo - Lee did a sterling job under the circumstances.

So set up and sound check was from 6 until 7:30 when the doors open. It was a five band bill and we, as first time visitors to the Shed were scheduled for second on the bill - fair enough. Any way – the opening act never bothered showing up and the third band on the bill didn't bother getting to the venue until 8:10 - bleeding amateurs!!!!! So running order and timings were in a constant state of flux. Anyhoo we were eventually given 40 minutes (no problem).

There was no owner, promoter or any authority figure in evidence so Paul the sound guy was managing things as best he could. Personally if we were running the show and a band, especially one from five minutes down the road, turned up over two hours late they'd be told firmly but politely to piss off home again, but a sound engineer can’t really make that call!

So we opened the show, decent crowd, most had come to see Stole the Show by the looks of things who were main support and they mostly seemed to get into it - as audiences go they were pretty good to us and Ian's bantering did start to draw them out of their shells a little.

We played one of the two short set formats we are using as the moment, but stuck 'Lucy' in the middle to bring us to 40 minutes - Actually I think we did about 45, but sod it, we got there on time and brought all the kit we needed! You see Grinn are professional and punctual.

Wrecking Ball
Smallville - dedicated to Christopher Reeves
Bully for you
It's alright
Lucy
Freefall
Scars
Angelina Crush
Def Con 1

Few gaffs, but mostly a good performance. Good to see old friends Paul and Neil walk in unexpectedly part way through to bolster local support from RicheyJames and SG.

After our set the tardy Liquid Mojo climbed up on stage and what should have been a 10-15 minutes change over took over 30 minutes as they line checked. Saw some of their set from the bar but didn’t really get it.

Lee did some meeting and greeting after the show and says 'Hi' to everyone he met. Thanks to all who came to watch our set.

I don’t know whether ‘Stole the Show’ did, as we shipped out while the mojo lot were playing because we had a long drive and early starts the next morning. I hope they had a good one, they sounded pretty good in sound check – kinda pop, punky, indy, hard rock from what I could tell, but I only heard 1 song – sounded interesting though. They panicked a bit when told they could extend their set to 40 minutes as apparently they only have 25 minutes of material (we could probably manage a couple of hours), but they deserve their place on this bill due to the volume of punters they dragged along.

I hope enough people managed to stick around to see Flare, we’d have liked to have seen them!

I can’t find any web links for any of the other bands I’m afraid, if anyone knows them, mail me.

No pix – I got one, but its too dark to make anything out.