Barnsley Gig Review

The BOM guys seem to have got their act together down there at the Arches.

Its a great venue - a big square room with a stage at one end and a raised seating area at the other and a sizable dance floor/standing area in between. The bar is down the side, the punters weren't too thin on the ground and the PA was pretty good. I know quite a few bands who have played here and had a great time. The gig was videoed and a wacky visual mix (like a Hippy vomited into Quantel paintbox) was projected onto a side wall. There was a clothing stall and a raffle. I think technically if they had had a juggler or some dick chucking poi's about it would class as a festival.

Unfortunately we had a god awful gig - It wasn't pleasant at all on stage!
Though on a positive note, there is always a bad gig in any tour or gig sequence - I think we just had it.
We didn't play at the top of our game but by all accounts were still pretty tight - but the sound just wasn't there. On stage was an audio fog (nothing discernable to key vocals off of and despite the hand gestures to the sound guy the vocal fold back consisted mostly of a mess of delay so I could only really hear what I've sung a second ago - very disconcerting) and front of house was no better I hear. I'm not just some inexperienced kid with unrealistic expectations - I've racked up hundreds of gigs in my time and know what is possible. The rig as I mentioned seemed pretty good and our back line is pretty awesome. Really can't see why there was a problem.

I think we got a bit of a bad deal - the regular guy who seemed to be very good and have everything under control had business elsewhere so couldn't stick around and the resultant mis-organization put me in a girlie diva tantrum-esque mood and so wasn't in the best of mental states when we got on stage, but I'm professional enough to have tried to make a go of things - even getting dressed up and painting in my hidden panda. You can never tell from the stage what the front of house sounds like - but you could detect that it wasn't good.
I could rant, but I won't, at least not here.
Any hoo - The Western Front were pleasant enough and I really enjoyed Stan Williams and the Manifesto but in both cases their front of house could have been much better, the Western Front faring worst as their drums didn't really pop into the mix until half way through the set and the guitar sound was sooooooo thin.
Though neither band really seamed a natural bill mate for Grinn it didn't really matter.

Weird crowd - I couldn't really tell if they were into it; firstly because I had big ass spot lights in my eyes and so could only see 2 inches forward of the stage and so could not see into anyones eyes and secondly because they weren't very vocal - but they mostly stuck around so I guess that is something.

Any hoo - onward and upward. Thanks for everyone that stuck around to see us (sorry for being a moody bastard on stage, but the sound was doing my nut - I normally like to talk to the crowd and make some friends), thanks for BOM for inviting us to play and sorry you didn't get the best Grinn experience tonight. And although we only feel slightly responsible, it still weighs on our minds and we'd like to come back to Barnsley and rectify.