Andy
Honorary Member
Wind back a few gigs, & a member of a working man's club committee catches us at a couple of gigs, & becomes a fan. He asks us to play his members club. It's a big club, the main room holding 500+, good stage, but in the UK, a working man's club is the last place you'll ever find a rock band, even one as mainstream as ours. Usually uber benign trios & similar low end "cabaret" acts tread these boards sandwiched between the Bingo session & ticket raffles for a bottle of cheap wine.
After much pestering, & stating they want to change the venue image by bringing in "different" acts, we give in & agree a booking.
Wind forward to last night. We haul in a modest (for us) setup, soundcheck (on stage mix position only), & retire to the bar until first set time. 10 minutes before we go on, there's 5 paying punters in the audience. There's perhaps another 20 punters in the club, & to say they're not our usual demographic is understatement of the decade. We find out that the club hasn't advertised because "we're a members only club, so can't admit the general public because of our constitution". Ok, this is going to be terrible. Our attitude switches to paid practice, & we kick off the first set.
To our surprise, within 10 minutes of starting, 50+ people enter the room. Partly from the Bingo session next door, & partly from new arrivals. 50 is all we had all night, but to our utter amazement, they were the most enthusiastic & vocal "crowd" you could wish for. Despite the disparity between venue & audience size, we had a great night, sold numerous Tshirts, etc, etc. I must reiterate, desperately avoiding disparaging characterisations, this audience was so far removed from a rock crowd, it's untrue.
Just goes to show, you can never predict a gig situation, & you should always play the room like it's a full house.
Here's a very brief clip, purely to show the stage setup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgXAbo16TCg&feature=youtu.be
I royally screwed up the camera settings, hence the distortion & imbalance
After much pestering, & stating they want to change the venue image by bringing in "different" acts, we give in & agree a booking.
Wind forward to last night. We haul in a modest (for us) setup, soundcheck (on stage mix position only), & retire to the bar until first set time. 10 minutes before we go on, there's 5 paying punters in the audience. There's perhaps another 20 punters in the club, & to say they're not our usual demographic is understatement of the decade. We find out that the club hasn't advertised because "we're a members only club, so can't admit the general public because of our constitution". Ok, this is going to be terrible. Our attitude switches to paid practice, & we kick off the first set.
To our surprise, within 10 minutes of starting, 50+ people enter the room. Partly from the Bingo session next door, & partly from new arrivals. 50 is all we had all night, but to our utter amazement, they were the most enthusiastic & vocal "crowd" you could wish for. Despite the disparity between venue & audience size, we had a great night, sold numerous Tshirts, etc, etc. I must reiterate, desperately avoiding disparaging characterisations, this audience was so far removed from a rock crowd, it's untrue.
Just goes to show, you can never predict a gig situation, & you should always play the room like it's a full house.
Here's a very brief clip, purely to show the stage setup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgXAbo16TCg&feature=youtu.be
I royally screwed up the camera settings, hence the distortion & imbalance