Diary Of A Musician

That night there is still an odd feeling between us and the headline band, but I put it down to getting to know each other. By the time the first band go on, the venue is a sell out and the crowd go wild. We go on and have a brilliant show but I notice that, by the end of the night, the venue is half as full as at the start. We get taxis back to the bus and have another night’s sleep in what is essentially a windowless room with 15 men.

A mechanic fixes the bus the next morning and we drive to Brooklyn. The gig is stunning — sold out again — with a crowd who are totally up for it, or at least for us. The crowd thins out by the end of the night and the next night, in Washington, it becomes painfully clear that people are staying for us and then leaving. The bus breaks down again on the way from Washington to New York and we wake up in a garage in New Jersey. “Can I have a word?” asks the tour manager, who hasn’t got the easiest of jobs, juggling three bands and a broken-down bus. “There is going to be a change in the running order and you’re going on first,” he tells me. I ask why and he shifts uncomfortably and mumbles stuff about promoters and people leaving. “Why don’t we headline then?” I ask, but he’s definite that we should go on first. I ring our label boss who immediately says “Don’t worry, you’re still on in the middle.” But as the day goes on, it becomes clear that someone somewhere is pulling some weird strings, and it looks as though it is the headline band. I bounce calls from agent, label boss and tour manager and get more and more f*cked off. It is a bit of a kick in the teeth to be bounced down a bill and not be given a straight answer why, especially on the day of the biggest show of the tour. All three bands squeeze into a hired minibus that our tour manager is driving and I get a phone call from our label boss. “You’re opening for the rest of the tour, sorry, that’s the way it is.”

We get to the Bowery Ballroom, leave the unloading and setting up to the other bands and go for a pint to blow off steam. We are livid, but powerless. We get back to the venue and see the running order posted outside. We’re on in the middle. I grab the tour manager and go crazy. “Why f*ck with us all day, just to make it the same as it was in the morning?” He goes white and realises he hasn’t told the venue of the change in running order. The venue has been telling everyone who’s been ringing that we’re on in the middle. By the time we go on we’re drunk, tired and angry. Our guitarist and drummer start arguing on stage, our bassist faces the wall and I stand in front of a sold-out crowd thinking “this is in the top three of the worst gigs we’ve ever played.” The headline band go on and half the crowd leave. “F*ck this,” I think. Tomorrow, we’ll go on first and f*cking enjoy ourselves.

So, ploughing on, I decide to look at my messages on the Myspace site. Along with one from a band wanting to be our ‘friend’ there was one message from a booking agent who wanted us to play at a ‘Label Audition Showcase’ gig. Even without a proper bassist in the band, I replied and asked for some details. The basis of it was that, if we were good enough (and brought enough people), they might put us forward to another gig in a bigger venue. This would then be followed (if you were chosen) by another in a very auspicious venue made famous by a popular northern beat combo in the ‘60s, with the chance to go into a studio...

However, this meant we had to bring a certain amount of people down, and was beginning to feel like another ‘Unsigned Competition’ like the one that we’d just been through. I looked at their website and it was all very flash, and they did have connections to some record companies. With the thought of “If you don’t play, you don’t win” running through my head I replied asking if they could pencil us in for the 9:15pm slot.

Now all I needed to do was make sure the drummer could do it and have a practice with him and the new bassist he’d recruited. A guitarist first and foremost, I had a chat with our new member over email and said that if he did this gig on bass, at least he could learn the songs and be ready when he switched to guitar. He agreed, so that was one load off my mind. Now all we had to do was find time for a practice three weeks before the gig. After more emails and a couple of calls to some rehearsal rooms I decided that, in this climate of empty wallets, we should hold the practice in my front room. The drummer drove round with his snare and hi-hats, and the new bassist walked up the steps to my house and we were introduced. He was a nice bloke with a propensity to indulge in the odd Michael Jackson bassline, but it was all ironically played and he was a mate of the drummer’s so he couldn’t be that bad.

And indeed he wasn’t. I thought it would take us all night to learn four songs. In fact we learnt the entire set and a new song too. It felt really good to actually achieve something, even though it was just a little practice. We could’ve done an acoustic gig the next night and rocked the place.

The next day I got back to the promoter of the label showcase and confirmed the time with her. A weekend passed and, when I was checking my emails on the Sunday night, I had two emails from her in my inbox. One said that her colleague had double-booked the slot, and so she could only offer us the time of 8:15pm. The next one said that had gone, so all they had left was 7:45pm.

In a fit of ‘write in haste, repent at leisure,’ I sent a storming email back to the insipid promoter, lambasting them, saying they could have at least rung me and how my fanbase would be upset now most of them had to come early... so I called it off. Looking at the showcase more closely — yes, they did have ties with record companies. But when I see “You must bring 30 people down to go to the next level,” it just lacks spontaneity. You do all the hard work without any promise of progress about it. But has it ever been any different for unsigned bands?  0