Bad luck or a sign of the times?

I was pretty hyped for my show in London's Nambucca. It's one of those venues that everyone seems to know and everyone has at some point been to. Plus from a practical point of view it is a ten minute bus journey from where I work! So I jumped on a number 43 over there and arrived only to find out I couldn't get in to the place. Now this wasn't exactly right, I could have got into the venue if anyone from there had given me some information in the five days I had to get ready, but the email giving me details only arrived on the 12th, not too useful for a gig on the 11th!!

Not taking this as an omen or anything I ate some food at the bar over the road and tried again half an hour later. This time luckily there was activity in the name of One Fell Down (fellow act) having a cigarette outside so they showed me how to get in and I got myself set up and listened to a pounding sound check from Seethe, the nights headliners.

Now I knew full well that friends of mine weren't going to be at the show. Nobody ever  goes to see the opening act, hell my name isn't even on the flyer! If I were a social person I may have gotten a bit lonely or tried making small talk with the other guys there but hell, I have a PS Vita and I quite happily busied myself waiting around for the doors to open and a bunch of metalheads to come flooding in.

But that didn't happen. Not a single person came through the doors in the hour and fifteen minutes between them opening and when I was due on stage. So I was called over and had to start playing....

...to no one!

Most people have had one or two or twenty of those gigs where there are like five people in the place and they aren't really that bothered by you but you play anyway. Being an opening act means people almost definitely didn't come to see you play and will mill around in the bar area and a few stragglers or drunks may come in and see what racket you're making. But no. There was no one in the place to watch me. I played the first four songs to the sound guy (who to his credit applauded at the end of each song) and then a few of the other band members came in and watched and we joked accordingly about the spectacular turn out. My biggest worry before playing the show had been playing a crowd of hardcore metallers who wouldn't appreciate my upbeat lovey dovey pop punk musings but there was literally no one to care!

 So I finished and packed my stuff up and asked the One Fell Down guys if there was just a bunch of people in the adjacent room, but there was not. They went on and as you can see here, again it was just them and other members of bands that they played to. Now for me a turn out like this is water of my back, I have an oyster travel card so any journey  within London doesn't cost me a penny more than my usual work travel expenditure. But for these guys, they had come from 90 miles away, so they had done a 180 mile round trip and wouldn't even get back their petrol money!

I find this amazing considering they are what I like to think of as an "established" band, they have an album out and music videos and a merch stand and all these things that bands take a long while to procure. So whilst this is a mild annoyance to a guy with nothing to his band but a guitar bag and stand, it must be a massive punch in the nuts for five guys who had to squeeze themselves into a tiny van for two hours to get there.
So how did I end up playing to just a sound guy? Maybe it's because it's January, and it's cold, and people are generally a little strapped for cash? But then surely since these things are advertised so far in advance they would be well aware of a poor crowd attending a show, the promoter contacted me to fill a slot five days before so surely he would have seen that the show would be bad and would have decided to forego a first act? I think all of the above points may have factored a little but more so I think we live in a world where events like this are almost exclusively advertised on social media and all of us are constantly bombarded with invitations to join this and that and after no time at all we just kind of switch off to it. Now that at the click on a button we can send out invites and people can choose to either click on them or ignore them we find ourselves detached from any commitment to the decisions we make virtually.
I'm sure a lot of people just kind of forgot that the show was that night or never really planned to go or maybe found themselves without the means to go even though online they said they would. Such is life these days, when you don't even need to go onto a persons online profile to wish them a Happy Birthday. We have removed any feeling of loyalty to an event invitation by the over-saturation of them in our news feeds.

But anyway, now I sound like an old man rambling about better times, like when you got some poor shmuck to stand on a street corner handing out pieces of paper only to watch the closest bin fill with them!!!

So what's next, well I have a show in Harrow coming up but beyond that I think I'll hang off actively pursuing  gigs until the weather brightens up.

To fill the space in between I have decided I should be a true one man band and build an arsenal of instruments, all of which I can play (badly) and to use them to excellent effect on a recording I can truly be proud of. I would also like to write a song with friends who are in the process right now of recording their own EP. So now I'm looking to be doing vocals/guitar/bass/keyboards/drums and whatever else may come to hand. I'll see how it goes and keep you updated on progress.



If you have any opinions on the state of music promotion, or can think of any extra musical instruments I can play then sound off in the comments.