I have the pleasure of writing about some of the most fantastic experiences in my life on this blog. The trouble though, with a warts and all approach is that when things go wrong they're gonna end up here too, and wrong things did go, disastrously so.
This is the story of how a show I put together sputtered and died and how it was my fault I guess.
So lets start at the beginning. I needed to put together a show for a Hungarian band - Till We Drop - and unfortunately the 13SX mainstay venues were all booked up. On a hunch I tried The Junction in Harrow, having played a pretty sweet halloween show last October.
I spoke with the relevant people over Facebook and (here's where things start to go wrong) I had a phone call in which I assumed I had confirmed that the date was booked. I also sent them the event page so they could keep up to date with what was happening.
Anyways time passes and the world moves on and we come to the day of the show. I turn up to the bar and there nobody is aware of what is going on. Apparently nothing had been confirmed with the venue and rather than having checked with me at any point to see if I was still going ahead assumed that the conversations we had never took place.
Still they said the space was still free and we could still use it but we couldn't have the bar open upstairs. Fair enough I thought, the show must go on.
Next to rain on our parade was the fact we had to use their own (total shitty) PA instead of the stellar one we had brought along. Again, fair enough the show still went on. A little late I was ready to take the stage and kick some ass. What followed was the most awful set I have ever produced as a sober musician. The stress of fucking around getting everything happening gave me a brain wipe and I couldn't remember any of the words to any of my songs and I think Drew may have sustained a head injury earlier in the day as he similarly couldn't seem to recall how any of the songs that we wrote together went. So after ruining a live recording although apparently still doing well enough to hide it enough to make it enjoyable for everyone else we departed the stage and made way for the fully plugged bands.
The Drunken Ramblings were next and it was soon pretty apparent that the ampage of the equipment was way too much for the shitty assed PA system we were forced to use. So it was more of an instrumental set. It was also halfway through their set that shit started to go really wrong. The bar staff came up to me and told me it needed to be turned down a bit, fair enough I said, I didn't want to be fucking people off, I just wanted to make some sweet sweet punkrock. Later during their set I was told the drums were too loud. Well shit. What to do when the un mic'd drums are too loud. Fuck and carry on was the choice I made and TDR managed to finish our set. By this point we were annoying lots of the staff and we did all we could and tried (didn't really try) to keep some of the noise down(ish). Not Pennys boat were up next and they made it a fair way through their set before the axe came down. There had been some kind of complaint and the gig was totally shut down, we couldn't even carry on acoustically. Nothing. So there I was with my nuts in my hand and not a chance in hell of carrying on the show.
This was the single most embarrassing moment of my adult life as I had a headlining act who had come over from hungary to the UK for the first time for their farewell tour and they weren't going to play a show. They could have taken the money it cost them all to travel over with all their equipment and used it to buy pins to stick in their eyes and they would have gotten more than putting their trust in me to deliver them a great show. Now I'm not exactly saying it was the junction who ruined this event but I have a few points:
I have the message I sent to them confirming that the gig was going ahead. I don't know how archaic their processes are but I do all my band business over facebook so took that as a done deal. Also who agrees to book in a bunch of punk bands when they can't make noise? And who doesn't check to see whether an event they have penciled in is still happening or not if there is any ambiguity on their behalf. As I said I though it a done deal since I had the conversation on the phone saying I very much wanted the event to take place there and then sent them the event info straight away afterwards.Anyway I guess there is always more I could have done. There is always something else I could have done, but from now on one thing is clear in my mind. Punk is dead in Harrow. Long live South East London!!!
