Last night was a great one, probably one of the best gigs the cover band has played so far; which in fairness isn't saying much considering we've only performed four nights previous to last night.
The night started at around seven o'clock when the guitarist brought in the PA system, amps, poles, mics, and mic stands. We met him down at the venue and brought all of the gear up to the third floor to keep it there, since we weren't due to go on until 9:30, I had made a poster for the night, it was fairly last minute, but we put it up on our stories on IG and the bar also shared it.
I made this poster using Night Café, which is the free AI art generator I've used since finding it, I make posters, pictures for posts here on Hive, and also thumbnails for YouTube videos - it's a cool site and I think it's well worth looking into for anyone who feels that they need some art made up - it's not perfect, but some of the generated pieces can be really good.
Anyway, we dropped the gear off and then me and the guitar player hung out and have a couple of beers in the house, instead of sticking around drinking pints for a few hours. We were here and headed down for about 8:45 to set up, at which time the drummer and singer had arrived and were setting up the kit.
By the time we were finished and sound checked, we had enough time to get to the bar for a pint to bring back to the stage area. I had the same pint sitting in front of me for about two hours after we got started.
Currently, our set is just over one and a half hours, and the last time we played back in October we did the set the whole way through in one go, this time however we decided to take a small 5-10 minute break at around the fifty-minute mark.
Our Set List
I Wanna Be Adored - Stone Roses
Call Me - Blondie
Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater
Blitzkrieg Bop - The Ramones
Vaseline - Stone Temple Pilots
White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
Kids In America - Kim Wilde
Sweet Dreams - Eugenics
All The Small Things - Blink 182
Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Pat Benatar
(Break)
Fade Into You - Mazzy Star
Where Is My Mind - The Pixies
What's Up - Four Non-Blondes
I Fought The Law - The Clash
Zombie - The Cranberries
White Wedding - Billy Idol
Psycho Killer - Talking Heads
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Encore
So we did the set, were ready to head off, and then the dreaded encore came in, usually, this is a good thing, meaning that the crowd wants to hear more of us playing, sadly though, we had run out of music. But, then someone came up and asked us to play Blitzkrieg Bop again, so we obliged and actually did a better version than the one at the start of the set.
While we were playing through the set we had a couple of songs where we went into some weird unexpected jams and all we could do after was laugh. To be honest, the jam bits were a lot of fun and I think going forward we should try and do that near the end of some of the songs, obviously only if it happens naturally like it did last night.
The Crowd
They were brilliant and as the night went on more and more people arrived, there were a good few people up dancing, one woman was situated beside me, and in front of me, there was this table. The only way for her to get out was passed me, while playing I would occasionally have to make way for her, which I didn't mind as she was really getting the rest of the crowd moving when she got out on the floor. Funny though, one of the last times it happened I stepped back into the drums, which moved one of the stands. Needless to say, it's a pretty cramped area haha
Plenty of people were singing as well, which was great, the pub wasn't full by any means, I'd say it was maybe half capacity, maybe more by the end of the set. But, what the crowd lacked in numbers they made up for with enthusiasm.
The owner of the pub recorded a couple of songs, as did some of the crowd, I'm going to compile some of these recordings and add them to a showreel-type video, along with some previous clips. I think for the time being, concentrating on gathering some good recordings is the key to expanding and playing more venues.
The After Show
We went to the local nightclub after leaving the pub we played and my sister, who had worked there before spotted the district manager, who runs the nightclub and another popular pub in town. She told him about the band and said she'll hand over a few videos of us to see if he would be interested in booking us in the future. He said to send them over, so that's another reason why we have to compile some videos and clips people got.
We're on the up and up anyway, another hour of songs and we'll be at the two-and-a-half hour mark, add in two ten ten-fifteen minute breaks and we could start at nine and go until twelve, which is typically expected of a cover band around here.
