Categories: uncategorized
Date: 11 December 2006 20:50:30
Which leads us to gig part 2...
((only a little later than intended... been somewhat busy in between but with nice stuff that wasn't work related for once... A christingle and birthday party that sort of thing and playing on my new Xbox 360 - yay - which I got as a joint pressie from a few people clubbing together to get it...))
Anyhow, it started well, beautiful sunshine and clear sky yet not so cold that it was unbearable. Don't get me wrong, it WAS cold and the guitarists had a heck of a job tuning their instruments, but hey, I've commuted through Gatwick train station for a year which is the coldest place on God's earth, I think, so Woking in December was a mere bagatelle in comparison.
First road bump came in after ten minutes or so. Co-worker for the day had had a car failure on the way so started off in something of a stressed state. He was also the victim of one of those bits of communication that everyone thinks the other has said something that added ten minutes workload onto his morning, and he ended up saying a few things on the phone that weren't helpful. As much as things could be sorted in the busyness of the time they were and we got onto the business of working pretty hard from then on in. Set up the external PA and the external drum kit and the bands started to arrive and then... Well, that's when the fun started.
Now, a youthworker should not have favourites, but it's hard to go through the set list without holding up a couple of cherished moments from the day. All of the guys and gals did amazing, all of them performed a stormer, a couple did a couple of extra pieces that added to the day for me in a big way.
The first band, for example, had already gone over and above the call of duty before the first note was even played. They're a pretty cool band; Innovia (check out the Myspace here: http://www.myspace.com/landofinnovia ), a couple of years older than the rest of the group, a lot more experienced in terms of gigging. They should, by rights, have been pretty high up the set list however I had a pretty big favour to ask them: could they go on first? It'd start the day off strong and give the younger bands, especially the ones who had not performed up to this point, a bit of breathing space. It'd be pretty harsh to ask the noobs ( :~) ) to go on first. Innovia agreed, bless ‘em, performed a knock out set (despite forgetting the words to the Christmas carol cover that each band had to do but carrying on as an instrumental) and then, two songs in, they said they had a surprise in store. Now this is the sort of day for surprises; this'll be good I thought. I assumed it was a song I would not be expecting and I was right: They called me up on stage, gave me a beautifully decorated cake and a present and everyone sang happy birthday to me. How cool was that. Innovia: Greatest band in the World : ) : ) for services above and beyond music.
Then we got into some of the fresh faced debutantes: Kamichi an interesting outfit with a teen singer with a deep, sultry, cool voice. They've not got the hang of where she needs to be in terms of writing songs to the strength of the voice but they aren't that far off and in a month and a week they've got some cool grooves pretty much nailed down. I can't wait to see where they are in a years time. Four Socks and a Koala followed, slightly out of order for the skills of the band but the drummer was in Kamichi and the Koalas. FSaaK is a pretty cool funky band who've got a year + with us under their belts. They're pretty cool and have a very vibrant, unique sound: Koala funk. It's very cool, like it loads. Another debutant followed: Industrial Noise: a three girl rock act that, despite having not gigged, managed to pull out possibly the performance of the day, certainly in terms of showing a skillset beyond their practise time so far.
Following them we had Traces of the dream (or where they before IN? can't remember now, oops) who are a threesome of guitar, bass, drums. The two guitarists are so in sync you could put them on different continents and they'd be in time with each other. Just for fun they wrote and performed a song on stage and it was amazing. Then we had another surprise: a brilliant keyboard player came in to help us perform a couple of Christmas carols (Hark the Herald and Ding Dong Merrily) and we invited every WYACian and a few other volunteers to come up, grab a mic and sing a long... Was HUGE fun. Loads of smiles. Possibly not the most beautifully balanced and delicate of choir recitals but an ace sound nonetheless...
Then we had the two headline acts: Forget the World and Melting Sunrise. There was a waffer theen waffer between the two bands as to who should be top of the table, both are brilliant fun, both created amazingly good Christmas songs. Melting got the nod for finishing the day off purely because their song was a crowd pleasing belter whereas FTW's punk/emo/screamo version of Silent Night, whilst absolutely brilliant, would have been less in keeping with the family friendly finale that the day dictated.
Anyhow, both bands played out of their skins, both performed a storming finale to a brilliant day. I could say loads more but the bus journey I'm typing this all on is near to an end.
More loveliness on the day? Met a possible future employee of the centre, he made all sorts of good impressions lets just say and he helped out getting all of the stuff back to the centre which was ace. Met some future WYACians as well which, again, was fantastic and some previous ones stopped by to say hallo which was excellent, always nice to see a face even if, in one case, he'd changed so much I had that ‘what the heck is his name' feeling.
So anyhow, was an amazing day, much needed. So many things could have gone wrong and nowadays I count on and expect those things rather than have any real hope of success a lot of the time. To have something go according to plan and then, because of the actions of the yaks and yakkettes involved, far, far exceed anything I could have hoped for leaves me with that warm fuzzy feeling of a Yak in clover.
Tuesday there's the last gig at the centre. Should be different, but regardless I can't wait (although as ever the numbers thing is a little nervey. You can only fit 75 people in our theatre room at best, so promotion of anything like this is a fine balancing act...) That said the last time we did a gig in the room it was utterly fantata. Top, top stuff).
Yay. Tales, today of non-variable yayness (such a cool title for a blog that one).
Righto. Loads to do, loads done, but loads to do now. As of this instant I'm now right into a possible Lantern festival for Chinese Lantern Festival/New Year sort of time (still writing the brief) which'll be a doozey of an organizational monster I don't doubt... But anyway, I'm in a smiley mood for the mo'.
The myspaces for the bands involved, most now including their Christmas songs, are (in no order, just the way they turned up out of the friends list):
http://www.myspace.com/landofinnovia
http://www.myspace.com/tracesofthedream
http://www.myspace.com/foursocksandakoala
http://www.myspace.com/meltingsunrise
http://www.myspace.com/jonnysilence
http://www.myspace.com/forgettheworldband
http://www.myspace.com/kamichimusic
http://www.myspace.com/industrialnoisemusic
The art centres one is:
http://www.myspace.com/wyac
and mine is http://www.myspace.com/kercal