Birth of a Band 6

By April 11^th we were all feeling comfortable with our new drummer, rehearsals were going well and the diary was starting to fill. The Hobgoblin gig had been postponed for a week (to May 17^th) and this meant that our first gig would be at the Hope & Anchor in Wokingham on the 11^th, unless I could come up with one before then.

I had been playing guitar in another band before the Custard Cream thing got started and that had a residency at The Chequers in Marlow. For several months we had played every two weeks, but then the band leader, Gez, had formed a Santana tribute band and (for the sanity of everyone concerned) had taken one of the slots, meaning each band played once a month.

With the onset of Custard Cream, I had been asking Gez for one of the slots, meaning each band would perform every six weeks – even better for all concerned… In fact, we had been discussing working as agents for the venue and getting different bands in each week, but, well, either the manager at The Chequers was lying when he told me no-one had been to talk to him, despite his requests, or Gez was when he said that the manager couldn’t make his mind up.

Either way, I kept telling Custard Cream that we would be playing ‘next week’ for about a month. Eventually I gave up. Let the first gig be the Hope & Anchor…

Then, Nige came through with the news that he couldn’t play the Hobgoblin on the 17^th!

My reaction to George not being able to play was that we should play as a trio without George. George wasn’t having it and I apologised for my hastiness.

My reaction to this latest news was that we should play it as a trio without Nige… but George wasn’t having it. “all for one, one for all,” he said. I have to confess, I got a little angry.

To try to resolve the issue, Nige went back to the (grammatically challenged) Carly to see about switching the gig back to the 10^th. Needless to say, we have still, to this day, never heard another word from Carly or the Hobgoblin pub.

When asked to give advice to young, aspiring musicians, Robert Fripp said: “don’t fly Air Iberia”. I might add to that: “don’t mess the venues about with date changing”. With those two priceless nuggets, you’ll doubtless go far!

The next couple of weeks were spent, privately, adding songs to the repertoire for the next rehearsal – necessary as we had less than two hours’ worth of material, which would not get us through most gigs.

Rehearsal on April 20^th seemed to go down well and Nige kept on coming with the gigs for the diary, so the whole Hobgoblin scenario faded fast.

The first gig was now upon us, Things had reached the point of no return…