Birth of a Band 16

The week that lay between auditioning Ant and our first rehearsal with him the following Wednesday I remember as being fraught. I hadn’t played with a drummer of Ant’s quality since Zhorro Varamezov and Ivan Latrinov in the No Breaks years in Bulgaria (93 to 96).

I must have been intimidated by him, although looking back now I can’t see why, but my memory is certainly of a deep-seated worry that he was going to turn round and say: ‘On second thoughts… Nah!”

I think this was probably reinforced by the fact that he didn’t respond to any of the emails that Nige and I were batting around. We had agreed, all three of us, that we would rehearse the following Wednesday, but for some reason, Nige and I thought that we needed email confirmation.

By August 2nd, Nige and I were really worried and Nige was starting the hunt for a new drummer. And then came an email. It had a surprised tone to it: “Been away doing a session in Wales since Thursday morning. Got back about an hour ago. Thought I already told you I was interested and was ok for Wednesday 7th? I'm ok for next week’s gigs too. I enjoyed last Wednesday. Thought we played quite well together for the first time. Cheers, Ant.”

And that was that. We got together the following Wednesday and Ant was officially our drummer. All of us had said at some point during the whole auditioning and hiring episode that we should get a dep trained up, too… This was forgotten.

My job now was to tell Angus he was out of the band. It took a while to pin him down. He kept wanting me to tell him why I wanted to meet up with him and of course the reason I wanted to meet up with him was to tell him what I felt would be wrong to tell him over the phone.

Eventually Angus got round to mine after work one evening and was completely cool and understanding. He knew what was coming, of course, and he even outlined to me (very accurately) why he thought he was being sacked. Since then, unfortunately, he and his girlfriend have taken exception to this blog, but, for the record, Angus is a fine drummer and decent bloke. Circumstances were against him and his priorities were different to mine and Nige’s. That’s all.

The rehearsal with Ant was a blinder. We went through just about everything and, as is the way with a quality drummer, Ant made us sound ten times better than before… And we sounded pretty good before. He also made us sound hard, heavy, down and dirty. A fine guitarist once said that drummers dictate the sound atmosphere of a band. I had noticed it before, but never quite so starkly as now.

On the Thursday I got a call from Gez that the Chequers gig had been cancelled and would not be reinstated. The pub had decided to go through an agency in Henley to get its acts. I was a bit pissed off.

South African Mark, the manager, would not talk to me about band arrangements and Gez, despite being told at least twice by me, would not go in and talk to Mark. Thus Mark said ‘enough’.

I went in and complained that you can’t cancel a gig the day before without paying something.

“How much?” asked SA Mark.

“Full price!” I responded.

“On your fucking bike!” came the retort. Fair enough. I knew I was pitching it a bit.

“Ok, how about half price?”

“I’ll give you a hundred.”

“Fair dos.”

And thus, when meeting at the Cannie Man in Bracknell for our Saturday gig, Ant became the first muso I have ever known who got paid for playing with a band before he had ever played with them! Pretty good going.

Birth of a Band 13

Following a weekend that included two successful gigs and something approaching a living wage in the pocket (at least for a couple of days) we then had a fortnight with nothing in it.

A band needs to shooting out feelers for festivals soon after the New Year, so with Custard Cream starting gigging in May, the chances of being in the ‘outdoor calendar’ was pretty slim. These were always going to be quiet times.

Nige suggested we should get together as a trio (minus George, that is) and I concurred. Unfortuantely, I was away for one weekend and Angus another. So what about midweek?

Angus said no. To be fair, he had booked this time off when Nige had asked for dates when we were not available, but I felt certain that we could have found a couple of hours somewhere in between July 17th and August 10th… Apparently not. My turn to wrankle…

After this – and I need to add here that Nige and my attempts to get together for a two-man rehearsal also foundered – another ad hoc gig popped up at The Chequers in Marlow on August 16th. Then another at The Pub with No Name the week before (Noctor’s – now The Corner House), where I was now organising an open mic night. So that would be two gigs in my territory in one week. I was going to make as much noise as I possibly could.

Nige then found a gig in Reading on the 17th. August was really filling up… Then Angus came through with his now-(for us)-legendary email: “I might be asked to go horse riding on the 17th, and if I am, I would like to go, so I can’t do that gig.”

What?! Not: “I’m going horse riding, I told you I wouldn’t be around”, but “might be”. To say that I felt as though someone had hit me in the face with a shovel is not over-egging it. Might be?! Might be?!

Nige’s response was, to say the least, not diplomatic. I was sitting at home. Silently seething at this invasion of nonsense into our ever-burgeoning state of well being and self importance, when Nige fired from the hip in an email of no uncertain terms. He concluded with: “Fucking think about where exactly you really wanna be Angus!” I had to agree. 

Angus’ response was to acknowledge the work Nige was putting in getting gigs, but pointed out that sometimes new unavailable dates would be added and Nige should contact him before confirming each new gig in order to avoid the embarrassment of having to pull out.

This seemed a little churlish on the face of it, but when you consider that Angus was never exactly prompt at replying – in fact a number of times, he needed prompting in order to get a reply from him – the tone was pretty condescending. I was purple with rage. God only knows what Nige thought.

The next day, Nige confirmed that he had cancelled the gig on the 17^th and all but apologised for his email. I’m not sure why, but he was keen to get things back on an even and friendly keel…

Nige and I then corresponded and concluded that the only thing that had redeemed young Angus was the fact that he was obviously doing his homework and improving on a weekly basis… But we agreed that this was definitely ‘strike one’ for him.

Birth of a Band 10

The June 8th gig at the Dukes Head was Custard Cream’s third and by far (to that point) the best. The endings had finally come together, mostly thanks to Angus’ explicit movements and eye contact, and everyone seemed to have taken on board all of the critiques that had flown about the week before. It was good.

The audience was made up (to the degree of about 50 per cent) of people I had dragged along one way or another, but there wasn’t nearly so much audience interaction or participation as there had been the week before.

But there was a degree of appreciation – certainly enough to give the band some energy to push on through to the end. We still seemed (to me) to be a little short of material, but we were getting there.

Our next gig, at The Chequers in Marlow on June 14th, was even more of a ‘local’ gig for me and I had tried my best to get as many people as possible over. We had quite a few and most of them stuck around. I say most, but certainly not all... For example, there was one guy, Justin, who I had been playing with quite regularly at the open mic nights. He’s about my age, into rock music… But I realised as I watched him watch us that we weren’t getting through at all. He left before the end of the first set. It's always odd when you discover something you love means nothing to someone near.

Ah, well, the prophet is never recognised in his home town… ;-)

The Chequers is a pub that stretches back into (what is now) a large steak restaurant. Last orders for food are at 9pm… which is when the band is booked to start.

We did a sound check at about half eight – and the waiters, waitresses and management were down on us like a ton of unfriendly bricks. “Too loud!,” they shouted at various times during the sound check, after it and once we had started playing.

George, Angus and I all turned down… I have a distinct feeling that Nige turned up. No matter, once the food was served out, we were back at normal volume again and the evening went well – not to mention our highest pay-out to then.

The following Monday saw an email from Nige praising the gig (and, oddly, the venue) and explaining how his wife was organising a sort of mini-festival in Wokingham market square – would we play for nothing.

These sort of things are anathema to me, but they are so good for publicity… We all said ‘yes’ without a moment’s hesitation.

I got a gig to play at a friend’s 50th birthday party in July… £400. I have to admit, I went into something that can only be described as ‘smug mode’ for quite some weeks after that.

George complimented me. Nige, trying to sound as though he was joking, clearly wrankled.