Albany Down @ Tommy Flynns, Camden - Dec 4th

Where:Tommy Flynn's Bar
When: December 4th, 9:15pm

Well what can we say? That was the plan at least...

Soundcheck was supposed to be at 6:30pm, and we arrived in plenty of time to find the stage was still being built. Some genius had decided that the afternoon before the bands were due to play was the best time to do some renovations.
6:30 came and went.
7:00 came and went. The dust curtains came down and the stage was cleared.
7:30 came and went.
At 7:45 the "organiser" (I use the word sparingly, since it would appear he couldn't have organised a piss-up in an Irish bar) came up to us and asked if we'd be okay to go on first, at 8 o'clock.

Now this wasn't part of the plan. We were supposed to be about the 3rd band on that night and this was over an hour early. We had all arranged for people to come along and see us, and because most London travel is done via the Tube, contacting people to rearrange is nearly impossible.
Turns out the pub owner had decided to invite two bands he was friendly with along and add them to the list, meaning the rest of us got shafted. We argued and stalled as much as possible, but since we have no reputation to fall back on and we didn't want to end up with a bad one, we had little choice but to take to the stage as much after 8pm as we could get away with.

Our soundcheck consisted of me trying to tune the bass guitar, and that was about it. As a result, our first song sounded pretty bad from the stage and probably not that much better from the bar. We had feedback all over the place and I couldn't hear anything I was playing other than the lowest string, which was unbelievably loud. And I forgot the lyrics to two songs, which was better than the three I was expecting!

Apparently though, it sounded good from Front of House and after the first song or two we got into the swing. People seemed to enjoy it as well, judging from the pretty limited crowd in the pub at 8:15pm on a Tuesday night. Annoyingly, my girlfriend and he workmates arrived just in time to see the last minute of our final song and one of them missed it entirely. Highly annoying, but can't really be helped.

So a moderate success for a first gig. Let's hope the organisation of future events is a hell of a lot better though.