I've murdered Beethoven.
Second post in and already off topic...
I thought this would happen at some point. Just not this quickly. Being in two bands I do spend some considerable time doing music based things. Therefore, sometimes I'll end up writing about them. It's just the way it goes, man.
Last night (Sunday 28th August) the Pirate Ship Quintet played Mister Smiths in Bournemouth. I've been with the band about five months (although yesterday I overestimated that by some considerable margin) and we've played four gigs together. Last night's was by far the shoddiest I have ever played. It was the shoddiest any of us have ever played. We're a post rock band, and as such our songs tend to be quite long. Although we only played six, we filled an hour. In each of the songs, one if not more of the band made a compete cock up.
The first song was the biggest shambles, as no sound was coming from my keyboards. It's strange, though, how few people actually noticed. It wasn't until the end of the song that I discovered it hadn't been plugged back into the DI box (a device that connects the keyboard to the sound system) after the previous band had finished. I have a nasty feeling this is my fault. I should have checked the bloody thing.
We did gradually get better as the evening went on, finishing with two songs that were actually quite well played. The best song of the evening turned out to be one that was not only the most complicated to play, but one that we hadn't played live before. I have a suspicion that concentration has a large part to play here. We were, perhaps, a little too casual about the whole thing.
However, something that will bother me for months to come is the way in which I managed to utterly murder Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, surely one of the finest pieces of music ever committed to paper. Our version of the piece involves me playing the opening two minutes or so, before going back to the beginning where everyone else gradually joins in and we build to a suitably dramatic climax.
But I managed to make some horrendous mistakes. In the end I just had to play up to them each time I made one, because after the first couple my confidence was bruised somewhat. I have to say in my defense that the lighting system, which reacts to the music on stage, decided to set itself to the 'off' position while I was playing. This meant that I couldn't actually see what I was doing, which isn't ideal when playing a solo in front of a room full of strangers.
So I apologize. Profusely. I will try again, though, and it will one day sound fantastic on stage.
Fingers crossed. Maybe.
The most annoying thing about playing as poorly as we did last night is that we all know we can do far better. It has to be said, though, that the only people who noticed that we sucked were the ones who has seen us before, which luckily was only a small portion of the audience. I'm sure that every band has nights like this. In fact I know they do, having been in other bands previously and experiencing exactly the same thing.
We'll carry on, of course. I think having a crap gig is needed sometimes, just to keep your feet firmly on terra firma.
And we didn't get paid, either.
|
