How To Be A Rock Star - Part 27

It's been a few weeks since the last blog. This is because Hot Donkey has its first ever gig on Friday 12th August in the enormous stadium-like back room of The Half Moon in Bishop's Stortford. It's all gonna be fine. How do I know this? Because we've been rehearsing!

Now, I haven't had to rehearse with a band for more years than I care to mention. This is partly because I'm not really a performer and partly because most of my noise making machines aren't exactly what you'd call portable. But gigging used to be fun, if my poor addled memory serves. I used to play drums in an awful covers band that, thankfully, only ever had a handful of gigs - one particular highlight was having to play a gig with an old toilet bowl jammed in front of the kit to stop my bass drum from creeping forwards. Stylish and practical! We once played a charity gig for Mencap - giving back to the community, y'know - but all I remember about that is the sight of the carer's rushing around trying desperately to calm down a room full of distressed "clients" as our guitarist shitted his way through the opening bars of "Sweet Child O' Mine".

Anyway, I'm older and wiser now. Definitely older. If I was wiser I probably wouldn't still find bum-trumps funny. So this whole gigging thing should be a doddle now. Right?

I'm not so good with the nervousness leading up to the gig but I do enjoy the idea of rehearsal. I say "idea" because in practice doing a rehearsal is noisy and hot and frequently smelly - depending on your drummer. I used to run a studio that had a rehearsal room and that was... er... interesting. Most of the bands seemed to bash happily away on whichever instruments they were using with gay abandon in the sure knowledge that at no point would it be obvious that they were meant to be playing the same song. I used to sit in the office playing SNES and quietly wishing my evening would end. After an average session I would have £40 and a headache. All my clothes would smell of weed and beer to the extent that I worried about either being rolled up and set on fire by some nefarious youth or being licked by a tramp on my way back to the car park.

So after all this time I would get to be the one making the noise!

With very little notice, we managed to book into a charming set of rooms based on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere. The ambience said "Eastern Block Mafia" and the smell said "dead cat in chimney". We were booked into the best room. The most expensive room. The room where all 3 of the mic stands were guaranteed to be able to stand up to more than a gentle breeze. The PA seemed to have most of it's knobs and there was even an air-con unit that, when initiated, filled the immediate few inches in front of it with a slightly tepid fart. Yes, I have finally hit the big time people. This, I imagine, is both rock AND roll.

So I plugged my Mac and my desk and my whatnots together. I panicked momentarily until I realised I'd forgotten to plug it all into the mains. I tested my sound levels and faffed around with the EQ hoping to be able to get something out of the PA that resembled music. Drums got assembled and hit. Guitars got plugged in and tuned. Vocalists sat around in the smug knowledge that they only had to carry something the size of a pencil case around. Eventually we were ready to make some noise...

Four hours later, and with a generous dose of tinitus and mild concussion, we emerged from our carpeted shoe box drenched in sweat and glory and several previously unknown strains of bacteria. It had been a success! I'm fortunate enough to have people around me that display enormous talent, when they're not farting or drawing pictures of cocks. I'm sure that, thanks largely to them, when Friday 12th comes around, they will all know what they're doing and I will be able to hide behind a stack of equipment, twiddling knobs, occasionally pressing keys and desperately trying not to forget when the chorus comes in. But that is a worry for another day. This day we calmed nerves, soothed feathers and managed to produce a coherent version of our tunes. We grinned sweatily at each other and started dismantling all the gubbins.

This feeling of elation - this Rock Star high - was a little tempered by the fact that we then couldn't get out of the car park until the band in the next room had finished what sounded like a 37 minute jazz-funk epic with a keyboard solo by a player who had yet to discover the excitement that can be had from sometimes using the black keys. Oh, and on the journey home I was unable to keep the drivers-side window closed (thanks to a snapped cable) and I got a really cold right ear.

I bet Bono never gets a cold right ear.