Ashford. Cultural Centre of the World

Well another gig, another blog. This time we were at the Conningbrook Hotel in Kennington Ashford, and I must say a strange experience.

The evening started as normal, my satnav sent me the wrong way and I got to see the wonders that are the ashford oneway system at night! so needless to say I got there later than planned. The area we were playing in was small to say the least and when eventually we got all our crap in there wasn't a lot of room to move, so seting up took longer than expected. All this meant that our normal starting time of 9.00ish was pushed back to 9.15.

There was a good size crowd waiting to be entertained which was awsome, more to do with the conningbrook being an outstanding venue for music than the fact that we were playing I think. The sound balance was good, everything seemed clearer than we have had it before and my voice felt good, better than either of the other two gigs we've done before.

This is where things get a little strange, I thought (in my own opinion) that we were rockin out, things sounded good and my throat was coping well. But the crowd seemed a bit disinterested, a few people were enjoying it but overall the atmosphere was not very warm. Having not been in this situation before I found myself playing to the few people who were getting into it. At the time I put it down to the venue hosting a high standard of music and us needing to go the extra mile for the crowd. But by the end of the first set and despite my best efforts the few folks who were enjoying it were still the only ones it seemed.

We came on for the second set to not much enthusiasm, and to be honest I was feeling pretty dishartened. but then slowly I noticed people were nodding their heads and moving about more, this was a great lift and so on we went. By the time we came to the last song of the gig we had women line dancing in front of us and everyone seemed to be having a great time. we then pushed it up to 11 by doing an encore of enter sandman.........well the place went mental! everyone was singing along and loving it. After our two encores the crowd wouldn't let us go, so we took a chance and did plug in baby by muse everyone loved it, we've never played it live before but i'm sure it will become a keeper in the set. In the end we were offered a possible gig at a biker rally and lots of people shook our hands and told us how much they had enjoyed the night!.......This is why i do this.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at the conningbrook hotel for letting us play such a fantastic place, and hope that they will invite us back soon. The staff were welcoming and friendly, I would highly recommend it for a good night out.

I'd also like to thank my fellow bandmates:
1. For being so god damn talented.
2. For putting up with my seemingly terminal lack of ability to remember the f*#+ing words or queues.
3. For letting me do this, this gig will be one to remember for a long time.