Jongleurs, Battersea, London - 8th October 2009
“All over Battersea some hope and some despair” Morrissey sang once and it’s these words that are ringing around my head as we make our way into London. “I played Jongleurs in Oxford once” pipes up Ben in the car “It was shit, no-one turned up and the sound was awful”. I know exactly what he means, past experiences of these type of things has shown me that every now and then optimisitic promoters hire out places like this (nightclubs, comedy clubs etc) in the hope that lots of people that go to these places will also be interested in live music. Wrong. It doesn’t work like that.
Still, we arrive at the venue with a glimmer of hope, tonight’s event is being promoted by Tony of Gig-time Media. He also organises Farnham Maltings gigs now so he might know what he’s doing. The gigs in Farnham are always good.
Tony greets us enthusiastically and we enter the cavernous venue and say hello to the drummer from ‘The Dirty Chimes’ whose kit Mark is borrowing. Then we retire to the bar. it’s a nice place, we have to say that. Shortly after myself, Ben and Mark arrive Kat pulls up outside while I’m smoking a ciggie and proceeds to park right outside the venue. Result !
The headline band (’The Dirty Chimes’) soundcheck. They are very loud. Very very loud. ‘Dita’s Dream’ soundcheck next, they‘re only an acoustic duo. It doesn’t take long. Just as they finish Ben gets a text from Neil saying “Let me in !”. He’s been driving for 2 hours but he’s finally made it. He sits down and we get more drinks., but before Neil can relax we get dragged up to do a soundcheck. It’s loud, very very loud. I turn my guitar amp down. I turn my guitar amp down again. Strange, the sound overall is very very loud but still I have to turn down. It doesn’t bother me, I’m not a loud guitarist, I’m just perplexed. Ho hum. We muddle through anyhow. The soundman is a decent guy about it all too.
We settle down after the soundcheck, well, we try to, the music coming over the P.A is very very loud. We buy more drinks and each take turns looking at the door nervously. Nobody is turning up. ‘Dita’s Dream’ make conversation with us though, they’ve come from Bournemouth. Not much chance of a crowd following them we think. Still, they’re enthusiastic about us so at least we’ll have some good responses we muse.
Then, the time comes for us to take the stage. By this time ‘The Dirty Chimes’ are still nowhere to be seen, the enthusiasm of ‘Dita’s Dream’ has dwindled as half of them are nowhere to be seen but there is a crowd of about 5 randoms coming through the door. All is not really lost.
We play. We play a full 40 minute set which is great for us to get all our decent songs in. We play loud. The sparse crowd like it. (’The Dirty Chimes’ did come in halfway through our set but proceeded to walk straight past us to hide away somewhere, why are some bands just idiots ?)
So, we pack up somewhat dejected, but what’s this ? The lead singer of ‘Dita’s Dream’ has joined the queue for a copy of our free cd (don’t laugh, the table of 5 people are all queueing up, really) saying she thought we were awesome. Not bad for someone who came in half way through our very last song. The pleasures of playing to a sparse crowd means you can see who comes and goes through the door ;-)
We’re shocked, did she really think we hadn’t seen her come in at the end ?
Now, despite getting a good interest for the cd’s we decide to go against everything we stand for and leave early. ‘Dita’s Dream’ watched one song of ours, we’ll watch one song of theirs. ‘The Dirty Chimes’ didn’t bother watching anything at all of our set so we’ll definitely not bother sticking around for them.
Tony the promoter understands, he’s very apologetic saying he’d done loads of work and couldn’t explain why no-one turned up.
We leave, we want an early night after all this.
Sid.