This event was a double header with us and Terry Lees & Natasha Norodien. The night was extremely cold with a freezing fog so we were amazed to have any audience turn up at all! But there was a decent crowd of about 25 in the Venton Centre, opposite the railway station bus parking in Junction Road, Eastbourne. The venue is the Help the Aged centre for the town and is a brilliant resource – not only accessible with sweeping ramps but also great acoustics. Steve was on hand to do the sound and lights but to be honest not much amplification was needed.
The Under Ground music events are all free to attend (donations invited) and the Saturday mornings have been going for many years now, having started originally when it was held in what is now the Grove Theatre as basically community events. They’ve been in a couple of other venues since and have hopefully settled now in the Venton Centre. They have recently started holding evening music events too which are not as well attended, understandably as it is mainly an older audience. Apparently mornings attract between 80 and 100 in number.
That day we had travelled 250 miles back home from Devon in freezing fog pretty much all the way so were pretty tired. We’d had just under an hour at home before we left for the gig, arriving with half an hour to set up and sound check. We hadn’t realised you could stop by the side door to unload so had unloaded at the front door and I ferried everything the length of the building and down the slope while Jim went off to park. It was a bit of a scamper to get set up and we weren’t really sure if we were doing a set in each half or just one to start, until just before we started. Needless to say we felt a bit unprepared! But we had sorted out a provisional set list and practised well the day before.
It was a lovely evening and we really enjoyed Terry and Natasha’s set in the second half. The audience had joined in with our rendition of Romance at the Panto, always a crowd pleaser, and were very generous with their donations in the pot which was split 2 ways.
Huge thanks to Alan and co who co-ordinate these events and to the team who serve the drinks and, this time, mince pies!
We didn’t perform our best and know that we really do need to factor in some backstage warm up time for future gigs, especially when travelling a distance – it just wasn’t possible this time. We had been in Devon for the week writing songs and performed 2 of them which both went down very well.
One CD sold (we mentioned them once during our set and the host plugged them well), no mailing list sign ups and we forgot to mention the audience book! Note to selves to add prompts onto our set list: mention CD; mention mailing list benefits; send round audience book!
