Don’t Stop Me Now…

We had a very good gig a few Thursday nights ago. Not a particularly good day, it must be said, as Sam and I were rushing around trying to hand in six assignments at once, but a very good night.

It didn’t exactly start well, like when an elephant gets up in a crowded pub and says ‘which one of you ate all the peanuts?’, but then again if this gig was a new height in our gig history then we had to climb there somehow.

It was in Bournemouth, in what I have been reliably told is the ‘dodgy end’. All cities and towns have a dodgy end, so it’s a surprise they don’t put it on the road signs. Villages don’t have dodgy ends, as they’re not big enough. The dodgy end of a village would be the other end of the post office where they sell jiffy bags for 20p more than the RRP.

I don’t like dodgy places. To me, dodgy places means hard men, tough women and mouthy youths. The kind of people who don’t like skinny jean-wearing, big haired, non-muscled, boot wearing Russell Brand types. Enter me. Skipping. Now I’m sure that I’d never actually get murdered in such a place, but my response to being told I have to go to the dodgy end of anywhere is ‘I’m going to get murdered, aren’t I?’ To which Sam’s helpful reply was ‘Yes.’

This gig was like a cake made of shoes and nails. It shouldn’t have been good. It shouldn’t have worked. The place was tiny, yet awesome it must be said, and the stage was so small Aaron, Jake and Sam couldn’t move at all. But it doesn’t matter about the location. What matters is the people, and the people there were brilliant.

It’s amazing to think we’ve been gigging for a year and yet this was one of the first times we’ve played to a crowd of genuine music lovers. Apart from perhaps ten people, the rest of the crowd were people who had never heard us, and were simply there for some good music. From their reactions to our songs, I think it’s safe to say we gave it to them.

You can tell people are into music when they dance even through the slow songs. These people didn’t stop moving for a second. We had people jumping up and down, grooving around, and even a couple of girls slow-dancing together near the front. The band’s future is in a bit of turmoil at the moment (more on this in another article) but we all came off stage thinking ‘we can’t stop now.’

 It was one of the few gigs where I’ve wanted to be on stage all night, the kind of gig where the fact we only had two songs left was really depressing. If the others had agreed, I would have been perfectly happy to have played every song we knew, even the ones we hadn’t played for over six months. On reflection, it’s probably a bloody good thing we didn’t do that.

So there you have it: the best gig we ever had in one of the most unlikely places. Well not that unlikely. I’m sure a submarine or in a lift or underneath a camel would be more unlikely. So dodgy ends can be very good, and it was hardly even dodgy at all. Apart from the three policemen who came storming in at the end to arrest a couple of guys. Oh and the guy so off his face on drugs he asked the floor to hold his drink so he could have a dance. To be fair he did say thank you to the floor when he picked it back up. Hardly dodgy at all, right?