Autogigography, 12 October 2007, Manifest (Hoorn, NL)

It’s been a while, but here’s another gigography.

10 October: our first gig in Noord-Holland, far up in the Northwest of the Netherlands. We were going to perform with our friends of  A New Dawn (NL) and Seraphim (TW).

At around 14:30, I picked up Melaina, our new vocalist, from the station. She wasn’t going to sing but we all agreed it would be a good idea to have her watch the show - get a feeling for the music and the way we move around on stage.

We drove “all the way” to Hoorn through Friday-afternoon traffic and we made it in about 2 hours. We were slightly early.  In my mind, I was already expecting Seraphim jokes and confusion, given my (good) Asian looks. Effectively, upon entering the premises of Manifesto, I was greeted by a host, welcoming who she thought to be Seraphim to their venue upon which I greeted her back in Dutch. She stammered “You … you speak fluent Dutch! I’m amazed”. I explained the situation and she flushed completely.

After the usual hanging-around we checked the sound and were back off-stage in maybe 20 minutes. Getting my gear on stage proved to be a little bit difficult. I was wearing snakeskin boots with leather soles. The entrance to the stage consisted of a rather long ramp and pushing a cart with about 25 kilo’s of material on top of it proved to be rather difficult with the leather soles :) Two steps ahead, one step back.

After a very very nice meal we got ready and climbed the stage. The stagehands forgot to reconnect our in-ear monitors so I spent the better part of the first song gesturing the sound engineer to reconnect our monitors, adjust the pan again and then adjust the volume on the transmitter because it was flashing red all the time. Apparently, they had also changed the volume while we were having dinner.

After that, things were a breeze. Joyce did a good job as a guest singer and the whole band felt solid enough after months of not gigging. By the end, we were all rolling and having fun as usual. By the end, I had distributed guitar picks, signed a few items and gotten several thumbs up, nods and handshakes. Even our guest singer was surprised at how positive the audience reacted.

Next gig: Plug-Unit, Reeuwijk, Friday 19 October. With our very very special guest: our new vocalist Melaina! I’m all excited and I can’t wait.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 21:43:56 and is filed under Live performances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.