Yesterday, I got a call from Joop, our keyboard player. “Could you make it tonight”, he asked. “Could I make what”, I thought and asked. “Peppel, tonight” was the rather brief answer to which I replied “Hmmm, gimme a minute to think about YES!”

Apparently, the main act of that evening cancelled and they were one main act short. Cue Transentience’s second gig as a main act (on a local stage).

The organisation was good as usual at De Peppel. There was food for the hungry, free drinks (Yay, that hand always beats the “3 drinks a person” hand …) and very loveable personnel - all volunteers.

The show rocked, once again. Although the stage was smaller than the one we played on at the IJsbreker, it felt really familiar and almost relaxed to be on this stage. I had been on that stage twice before, and I hadn’t had time to really get nervous for the gig since it all went so fast. The only downside of the smaller stage is that it was really hard to walk around. While there most certainly was enough room to walk around and even do my now patented heel-spin, it made it hard to walk to the other side of the stage and do some Status-Quo moves with the bass-player.

The people went absolutely wild, and they only got wilder near the end of the set. They shouted for encores so we did an extra “Calling out the Gods”.

Of course, there were the usual hickups but overall everything went fine and smooth. In the end, we got comments from someone who is used to judging bands and performances. We got a lot of good tips and the most interesting was about us needing a light-technician. Oh yes, and a much bigger stage. Thanks, Frouke, for the insights.

Oh, I’ve also been called names. Three to be exact …

- John Myung (by one of the other bands although I don’t play bass at all);
- The NEW Herman Li (of Dragonforce fame. It might be the fact that sometimes, when going into a chorus, I will lift the guitar by the tremolo for dramatic effect).
- Ace Frehley without make-up. I accredit this one to my face-making when playing music…

Setlist:
Intro
For Hope is Still There
Calling out the Gods
Lieland
After the Storm
Calico Jack
Jane Doe (Within Temptation cover)
Paradox
6:19
Endgame

Encore:
Calling out the Gods

Surprisingly enough, I slept like a slightly crumpled rose the night before the gig. I woke up at 08:00, fully rested and aching for breakfast. I sat patiently in front of the TV, eating breakfast watching Kelly Bundy try hard to be a responsible mother in a television series that wasn’t related to the Bundies. It’s weird how some people will always be that certain person. Just like Larry Hagman can never be anyone else but J.R. Ewing and Ed ‘O Neill will never be anyone else but Al Bundy … After hanging around in the most aimless yet seemingly unstressed way ever, time had come to leave way too early for our meeting point.

I got at the rehearsal space about an hour early. I marked all of my cables with a spraycan, as well as a monitor-stand and my new rockstand (hell, yeah!) that will hold 3 (three) guitars even though I only have two. One must think ahead and think big. I rolled two carts into the space and started loading things on top of the carts. Just then, I got telephonically informed that the “trailer” wasn’t going to be available. Let’s just say that someone thought that, if the neighbour says the trailer is going to be fixed tomorrow morning, it’s going to be fixed. Well, it wasn’t and I got a call asking if I could get my Volvo. Luckily, I could. We hauled all of our stuff in 3 the back of 3 cars. We got pictures to prove it!

Fast forward to the show itself. While the venue is populated by volunteers, this is one of the most professional venues around in the area. The plan was to play the same set twice, so we could get some extra practice.

I was my own regular cool self for the whole day until just before the show. Adrenalin spurted through my veins and made it hard to control my movements. Joop started the intro and Rene and Kace went on stage. On my cue, I walked onto the stage, playing the melody for our intro. Surprisingly, all of the notes I struck by mistake were all in the right key and no-one noticed.

The sound on stage was almost okay. Then again, I was in the good corner. I could hear the keys, I could hear the drums and I could hear the vocals. That was all I needed. On the other side of the stage, our bass player couldn’t hear my guitar. Carmen however seemed to have a very good monitormix which allowed her to hear the rest of the band most perfectly. After the first song, I got informed that the right channel of my Pod had no output. It was too late to check that (Soundcheck, hello, did you do it properly in any way?). I’m guessing a cable was unplugged or plugged into the wrong place. I played the rest of the set on mono and no-one really noticed the difference.

Things got better throughout the show although it was hard for me to relax. After the first set, I was shaking like a naked Masai on the North Pole. The results were overwhelming, though! We got a lot of positive feedback from people whom we knew socially, but also from people that were coaxed or lured into coming to our show. Especially Carmen, our phenomenally fantastic vocalist got a lot of compliments and luuuuuvvvvv ;) from the audience.

Our second set went a whole lot better. Although most of the audience had left after the first set, our die-hard-fans-in-the-making were still there. We felt really important because almost everyone who stayed for the second round was sporting either a digital camera or a camcorder. This show actually went a lot smoother since all the adrenalin was already out of the system.

At the end of the show, we got more feedback. The problem with getting feedback from people you know one way or another is that it’s really hard to get an honest feedback other than “You guys were good and you played well and can I have your babies”. Luckily, a few people were professional enough to offer us some sound advice which we took and discussed after the show.

I’d love to post some pictures here, but due to my own regulations under which we’re trying to keep the scattering of band paraphernelia to a minimum, I would like to invite you to visit our website where you can view the live photos. There’s a lot more coming from at least two very good photographers (Erik Schepers and Markjuh)and we’re looking into if and how much video we’ll be sharing from this set.

In the meantime: if you were present or gave as a little thought: thanks for you support. If, for some reason or another, you couldn’t make it, please keep an eye on our giglist! We’re working real hard on getting other gigs together so stay tuned.

In 30 more minutes, I’ll be leaving for my first gig with my new band. After a year of hard work, dedication, writing, freezing and melting during our rehearsals, we feel we’re ready to come out of the shadows and into the open.

I slept surpisingly well. I’ve had gigs where I barely slept the day before. Yesterday, it was as if my body knew there was something exciting happening even though my mind wasn’t on the gig. The powers of the subconscious …

I’ve been spending the best of last month preparing and working towards this gig. That includes dress rehearsals, communication with the venue to ensure proper lighting, sound and stage setup, organising the band, and generally blabbing my head off.

We’ll be meeting at the rehearsal space at around 11:00. We already tore down our setup in the room last Wednesday, after rehearsal. That took considerably more time than we thought it would. Today should just be loading stuff into the trailer and hauling our respective behinds to the venue which is not even 10 km from here. That’s even less in miles and “next door” if you live in Texas, USA.

We’ll be starting our first gig around 15:30 CET. Please think of us and wherever you are, show us some Pinky Respect !

Please visit the forums on our website and, of course, this blog to find out how everything went. For now, I’ll just break a few legs and throw in an arm and a thumb for good measure.