24-07-09 – 25200 Degrees / 7 Day song numero uno!

Ok! Once again I’ve been so crazily busy that I haven’t had time to write my personal blog on time, but will pretend that I have.

This week, I…

- Paid to get the YAWA van working… and changed its name!
- Attended my homegirl Rebolio’s birthday!
- Played my first ever promoted gig in Worcester (8/10)
- Played my hometown’s local venue The Haygate (6/10)
- Made Jamie’s website boywithabass.com
- Watched Harry Potter 6!
- Made 7 video tutorials on Dubstep for boyinaband.com
- Had my advertising rate increased!
- Found this LOLCat!

The dawn of The Boat!

The day of the Worcester gig was an eventful one. Zak was confident that we could sort MOT, Tax and Insurance out for the van in the few hours before we had to set off for Worcester. Unfortunately, since I was (and I now emphasise “was”) the only only member of the band with any money, this meant me buying all of it, with the guys paying me back for their share when they are able.

Zak sorted the MOT by about 11am, I bought the insurance in the morning and then we went to get the Tax. I withdrew the money from my account, leaving a pittance in there. We attempted to get the tax, but since I’d got the insurance online, apparently the printed off form wasn’t good enough for proof of insurance. They wanted something signed. However, they said if we go to Shrewsbury (which was a half hour away, and we needed to get to Worcester), they might be able to help us.

Half an hour later, the DVLA in Shrewsbury say they can’t help us. We are worrying at this point, since we’re already an hour late, but Zak seems to remember that you can buy the tax online (Not sure why he couldn’t remember this when I bought the insurance in the first place ><)

We rushed to Zak’s and borrowed his mother’s laptop so we could get on t’internet, and I scraped together the last of the money in my account – I was about £7 from not being able to afford the Tax since I’d taken so much out. We got the tax and set off for worcester with a sigh of relief from the guys and me reeling from the repeated punches to my wallet.

Happy Birthday! …Now where’s the BBQ?

The feeling faded, however when we arrived at Worcester. Rebolio, who had invited us to her birthday BBQ before the gig (she co-organised and promoted it with me), welcomed us in and we (mostly Zak) ate loads and had a merry time! Even though we were 2 hours late after the drama with the Van, we still had fun.

Rebolio (that’s not her real name btw, I gave it to her when I met her after the last gig in Worcester (which incidentally took place one year to the day before this one – 15th July 2008!))’s other friends seemed pretty quiet, but that’s understandable since the party had just been crashed by a scary looking bunch of guys (and a pretty girl (See? I’m not always mean, Liv )) from something that is in part a rap act.

25200 Degrees!

So eventually we went down to the venue to make sure everything was set up. Two of the support bands, I have clones and Silent Descent, had arrived already, so we brought in YAWA’s gear and soundchecked quickly.

Silent Descent’s soundcheck was next and took quite a while since they have 7 members, a pretty big lighting rig and electronics to sort out… and the sound guy only had 8 inputs on his desk (usually the drums take up most of that!) I’d never been on the promoter’s side of this situation before – waiting for the band to get ready is painful when you’re running low on time until the night opens! I now feel the pain of every promoter that has ever put on YAWA

Out From animals showed up and finally the night opened. I took the chance while IHC quickly soundchecked to talk to Silent Descent, who I found out I get on really well with. I always judge the quality of my friends by how much I can insult them. I said to the lead singer “So, you guys are pretty much ripping off Bring me the Horizon then, huh?”, followed by “Yeah you’re basically Olly Sykes.” When he took it with good humour and countered with “So, Enter Shikari?” I knew we’d get along.

In fact it wasn’t just the singer I got on with, all the guys seemed genuinely nice and reminded me of the kind of attitude that YAWA and OFA have about working hard to get to where we want to be. Onto the show…

I Have Clones went on first – some of their electronica was pretty sweet but their vocals and guitaring wasn’t up to the same standard imo. Some people enjoyed it though.

Next up was Out from Animals. They completely rocked it – I have always loved these guys, ever since mobileACT and touring with them I’ve considered them friends rather than another band we play with. Their new songs were ace; check them out and I got to finish singing “greed” so I was happy. I even hit the right note, which Jamie was impressed by

Then came Silent Descent. Freakin’ woah. They were an experience. Not only was the music awesome, but the lighting and fog machines and everything… it didn’t feel like a local gig. Everyone was dancing and moshing. They were great, they got the crowd involved and put on a blinder of a show.

We took to the stage and got everyone moving once again. Lou and Rachie (The hardcore YAWA girls that come to pretty much every YAWA show, no matter where it is) were there raving like ponces, it’s so cool to have familiar faces there – people that genuinely appreciate what we’re doing and who we are. Eamon filmed the whole thing on my camera so I’ll be editing in some bits into the July YAWA Video Blog later this month. I dedicated Supernova to Rebolio since it’s her favourite song, and one year to the day she raved out to it. Probably one year to the hour.

Everyone had an ace time and after the show Rebolio’s once quiet friends were screaming and shouting and saying how they enjoyed it. The guys from SD and YAWA all chatted and we had this awesome photo taken by Rebolio’s Dad (who, along with her mother) helped with the night too:

The night was almost a financial success too – I brought £150 just in case we didn’t make anything, but we covered all venue and promotional costs and I had enough to pay the bands a little bit of petrol, I gave SD some out of my own money though since they’d spent a fortune coming up from London. Next time, we’re thinking about doing another show near christmas, hopefully we’ll make a bit more!

So yes – 8/10 because it was an awesome night with quite a few people there, all raving, I met some awesome people, it was novel since it was one year to the day and it was a successful first ever gig to put on. I also have some of the posters I designed left over that I’ll be putting on my wall – check it out!

The GayHate

I thought I was technically banned from this venue since they didn’t appreciate some of Interabang’s more colourful (read: racist for lols) language, but they didn’t seem to remember.

I have played the Haygate pub a million(ish) times. It was where I had my first real gig as the band Kollision Theory, where YAWA and Interabang played their first gigs and is in general a big part of Telford’s music scene. Which isn’t saying much, but all dank-pub-ness aside, it has some meaning to me.

Lost in Vegas were playing too – YAWA have played loads of gigs in Tamworth at a venue called the Palace, where the promoter/organiser dude was the lead singer of Lost in Vegas, so I’m good friends with the guy – we’ve played a few gigs with them outside of Tamworth too (the first one being a battle of the bands in Telford like 3 years ago when YAWA first started doing electronica and rock together – we beat them in the semis, but they went through as well and they won the final, the gays!)

Anyway, jolly times were had, and Chris now works at a massive venue called the Assembly Rooms, where he said that he’ll try and get us on a big gig if he can. Which is awesome of him.

No-one moved to the first band, who instead got a smattering of polite applause, but when we went on people started dancing and having fun times! Rachie and Lou (They are seriously awesome coming to so many gigs and such good people too) were there, as was my friend Emmie (4’8″ girl, pink hair, talented artist, in general an awesome person) brought some friends too. Jamie’s mom was dancing as well. She embarassed Jamie quite a lot that night, but we won’t go into that! My awesome homegirl Kirstie came along too and we had a bit of a natter!

It would have been an even better night, however, if Zak hadn’t got drunk so he couldn’t drive the van home. I had to get my parents out to fit the gear in their cars. Cheers for that, Zak.

All in all a fun night though

Boy with a Bass!

Check it out – www.boywithabass.com! Not much content yet, a couple of cool videos I edited for the guy, but mainly I made the site for Jamie this week. I’m proud of the logo, I might try changing mine to something similar! I also think if we keep the layouts similar it’ll make everything fit together nicely when I start the blog ring I’m planning!

Harry Potter 6.

I don’t care what people say – I found it brilliant. It was hilarious in the “lol @ how hollywood this is” kinda way but also had some genuine good humour. It was tense, happy, sad, scary and funny – all the things a good film should be.

7 Day Song Dubstep Tutorial!

Christ on a bike this took a lot of time and effort. I actually felt like I was working on my blog this week. But I percevered and now have 7 Dubstep tutorial videos to my name which is ace! I’m really pleased with the response too, everyone seems to have really got into it! I’ve even had a few video responses so far and I didn’t expect any!

Also, check out the weekly blog for this week:

Monies for Dave!

Since my site has doubled in traffic since last month, I almost doubled my advertising rate too! Good ol’ Primeloops

Next Week on Dave’s Blog…

Next week will entail:

- Watching Bruno O_O
- A YAWA gig up in Kendal with our homeslices Kyra
- Putting together a weeks worth of Electro House blogs!
- Helping my homegirl Emmie set up her blog/portfolio website!
- Finishing the last few Intera things before the release in August!
- Compiling the July YAWA video blog!

AND THE BLOGLY QUESTION: What’s your favourite style of electronic music? I needs me some ideas for blogging!