American Steel and Rooftops

On Monday I scammed out of work early and headed to Mornington Crescent on the tube to meet everyone in our band at the Purple Turtle in Camden for the American steel show. It was the first gig in a long time where I have travelled alone to a show and it feels like even longer since I went to a show and didn’t have any gear with me. I was thinking on the tube that in a few hours I would be putting all our practice over the last few months into action as we played our first full-band show and how the Purple Turtle is the worst venue to have that sink-or-swim gig. I’ll get back to that though. I don’t usually pay attention to anything when riding the tube. It’s a lowlight of the day, made only less slightly dim by the fact that it’s usually the only time in the day I can listen to my headphones or a read a book in the 10 minute chunks between walking, changing trains and waiting. But Monday, as I was riding to Camden I started looking around the carriage at people and trying to imagine where they were going and what they were thinking. The Mother and two children of a young Indian family sat opposite me, with the youngest in her pram, slowly mashing a biscuit into her gums and getting baby spit all over her face while the older daughter who was maybe 6 years old sat quietly in her seat, arm outstretched to her younger sibling across the arm-rest holding her hand. The Mother sat next to me, facing her children. They all had their hoods up and coats on despite the heat slowly intensifying around me 50 meters below the ground and I never heard any of them speak a word. They looked nervous as they quietly alighted at Southwark, just one stop before me. I wondered where they were going and what seemed to be making them all so tense. I wondered if I looked as nervous as them and if the youngest girl in her pram, who stared at me constantly was thinking the same about me. Then Grade shuffled onto my ipod and stopped thinking about anything at all immediately.

I don’t like Camden much, but I do like the Purple Turtle and I do like Aisha who has put us on a few times and it always lovely. The venue is perfect for middle sized bands touring the UK with a capacity of several hundred, a good height stage, excellent sound and a soundguy who actually tries to make the mess of noise on-stage sound work-able while playing. But that’s its biggest downfall for this show. We were elevated 4 feet of the floor for everyone to see us. Everything we played and sang was pretty clear to everyone who was there. If we fucked it, everyone would know immediately. Nerves kicked in a little in a way I’m not that used to, a way that felt like the way it used to feel when we never really knew how it was going to go and if we would be utter shit. In the end, we played as well as we do in practice more or less and it was awesome fun and I was settled that we didn’t have to hide behind bad sound or a low floor to get through the gig. We pretty much blasted our set and said very little, I think we all felt the same way- like if we did the first few songs fine then we shouldn’t disrupt ourselves with too much spaffing, like avoiding cracks in the pavement. I was happy, I had a massive sense of relief after we played but that was quickly replaced with a feeling of disappointment that we had to wait almost 2 weeks to play as a band again. Rooftops were awesome, as usual, and American Steel may be a new favorite band that I have yet to get into completely. I watched Tommy instantly break his no-drinking-for-a-month rule, which was my favourite part of the night on the excuse "someone else bought it for me".An awesome night.

Thanks to Strike a Chord for the video.