The Birds Nest

Not long after moving to London I find myself in the Birds Nest in Deptford watching a horrible band try to squeeze onto the tiny stage with no idea of balancing their levels and so all I can hear is the bass guitar. Everyone around me is drunk and if I wasn't also drunk I would realise that I am completely lost and shouting louder than I need to at almost total strangers, surrounded by some tough looking guys with faded blue tattoos. At some point in the night I ask if our band can play here sometime and the guy just tells me to turn up on Monday to play the open mic night. The butterflies started then. It was a good few weeks later that me and Josh returned with one acoustic guitar, a knock off Les Paul, no amp and about 5 songs. We played at about 6pm to no-one and were most likely horrible to watch. We played sitting down and it was our first ever show. We got offered a proper show there a few weeks later and so back we came, with all our gear on our backs and in our arms and played electric guitar and drums. The guys doing the show split as soon as we arrived telling us they had a gig of their own to play and that the other bands most likely wouldn't turn up, but that the bar had money for us. We drank our pay before we even played, all ten pounds of it. A few of our friends turned up and watched us stumble through a short set that finished with josh kicking over his cymbal stand because he wanted to keep playing despite us running out of songs. It was our second ever show with drums and we were terrible. In my head, I wrote off the Birds Nest, somehow palming off the blame for our performance on the venue and swearing we wouldn't play there again and me and Josh started a new routine of practice and started taking steps towards consistency in our playing. I've only been there once since and I still felt some bitterness towards the venue despite knowing that we were entirely responsible for ourselves at the times we played there.

We're playing the Birds Nest tonight, probably 3 years since we were last there and I just don't know how to feel about it. The line up is great, with all the bands who have toured with imadethismistake playing, but I am uncomfortable playing there again. At the very least, if we can play ok tonight then I will feel satisfied.