Gig One - Treeton Miner's Welfare Club

(The following blog is about my experiences of being in the thrash metal band Blackened Eyes. It is from my perspective, and honest opinions are often used, and so if anything upsets you, please contact me via Facebook and don't hold the group responsible. Nothing will upset you though, because I'm nice, and you aren't a 70 year old woman writing to complain about a coach holiday.)

Blackened Eyes.

At last.

At long last, I'd made it. 

At last, I am legally able to drink. Who cares about voting or credit cards? Alcohol is now purchasable by ME.

"It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then it's just fun and games that you can't see anymore," James Hetfield. 

I first planned this day when my father suggested we hired out the club and got a cover band to play or something. My dad did that for his 40th a few years ago, he got a Queen tribute band, and I did my first ever stage performance on the guitar with them, playing Hammer to Fall and owning the solo. I was only 12! This was when I first really tasted that sense of fame and ego you so selfishly feel after a performance, when everyone talks to you about it afterwards and says how well you've done. It was exciting 6 years ago, and it's still exciting now. Performing music is like a drug to me. So to play this stage again, with my own band, on the day I reach adulthood - quite a sentimental thing, I feel.

As soon as he said 'band', I said: "No, I'll get my band and a friend's band to play!"

I had a vision of this evening for months. It was all I could think about. Blackened Eyes' first gig, with a huge audience of my friends and family. 

I asked Kriss Stainton if Habberdash would play, and he said yes. 

So now I had to figure out when to put us on during the evening, to create a "bill" for the night. And I had to figure out how to make the venue gig venue-like. There was no PA system or monitors. 

I got a good friend to do lights for us, and another friend to do a live recording for us. 

I went on holiday to Florida for 3 weeks, (I wrote so many depressing poems whilst there, feeling extremely lonely when my girlfriend and friends were thousands of miles away, when it's only 8pm for me but everyone's in bed at home. I even got a cheap ukulele to make up for not having a guitar; just to keep my fingers moving!) and when I got back I had a week to sort some stuff out that I tried sorting out before the holiday but couldn't due to let downs. 

We were told by the venue owners that we'd probably be able to use their regular DJ's PA system for free. And I thought 'monitors aren't so important, right?'

Ha. Oh dear. 

We arranged to meet with this DJ, who decided to charge us £100 for this 'really good PA and microphones'. I'm sure they're good in a decent venue, but I think paying £100 to be hit by a Fiat Punto would be a bigger bargain than the sound quality we got that evening. 

£100 for moving his equipment 20 metres from the back to the stage, then back again. He tried I guess but for £100 it was pretty damn awful. He let us use one of his wireless mics; but the one problem? 

It kept switching itself off every minute. 

Fine if you're using it to call out bingo numbers, but when your songs are 6-8 minutes long and the vocalist plays guitar too, you can probably imagine the consequences. (I've always wanted to call out bingo numbers though, I mean, get people's hopes up when I say: "A two and a six... sixty two!" Or "Two little ducks, seventy three!"

I was there, on my 18th birthday, from 1pm, thinking I could relax, drink a bit while sorting out the stuff I had in front of me; that we'd have all sound-checked by 4 and could relax and drink 'til 7 when it opened. 

So what went wrong?

Take a guess. 

The microphones. And Kriss' new amp didnt work. 

Great. We soundchecked for ages trying to sort it all out, and apparently the Habberdash bassist was getting funny because he wanted to soundcheck. 

Believe it or not, so did we! 

The vocals were too quiet, the mic kept switching it off, and the drummer couldn't hear a thing.

It was okay for Habberdash mainly because there were only three of them, and only one did the crucial vocals all the way through, so they didn't really need two microphones. They were sounding ace! 

One of the women behind the bar, resembling an old farm animal, was complaining to my dad that it was too loud and that we'd driven the 'customers in the next room' away. 

It was 4-5pm. There were no customers to even drive away, and I'm bringing 100 people to this event to make you money. Silly woman! 

7pm.

A few people started to arrive. My sister was to perform first, many of her friends were there too. She did really well! She played acoustic covers. She's usually really shy, but she just got up and played, despite having a sore throat. She claims it was the best night of her life.

It was my 18th and it wasn't even my best night!

I went on stage to greet everyone for the evening: "Tonight is a very special night for me. I've reached adulthood, and it's a time I get to see everyone I love in the same room. But more importantly, it's a place to showcase my talent." 

Sure I stole a Jim Carrey line, but hey, I am made up of all my influences. No one is ever purely original or unique.

Next was Habberdash who were as always good, and even let me play their song 'Candle' with them. My first time on stage that evening performing, it took some of my stress away at least. I added a guitar solo of course, it was the perfect song to add one over; the song has the same chord sequence as John Wayne by Billy Idol; which has a good solo in it, so I thought I'd be like Steve Stevens on speed. 

Now was a guest performance, composed of my father on drums, me on lead guitar and vocals, Kriss on vocals and rhythm guitar and then Callum, Blackened Eyes' bassist on... Well, bass! 

We performed Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd. I ended up singing the majority of it because Kriss didn't know the words. Otherwise, it sounded good!

Then was our mystery performance.  

For about 6 weeks previous to this, I had head of the song "The Fox" by Ylvis. ("What does the fox say?") Whilst in the States, I discovered a metal cover of this, and so decided it would be extremely funny if we attempted a similar version at my birthday.

My father, a non-metal fan, even loved the song and wanted to do it on the drums for me. So, I did vocals and guitar, and Callum did bass.

We had rehearsed it once together before the show, and so as expected, it was pretty terrible, but people were crying with laughter at me shouting/screaming the words whilst running out of breath. (Still training my vocals here!)

But, no regrets, right?

Originally, me and Kriss had planned to do an acoustic performance now. However, I was getting really stressed out.

All these people I loved were in this room to see me and to socialise with each other, and I so desperately wanted to socialise and drink with them on my birthday. Yet, here's me, trying to entertain and greet and socialise with everyone. It was impossible. So, I cancelled the acoustic act and brought Blackened Eyes on, thinking:

"At least I'll get to drink for a couple of hours after!"

Wrong.

We went backstage, the lights went out, and I put on the scary, horror film-like intro music I created at college for a stage introduction, something to build excitement.

We ran on stage to lots of cheering and such, grabbed our instruments, and we went straight into Days of Terror.

So far, so good. But then came the vocals. The vocals no one could hear, except my backing vocals. (I mean, people could hear my backing vocals, not that my backing vocals grew ears and could hear the lead vocals.)

Why not use the backing vocal microphone for main vocals instead? I hear you ask.

Well, the wire wouldn't stretch long enough to reach the middle of the stage. Dave didn't want to stand at the side of the stage, and so we never moved, though in hindsight he should've done.

We finished the song, everyone seemed to be enjoying the performance.

Except us.

The drummer couldn't hear us, the microphone was stressing us out, and when I went to switch guitars, it was for some reason in the wrong tuning, so I had to just use the same guitar and tune up the lowest string on stage.

By this time, most people had gone and sat back down while we tried to fix the problems.

In my opinion, we were fine after this little "break". We were stressed and self-conscious after the time spent fixing things, but in hindsight we played the rest of the songs really well.

It's hard to enjoy a performance when you're self-conscious.

I'm never usually self-conscious on stage, I feel like I become someone else, I become "ARK Walton" onstage, just my inner performer, my pure emotions with everything else filtered out. The music is what matters, and when people can't hear the whole music (e.g the vocals) it means they're hearing something else to what we intended, and I don't really enjoy that.

Metal inspires many, many people, and helps them with problems, day to day life, with emotions. I like to be that person who can help you get through tough times through the use of aggressive music. Whether the music allows you to forget the problems just for 30 minutes, or whether it vividly brings them back in order for you to deal with them there and then; if it helps, I'm glad.

Our music isn't the most beautiful, it isn't meant to remind you of the happy things in life, it's raw emotion, whether it's anger, sadness, depression; it can bring back bad memories, but then hopefully make you angry about them and thus get over them quicker. So in the long run, it makes you a happier person, 'til the point where you listen to a metal performance and it makes you immediately happy because you think, "Here's my remedy, my escape."

We finished our set, and I went to get food and drink, to try and enjoy the rest of my 18th birthday.

Oh, but guess what?

There was no more food left, and the bar was to shut in just 30 minutes. I felt like I had wasted my 18th in some ways, and was disappointed it didn't end with me throwing up everywhere.

However, I am glad everyone else enjoyed it, that I did what I've always wanted to do - entertain people.

In fact, my father's friend came up to me saying his son had said "Dad, why can't we listen to that type of music at home?" His son is about seven, so it's good to see we've corrupted young minds!

Overall, most people had a nice time, we practiced a live set to a non-strict audience, we felt that we'd learned what needed work, and even though Dave was a bit angry for the next few days, we all spoke, learned from it, and the next gig (blog due up in a week or so) went fantastically.

Oh, and I managed to make up for the lack of drinking on my 18th at Dave's New Year's Eve party. Problem solved! (Photo of me and Dave asleep on his bathroom floor is on one of the other posts.)

Thanks for reading,

Take care,

ARK Walton.


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