Carmel College, 23rd September 1993. The 1st proper public performance of our band Necropolis BZ.
It was a college band night and the place was buzzing, 200-300 people altogether, mostly students. The nervous energy was in overdrive. We had been rehearsing 4 of our own tunes (I think that was probably all we had at the time) and we thought they were AMAZING; surely a record deal and world stardom was just around the corner… err, yeah ok, haha… The naivety of deluded teenage dreams.
The event management (some disorganised students) kept telling us “you’re on next” and then changing their minds and pushing us down the bill, it must have happened at least 4 times and we were getting angry about it because we kept getting psyched up towards going up on stage and then having it pulled out from under us.
As it turned out, we ended up playing right when the crowd was at its peak in terms of size and energy, and we blasted our way through the first three tunes, at about twice their normal speed and we were loving it. On the count in to the last song we got told that time was up and we had to get off stage. Gutted. I remember looking out into the lights and the crowd, knowing they were loving it (probably not as much as we were) and said “Awww they won’t let us play”… a quick whip round of glances round the band later, it was back on. No way were they gonna tell us to get off OUR STAGE, “1,2,3,4….” and off we went.
Can’t remember what tune it was, but what I will always remember is halfway through it Chris suddenly had some kind of jazz attack, stopped playing, slung his guitar down on the floor centre stage, and started doing a flailing red indian style war dance round it for a few seconds, with the rest of us watching open mouthed as he then looked up and launched himself off the end of the stage and into the crowd, surfing briefly before going under and out of sight. Rock & Roll! We wrapped up the tune without him, and at the end I followed his lead, diving into the crowd who managed to part just in time to let me fall pretty much untouched from 10 feet high onto my arse and back. Due to the adrenaline rush, I just bounced right up and ran off (limping) to find the boys backstage. We were buzzing for weeks afterwards.
Somewhere, somebody has a grungy old VHS tape of this gig. Matt Halliwell or Dazzy T maybe…. Hope it survived! Would be ace to stick it up on here.