27/10/2006 Show Review – Festival, Amern

So, 2 weeks after our last gig in Kleve and we’re back to playing shows frequently again. The „Brücke“ in Amern this time with Poppycock from Jülich, Brasch (a local band my old biology teacher plays guitar and sings in. Very funny shit.) and once again, Dawson’s Crack. It was the first night of a 2 day festival called ‘Rhythm against Racism’ that takes place every year. Amern is a small village only about 5 minutes drive from my hometown, so getting there wouldn’t be as complicated as usual i.e. no toilet breaks, crappy directions and so on. We arrived at the venue at around 4 o clock and for a while didn’t have much to do at all. The place was basically some sort of a youth centre, with a foyer and a fairly large hall which probably fits around 300 people. Maybe more, I don’t quite remember. The stage wasn’t ready, no PA, nothing. So we basically just spent about 90 mins outside playing stupid skateboard games and starting the drinking. Luckily, just as we had the go ahead to start setting up, I had still only had 1 beer. Luckily, because I realised nobody had put the drum stool in the van. So from waiting around doing nothing, I was then in a rush to drive back do the rehearsal room and grab the stool. Once I arrived back the others had done a good job of setting up the kit and we were then ready to sound check. This took ages unlike the previous show and Dave seemed to be having a hard time with the room’s acoustics. As always, I was too loud and Horti was too quiet and we didn’t really solve this problem during the sound check. But we refused to worry about this and made our way out looking for something to eat. We walked with a roughly 10 strong posse round the corner to a local bistro we know well and stayed for about an hour eating and having a couple of drinks. David was definitely the hero so far, being incredibly drunk and practically unapproachable. On our return, the backstage area was finally open. This was excellent, a long stretched room with a free bar, a nice spread of food, foosball and 3 massive leather couches. At this point only 1 other band was there so there was plenty of room for everyone. We were set to play at about 2130 so we had plenty of time for socialising. In this case, socialising meant waxing each others various remote body parts with a pile of skateboard stickers donated by Robin. This time flew by though and before I knew it I had missed both the first 2 bands and was asked to start getting ready. The last band had brought their own drum kit so I had to set mine up again. This was the first gig i played with my new kit and unlike the old one it is set up much more easily and quickly than the old one. Even that alone will be worth the money. After about 20 mins and another quick sound check. We got things underway. I really enjoyed the set. I think we all were nowhere near as exhausted as the last show, and as far as I know we played much better also. The sound started off quite bad but thumbs up to Dave again for quickly sorting it. The crowd were quite energetic for the most part but the place seemed only about half full. Another highlight about tonight was adding an extra guitar player. Marius, a good friend and guitar player of Dawson’s Crack had been rehearsing with us for the past week and was going to play 4 songs with us tonight. This also seemed to go down really well making the songs seem a lot fuller. And louder, which is always good. I dropped a stick once but seemed to escape unscathed with a bit of lucky improvisation. Peeth said his bass kept cutting out but no one really seemed to notice any of this, so yay for us. After the usual 10 songs we left the stage to a nice round of applause and made way for DC. I watched them from the stage tonight and thought they were brilliant. Although it is funny to see all 7 of them get in each others way in a small space. After the show half of us stayed in the hall and the other half moved to the backstage room. I think for all of us, the rest of the evening began to start getting blurry from here on in, making the most of the free bar. We all left eventually, continuing the afterparty at my local pub. I left at around 3 – 330 leaving the others to apparently stay until 5am. Another great weekend, finally playing the local circuit again, although I think this was the last local show until December now. Thanks to Johannes and David (a bottle of Jägermeister in human form), Dave on sound, the other bands, everyone at the Brücke for making us feel so welcome and everyone who showed up. Check the blog on our site for pics!

I be gone, Drew