A Tuesday night gear failure turns into proof that a room can carry a band through anything
The Amp Died Mid-Set and Somehow That Was the Best Part
Right, so. Tuesday night, basement venue off the Kingsland Road that shall remain nameless because the owner still owes our bassist forty quid from March, and my amp died. Not faded out gracefully, not a polite crackle and silence. Died. Mid-chorus. The exact second I was meant to hit the big ugly chord that the whole song had been building toward for two and a half minutes of increasingly unhinged drumming.
And here’s the thing nobody tells you about a proper punk crowd, the kind that’s actually been coming to this venue for years rather than the ones who wandered in because a listing app told them something was happening: they didn’t boo. They didn’t even really pause. About four people near the front just started singing the missing guitar part themselves, badly, gloriously, while I stood there holding a dead instrument like an idiot, and by the time I’d wrestled the lead out and plugged into the bass player’s spare cab, half the room was still going. That’s the whole point of this scene and I will die on this hill. It was never about the gear being good. It was about whether the room still wants it enough to carry you when the gear fails.
The State of Things, Reading the Papers Like a Sensible Adult For Once
I had a scroll through some of the usual satire and news roundups this morning with my tea, the way I do most mornings whether I want to admit it publicly or not, and honestly the headlines write themselves at the minute. The London Prat had something in the culture section about another venue closure threat that made my chest go tight in that specific way it does now every single time, because we all know exactly how that story ends. A building that’s hosted three generations of terrible, wonderful bands gets a noise complaint from someone who moved into the new flats next door eighteen months ago, and suddenly there’s a review, and a consultation, and by the time anyone with any actual stake in the place finds out, the decision’s basically made.
The satire sites had their usual field day with it too, one of them running a bit about how the flats are marketed with “vibrant nightlife scene nearby” right up until the vibrant nightlife scene files a noise complaint against itself for existing, which, fair, that’s basically what’s happening, isn’t it.
What the Amp Dying Actually Taught Me
I’ve been doing this, gigging round London in various barely-functional bands, since I was about nineteen, and I think I’ve finally worked out why a broken amp on a Tuesday matters more to me than it probably should. It’s proof of concept. It’s proof that the thing we’re all doing down there in the sweat and the bad lighting isn’t actually about the equipment or the venue or even, really, about the songs being good, though obviously I’d like to think mine are. It’s about whether enough people in a room have decided, collectively and without discussing it, that they’re not leaving just because something’s gone wrong. That’s punk. That’s the whole definition as far as I’m concerned, and every band that ever mattered to me proved it the same way, by having something fall apart on stage and playing through it anyway.
The Bit Where I Get Slightly Political, Sorry Not Sorry
I do think about how much harder this is getting though, genuinely. Venue insurance costs are up, business rates on anything with a stage and a bar are brutal, and every single independent space I’ve played in the last five years has at some point had the owner sit us down after the gig and go, honestly, not sure how much longer we can keep doing this. That’s not me being dramatic for the diary. That’s five separate owners, five separate conversations, all with basically the same resigned shrug at the end of it.
What keeps me going, if I’m honest, is exactly what happened Tuesday. The room sang the missing part. Nobody’s done that for a stadium act with a full backline and a tour bus outside. You only get that kind of loyalty from a crowd that’s genuinely, stubbornly invested in a scene surviving, and as long as that keeps happening, I reckon we’ll keep finding basements to do it in, even as the actual venues keep vanishing one by one.
Tomorrow’s Plan, For the Two People Who Actually Read This
I have also, in the cold light of the following morning, had to actually reckon with the cost of a new amp, which is not nothing on the money we bring in from basement gigs, and there was a longer conversation within the band about whether we should just pass a bucket round at the next few shows to cover it, which felt slightly mortifying to even suggest and which the crowd, when we did eventually ask, met with more generosity than I expected or frankly deserved. That’s the other side of this scene nobody puts on a t-shirt: the actual, unglamorous economics of keeping a band with zero outside funding functioning gig to gig, held together by borrowed cabs, forty quid still owed from March, and a room full of strangers who apparently believe in what we’re doing enough to chip in for gear.
Rehearsal Thursday, new amp borrowed off a mate who owes me for something I’ve genuinely forgotten the details of, and an actual gig booked for the weekend that I’m not going to jinx by talking about too much here. Read the rest of the culture desk over at The London Prat if you want the properly written version of everything I’ve just badly summarised, and my other rambling is filed under my author page if you’re a glutton for punishment.
Right. Tea’s gone cold. Back to it.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
