Playing the Festival
Saturday was the day of the festival. On entry I was frisked and had my guitar case searched. Apparently the bouncer wanted to know if I was ‘carrying a gun’. This was somewhat unsettling but I pretended it was OK.
The event was held at Renaissance Rooms in Vauxhall. This is large club consisting of two rooms, one which is effectively a nightclub, and a second which a stage/club. The event took place in the afternoon, on the same afternoon as the Notting Hill Carnival.
For the first time in a long time, London had a glorious day of sunshine, so this seriously affected the attendance at the festival, which was held indoors. The capacity of the place is rated at 2500, but I doubt there were more than 250 people at the height of the festival. Apparently Channel 4 were about, but I didn’t see them.
We were ushered into the VIP area, where we were given food and a (single) free drink. I went down to watch some acts play, most of which were of questionable quality. An act failed to come on stage when called, so suddenly I found myself being told ‘You’re on, now!’, and someone was rushing my guitar backstage for me.
On stage, there was nowhere to plugin the guitar, and made do with a mic plug on a dj mixer. Sound quality was rubbish, though our performance was OK. It was all over pretty quick, and we played again in the VIP lounge straight afterwards. Once again performance was satisfactory but not astonishing.
All in all, it was a good experience, which was largely held up by large failings on the part of the organisers. I can’t berate them too much though, I suspect they will have lost lots of money that day.