And then there were five

First Gig Flyer :
Design as ever nicked from somewhere

Lacking in any vision for this blog, lets just start at the beginning with the first gig...

When we started out, our rehearsal space was a room above the Fox and Hounds pub in Caversham, Reading. It was a great space with lovely natural reverb (as heard on 'Shopping' amongst others).

Throughout our 'career' the punk rock spirit of getting out there and doing it yourself was really important to us. So for our first gig we just put it on ourselves, in our rehearsal space, which being a pub room, had a licensed bar in the corner.

Mike made the flyer and poster. Our early designs were all nicked from a Taschen 60's design postcard book. I think this was a James Bond poster. We invited friends and just flyered the town. At the time there was a real buzz in Reading about local bands so loads of people turned just because it was our first gig.

Having only been together as a 5 piece for a few weeks, we only had 8 songs, all of which we played. The most notable songs on this recording are perhaps Miranda and Bring all your love (to me) as they were never recorded or released in any form, although there are a few live recordings. The four songs from the Blue Demo were played but the only songs that ever ended up having proper releases were 1 (Pink) and 7 (I am the cheese) which ended up being the b-side to Girls are the new boys. 





The most 'interesting' song here is probably Pink. It was the first song we wrote collectively and it was very much a Saloon 'manifesto' song (like Plastic Surgery).  The first half of it was based on some chords from Matt, I am pretty sure I wrote the melody but Mike and Amanda also had input into the lyrics. (The line 'Pink cafetière' was pure Mike) . The ending was a couple of chords that I thought sounded a but like Quickspace that I hadn't found a home for. I used to 'conduct' the song, which basically meant let it go on until until the audience start to look really bored and then nod my head for the next bit. In this recording, when the end chords kick in you can hear someone say 'at last, the chorus'.

All in all, although the recording is well ropey, this was a great first gig and we came out of it with a real buzz about us. We crashed down to earth with the follow-up a week later though.

I don't have any photos, if anyone else does (maybe Matt) let me know.