Did somebody say, "Let's rock"?

Playing at a venue for the first time is always a bit of a worry, so I was a little apprehensive about last night's gig at "The Old Millstone".
We'd never played there before and to make things slightly more alarming, Dave was on holiday, so we'd drafted in Corin from "Amandla" to play drums.

As is so often the case, I should not have been worried. It was a smashing night out.

The Millstone is probably one of the busiest pubs in Macclesfield and is sufficiently large to allow a band to play to a good size audience while allowing other, less musically inclined, patrons to drink in relative peace and quiet.

It was a bit of a novelty for us to have so much space to set up the gear. Usually with a pub gig, it's a major challenge to shoe-horn the drum-kit, bass stack, keyboard, PA, mixing desk, guitar gubbins, monitors and mic-stands etc. into the corner of a room that the landlord assures you is "where the bands usually set up".
Here we had the space that would normally have been occupied by a couple of pool tables. Luxury! Not only does it make it more fun to play on an adequate stage, but having a sensible amount of space makes it a hell of a lot easier to set up the equipment; you aren't perpetually falling over your band mates and trying to avoid getting poked in the ear with a cymbal stand.

The acoustics of the room were fairly easy to work with, so we didn't have any problems with getting the sound sorted out; we just played the stuff and had a good time. We all played our socks off and this was clearly well received by the crowd, if the enthusiastic applause and demands for an encore are anything to go by.
I'm definitely looking forward to playing there again.

As for any qualms about playing with a 'dep' drummer, I should have known better. Corin was, as always, a joy to play with. So special thanks to him for helping us out. I think he's far too sensible to be a drummer; they're all supposed to be raving bonkers.