Pure Motive - The First Gig - The Winston Pub - Saturday 21 November 2009

Well…after counting down the weeks, then days and eventually hours, the big day (or night actually) finally arrived! Our first gig! Wow…The hours before we left to go set up seemed to drag on…forever…once we had set up it seemed like only minutes had passed before we were on the stage ready to play…While watching Outbreak play I felt nervous but okay…as soon as they got off the stage I felt completely overwhelmed…but once we were actually on stage ready to play I felt alright…I even managed to glance around the stage and pass a smile to my band mates…Then Chane announced who we were etc…he mentioned something about just wanting to play music and people started cheering…oh my word there were actually people watching us!!!! From then on I have to be honest and say I could not even force myself to look up…

I think we did really well as a whole during the first part of the gig…I think the song, Death Becomes Us, which we had chosen to open with was a good choice as it seemed easy to play and the crowd seemed to really like it…the first thing I heard while the last notes faded out was this dude that walked right up to the stage and shouted “You guys f***ing rock man”…that was really cool…

In the next song, I Know Ledge, another really cool thing happened…Shane is supposed to sing the first verse twice but missed the first time…when he started singing the next time round the same dude in the crowd started singing along as though he had heard the song a hundred times before! That was a really awesome feeling…many thanks to you random dude…

The crowd really seemed to enjoy our rendition of The Vaselines/Nirvana song Molly’s Lips! I could hear other voices singing “kiss kiss Molly’s lips” louder than I could hear Shane! Wow…I managed to glance up a bit on this one and saw some people rocking out…

Still feeling quite happy with how the songs were turning out…

In our next song, Machine Song, at first I had my doubts because in the intro Chane seemed to have forgotten exactly how it went but only for a few short moments before he went into the proper riff and Chirley and I joined in…This is also one of my favourites…I wish I was not as nervous as I was so that I could have at least nodded my head or tapped my foot a bit!

Moonflow is one of our oldest songs so we all nailed that one brilliantly, well I think so anyway…

At the beginning of Reach Out Quickly, Shane looked at me with a completely blank expression…then I positioned my hand for the intro and he followed…he later told me he could not remember how the song started! The rest of the song went really well considering this is our most recent song and we have only been working on it for about 4 or 5 practices and for only a few minutes each time…following in Shane’s footsteps at the beginning of the song, I could not remember how it ended and did not play my final chord…bummer!

Up until this point I think we did really well for our first gig…then we tuned our guitars down…during the down tune for some reason I could not get my 6th string in tune…and even after I eventually thought I did…Raymond came and told me it was still slightly out…Chane fixed it for me…luckily…

This was the moment I was dreading the most…our version of Fallen Leaves by Billy Talent…Chirley had begged us not to play this song! I was dreading it because of the intro riff which I play…sometimes if I get over excited I play it way too fast and then end up feeling so lost with it that I really mess it up…I was also dreading the solo part as I had not yet worked on the solo with Shane as we were meant to do a dual solo…at the last practice before the gig we had decided that this time Shane would play the solo by himself and I would play along with the bass…so that was still very new to me…I felt very comfortable when I started the intro…when Shane started singing I could hear his voice was straining…and then I started noticing other mistakes…We should’ve listened to Shirley and held out on this one a little longer…but I think the end result was not too bad…

In the beginning of Careless Shane just suddenly stopped playing his part of the intro…I hit a bit of panic and nearly stopped myself but somehow I managed to continue…Shane’s voice seemed to be okay again during this song…

Oh my word! The Fallen…our final and most difficult song! I completely messed up the intro! And then just stumbled my way through the rest of the song…I really screwed that one up…and it sucks because I had put a lot of work into it before hand! And to top it off I only realised towards the end of this song that I had not put my tone settings back to normal after changing them for Fallen Leaves!

I think overall the gig went well…Warren really performed the best out of the four of us! And he seemed so calm and focused the whole way through…Well done Chwarren!! I am really proud of you!

Just to echo Shane’s words…Thanks to Russell from The Winston Pub for arranging the gig…Thank you to Raymond for the sound…Thanks to Outbreak…Thank you to everyone that was there supporting us…Especially the random singing along dude…But most of all thank you to Chane, Chirley and Chwarren! You guys are the best band mates and friends ever! Well done…



Chanya

Pure Motive