Day 3: London
Welcome
Yesterday we did a video shoot on a canal boat and played a show in London.
Our 7am lobby call was a bit punishing, even though our body clocks were still encouraging us to become dawn risers. Jonathan drove us east on the M4, heading towards our first appointment in London. We made a breakfast stop at Membury services and I went to Subway, the only restaurant open at this early hour. I ordered off the breakfast menu, deciding that a Mega Melt would meet my caloric requirements. It came on a fifteen centimetre-long Italian Herb & Cheese bread roll, which contained poached eggs, pork sausages, and American-style cheese. To this I added hash browns, HP sauce, and aioli. A Mega Melt is also supposed to contain Beechwood smoked back bacon, but this particular restaurant had run out so I substituted it for streaky bacon.
It was only a 200km drive to our destination, just southwest of Hackney, but driving anything in London that isn’t a train is a real slog. After three hours of crawling through suburban back roads we made it to the Laburnum Boat Club where we found awaiting us a very handsome watercraft moored alongside the dock. The foredeck of the narrowboat Lady Mildmay was packed with cameras, lights, and crew, all ready and waiting for us to come aboard for a cruise along Regent’s Canal. We spent a while getting ourselves into position on Lady Mildmay’s bow, setting up cushions to get comfortable, and positioning microphone stands so they wouldn’t obstruct any of the camera shots. Then after a quick safety briefing our skipper reversed us out and into the canal, heading east towards Victoria Park. It was a lovely morning and there were plenty of people out running, cycling, or walking dogs along the canal path. Smiles and waves were received and given out aplenty.
We putted along at just below a walking pace, waiting until the scenery was the nicest, and that’s when our director had us do takes of our songs. I’d have to rate this as one of the most pleasant settings I’ve had the privilege of playing music in. The acoustic of the canal was friendly enough and sounded especially good when we passed underneath some of the brick bridges.
The most exciting part of the journey was when we got to traverse Acton’s Lock No.7. Our skipper temporarily moored us so she could hop off and open the huge wooden gates that seal the lock chamber. We drove in and the gates were closed behind us and then she hopped out again, this time with a large steel crank to operate the rack and pinion system that opens the valve, which in turn drains the water out of the chamber. It took a good five minutes for us to descend the 2.5 metres down to the next section of canal, but once we were down there it was as simple as opening the lower gates and motoring away.
After returning from our peaceful cruise we had to hop straight back into the van and head to Brixton, another slog through London traffic that redeemed itself only because we got to drive across Tower Bridge. The design of this structure is interesting in the way it combines two 82m suspended spans with two 30m bascules that can be raised to allow the passage of river traffic. I was interested to discover that despite the reduction of tall ships in service in England’s navy and merchant fleets the bascules are still raised around 1000 times a year, and although you do need to book 24 hours ahead it is completely free of charge.
Electric Brixton is Gabe’s favourite venue in the world. He likes that the mixing position is in a raised platform that feels like you are driving a spaceship. The room is tall and very wide – plenty of standing room on the floor and two mezzanine levels offer great sight lines for the room’s 1400 occupants.
We were met with some disappointing news when we arrived: the stage rack we had rented had been delivered without a crucial component, something called input cards which are apparently an important part in the signal chain from the microphones to the mixing desk. We had to wait two hours while we waited for the rental company to courier the missing pieces. This was only the first of many things that would go wrong over the evening. Gabe has written a nice succinct summary of the events in the order they occurred.
- Stagerack for rental console was only delivered with output cards instead of input cards. Correct cards were delivered 1 hour before doors.
- Bass amp dramatically explodes
- Liz tuner breaks
- Stage rack power source crashes.
- New power source for stage rack sourced by venue staff.
- Liz amp dies.
- Entire rental console system dies while we are out to dinner.
- 5 minutes before show time, a questionable jerry-rigged power idea is created again by venue staff with one staff member in the basement monitoring the breakers and another member monitoring our stage rack reading power health for the entire show.
- Show was sweet, sweet butter and no one knows.
Somehow, this was just enough bad luck to ensure that we played a really good show. Gabe said it was the best show he’s ever seen us do. It felt pretty awesome for us too.
📷 Dani Bolton
I’ll leave you with another special treat. Tristan spent a good part of the day busy at his laptop putting together this video of exclusive behind the scenes content.