10th June 1992 - The Tivoli

We weren't too thrilled to be doing this gig. We contacted the Tivoli since they had an ad in Rip it Up saying they were looking for bands to play there. So we rang up. We were lead to believe it would be our gig. After much stuffing around, we were put down to play with Paradise Interchange and Churchill's last cigar. That didn't impress us. Then we found out we were playing first. My first thought was to pull out, because I felt we had been shafted, and I didn't want to play with those bands. But we just thought what the heck, and decided to play it. I still don't know whether we should have or not. We didn't publicise it or anything, and there were bugger-all (i.e. hardly any) people there.

This was pretty much the antithesis of the Le Rox gig. There, we felt in control, whereas at the Tivoli, we were basically playing to our friends, and everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong.

The set list was:

Circle she is
Flood
Waterfall
Haunt
This peaceful place
Darkest lightest day
Led
Said August
Autumn color haze

I didn't like the setlist. It was unbalanced and badly thought out. We opened with Circle because its pretty strong. However, it wasn't really representative of what was to follow. It was a strong opening, but that took away from the end, where it is normally played. It was well played though. While I was feeding back at the end, Mark came in with the start to Flood. Wayne thought he would bang the bass a bit, for atmosphere. Only trouble was, by the time I came in, he'd banged it out of tune, and basically ruined the song! It sounded
absolutely shit! I had to laugh, but I just hope people realised he was out of tune, rather than fucking up! Speaking of which, Wayne missed the first break in the song, and totally threw everyone out. I'd say he was probably to busy working out how to play Flood out of tune! Then, before Waterfall, he had to retune, and took so long that we lost all our momentum. I played some stuff just to make some noise (My Bloody Valentine impressions if I remember correctly!) Waterfall was pretty shaky. While its an OK song, it will be one of the first to go, out of the current set, when Forgotten plus other new stuff comes in.

Haunt was well played. Theresa (Wayne's partner) said it was the best we had ever done it! At the start, Peter (our sound guy) was meant to put on the children tape. However, the Circle intro (which had been played earlier) came on instead! Had to laugh again! We false started TPP, as I had my volume knob turned down. We were just about to restart, when the taped into for DLD came on! Another laugh! TPP was played well, as was DLD, except the effects changes still suck a bit (three pedal changes in 2 seconds!). They are sounding alot better though. Led was good. Peter was controlling the strobe. It was coming on and off at really odd times, and pissed me off a bit. Said August was solid, as was ACH, but still not as good as it could have been. The strobe was used to good effect in this song, especially at the end, where Peter put on this radio effect tape that sounded great.

It was a bit harder to look out into the audience this time, as they were pretty close up. This made me appreciate Le Rox a whole heap better! Overall, I was disappointed with all the fuck-ups, but we did play very well. We did receive some compliments too.

Before we played, the keyboardist from PI came up and said they were putting a 4 dollar door charge on, and that we could have two guests. We didn't get any say in the matter. We couldn't be fucked staying until the end of the last band, so we left pretty early, and didn't bother collecting any money. Interestingly, there were fewer people there when PI started, so maybe some people did come to see us.

Postscript:

I have to laugh when I read the reference to the Waterfall and Forgotten now!

Waterfall never really worked because Wayne insisted on playing a bassline that didn't fit the guitar riff or vocals. As far as Wayne was concerned, it was a good bassline, so he was going to use it come hell or high water. The fact that it didn't fit the song never occurred to him, or he didn't care less - just another straw.....I can't listen to the song now - the bassline still jars even now!

Forgotten was named as such as it was the forgotten guitar riff - probably the best riff I ever came up with, but one which Wayne and Mark could never come up with a decent rhythm for. I recomposed the riff to make it simpler for them, and we developed a song around that. But we all felt that we were better of saving the riff until Wayne and Mark came up with something that equaled the magnificence of the guitar riff!