Day 18
Sunday December 19
Maja:
I am watching the clock for when the reception opens and when they do, I go down and beg them for a room change. To a room with a real mattress. We don’t get that, but the cleaners do offer to change mattresses, giving us one from another room. Perfect. That was all we really wanted. It also means we don’t have to carry everything again to change rooms. Problem solved. Now we’re going to be able to sleep tonight, but the damage is already done, and we are going to have to perform with me having spent the majority of the night rolling around sleepless and sitting in the kitchen watching youtube. I just hope I’m able to put on a show.
Mark:
So much for taking much of the past week off to rehearse, chill and make sure we were fully prepared and ready for tonight’s show. It’s almost 11 O’Clock in the morning and we still pretty much haven’t slept yet. But we do at least have an acceptable bed now and we fully intend to use it. I must say here that we attach no blame to 36 Rooms Hostel. The waterbed was in the room in all good faith and I’m sure many people love and venerate them. We’re just clearly not among their number and we only discovered that when we were given one to sleep on. In fact, when we first discovered it was a waterbed, we were a little bit giddy over the novelty and thought it was a great idea. Until last night happened and we got to see and experience the thing up close.
We have to be at Artliners by around 5:30 which is a 40 minute walk away. Mercifully we don’t have to take any of our gear; this is our first fully organised gig complete with stage, full sound setup, sound engineer, host, and lineup of other acts. And it will all be livestreamed. Which means that just about everything on here is a first for Maja, including playing on such a raised stage. Everything we’ve done in Berlin we’ve either hustled ourselves or it’s been open mic. She’s never played an organised gig before.
Now, this 5:30 arrival time is fine. It gives us a leave time of 4:50 or something like that. Normally that would be a perfectly relaxed schedule but not at all when you’re essentially getting to bed at 11am. We set the alarm for 4pm and when it goes off it really feels like we’re being forced to get up in the middle of the night, or at the very least it feels like a horribly early morning alarm call. Ridiculous. All we have to do is get up, go for a walk and play a gig. Hardly Monday morning blues contemplating heading off to the factory or the office. But at the same time, it’s not at all the preparation we were hoping for what we consider to be the biggest and most important gig of our whole time in Berlin. And the last one for this trip. We really have felt that everything we’ve been doing has been leading up to this, we did our very best to prepare for it, and now we’re barely able to get out of bed to face up to the walk to the place.
But we do, and our very first stop once we’re out on the street is to find a shop and stock up on energy drinks. Now we’re ready.
When we arrive, we finally meet Yvonne, our contact there, and she’s delighted to see us and says we’re there in perfect time. We are also greeted by Tom Lee, the host for the evening. No-one else is here yet. They start to trickle in over the next half hour. The members of Primark The Band, Berlin based but from the UK, the sound engineer, and a few people Tom will be playing with tonight. He will be opening the show, compering it, and playing the final set of the night after the two guests have played, the guests being ourselves and Primark The Band. We’ve got the most simple setup so it’s decided we’ll play first, once Tom has done his opening thing.
Primark The Band do their soundcheck, then it’s our turn. Up to now we’ve done very cursory soundchecks based around Maja singing nonsensical stuff while I strum random chords, just to find our levels. But in the past few days we’ve spoken about this and decided we need a different approach. This concluded in us deciding to use our own songs for soundchecks in the future. We’re able to do this now because we now have enough songs in our repertoire that we won’t play all of them in any given gig. And also because we’ve kinda left A Listing behind having admitted that it just hasn’t really hit the spot anywhere. That and All That I Can Be. But A Listing is a particularly good soundcheck song because it contains so many dynamics. We get a little worried about this when Primark The Band is soundchecking as they keep getting asked to turn down. This is The Lazy Sunday Session afterall. The difference between them and us is that they have a much fuller setup of electric guitar, bass and drums, but even so, they don’t seem that loud. When we get up, I suggest to Maja that we launch straight into the hardest part of A Listing to see where that fits into this venue’s volume requirements. We smash it out as loud as we can and no-one says a thing. That’s a really cool discovery; where a full band would be told to turn down, at our loudest we’re still perfectly OK.
Soundcheck over and everyone can chill now and just wait for showtime and for the audience to all turn up. By the time that audience has turned up, we’re able to see the capacity of this place in Corona times. I’m sure it’s been totally filled out on plenty of occasions, but that can’t happen anymore. Instead, everyone has to be sat down which means a few tables around the dancefloor at the front are occupied but that’s it down at stage level. Everyone else is behind the camera, which is on the centre of the dancefloor, and in the main bar area, all seated on stools around tables, or sat at the bar itself. This means that only the people at the front get the full effect, and in the past that probably meant a lot of people. But these are the times we’re in and it’s great that we’ve just been able to keep playing, right the way up to our very last scheduled show in Berlin.
Just before it all starts, we’re thrilled when our own little social gang turns up to do us proud. Cintia, Eric and Mattheus. They’re all here and we find a lovely table near the back to all hang out around. Now we’re ready. And here’s Tom to kick it all off.
He’s a very seasoned performer and has toured all over the world, so it’s no surprise that he delivers a very slick, polished set which is still perfectly rough enough to feel lively and edgy. When he’s done, he announces that it’s time for The Diaries from Ireland on their European tour, here for their first show in Artliners.
Maja:
It’s time. I step up on stage with a slight feeling of nervousness and excitement. This is hands down the biggest stage I’ve been on so far, and to be honest with you, the only real stage I’ve been on apart from some school performances and similar things I did as a kid. On our other shows there have been stages at times, but nothing as dedicated and fancy as this. It’s very raised, there’s not as much space to move around in that you might think, and the stage lighting feels scorching hot on my skin. I position myself as far forward as I can and I’m struck by how far away the audience feels. It’s a peculiar feeling and I’m not sure if they can really hear me that great all the way over to the other side of the bar. I’m feeling a little isolated up here on the stage with all the light on me. This show is more for the camera that’s filming the live feed, and cameras have a tendency of not giving especially good feedback in the moment. But we’re on and it’s time to put on a show.
As we start it’s clear to see that the crowd is getting into it more and more, and we get some great reactions to songs such as I Like You (Better When You’re Naked) and Insanity. The crowd is really getting into it, and it feels good to perform. I’m not really used to hearing myself in the way that this soundsystem works; I can hear myself clearer than I’ve ever done before, so that ought to be good. We have a sound engineer managing the sound so I don’t have to, which is one less thing for me to think about. Overall it is a fun stage to be on, and we get through our set without too many issues. I have a timer next to me so we can keep an eye on that and not run over our allocated time, and everything is going quite alright. The set holds and we’ll have time for all of the songs we plan to play. The crowd seems to be moderately into it, which is as good as you can get when you’re the first band out and the crowd is still sober and very far away. As we finish our third to last song, Tom tells us “One more song guys” and our hearts drop. I can see it as clearly in Mark’s eyes as I feel it in my chest. Couldn’t you have warned us when there were two left? Then we could have just gone for the two last songs in our set that we had left as big finish songs and scrapped the third to last song. But that didn’t happen. We’re here now and we need to finish off this show. Me and Mark look at each other and in that moment we both know and say simultaneously, Rock ‘n’ Roll Tree. And we just smash it out. It’s intense and fun and I let out all the last energy I have in me.
As we take our gear down and Primark The Band get up on stage we get some really heartfelt compliments. The bassist Meray says to me directly that she loved our show, and I just melt inside. Thank you so much. And then the night as rock stars begins. It feels like everyone is here, and we sit with our friends from the hostel that have come all the way to see us tonight and just enjoy the atmosphere. People talk to us and it feels great. After a while Mark comes and drags me to look and see behind the bar and points. ‘Look at that,’ he says. I do but I have no idea of what I’m supposed to be looking at until Mark says, ‘See they’ve pinned our card behind the bar.’ Oh yeah, they have. And he continues ‘Have a look and see what other cards they have pinned.’ Ehm, no I don’t. There are no other cards there. I look confused. ‘Exactly.’
