Saturday's gig

In theory, putting on a night of live music should be a fairly straight forward process:

First, you find a big room and ask a couple of bands to come and play some music in it. Next, you do whatever you can to convince people to come and watch those bands play their music in the room. Then, you all head into that big room on an agreed date, cavort about and have a jolly good time.

Of course, this being life, things are rarely ever so simple, and Saturday's show at The Fleece in Ashton-in-Makerfield was no exception.

Whilst we were fortunate enough to avoid any major disasters, several minor frustrations did rear their heads in the run up to the big gig. Yet despite such frustrations, I'm glad to report that things went rather well indeed and that the feedback has been largely positive.

The acts impressed way beyond expectations, though of the four that performed, only one of them hadn't lost a member or several before the evening in question, meaning there wasn't much time to go before the show before an absolutely final line-up was confirmed.

Yes, there was plenty of talk on Saturday night of singers sacking it off, bassists going bye-byes and drummers deciding to do other things at the last minute.

I'm not sure if this sounds a little harsh or not, but these losses were definitely our gain as the line ups we were presented with on the night couldn't have been better.

I won't go into too much detail about the sets (there's a review coming up soon that I'd like you to read), but it was top notch stuff.

Flying solo without his usual band, Ugly Soul, Olly Squires, with his acoustic guitar and assured vocal, delivered something pretty special to start the night and personally I'd love to see more of him in a solo environment.

Moody Tuesday and their brilliant crowd made the journey all the way from Portsmouth and went down an absolute storm before Stockport's Dirty Little Minds cranked up the volume, and the cool factor, with some wonderful hard rock.

Colour Me Blind, as enjoyable as ever, rounded out the night with a solid set made all the more impressive by the fact that the majority of their set had been written only a few short days before.

Of course, given said problems with confirming the line up, running a solid promo campaign wasn't the easiest thing to do, but we pulled it off and managed to get a good crowd who enjoyed what they saw.

What I also really liked about the gig was that, instead of taking off once their set was done (not an uncommon scenario at some gigs), the bands stuck around and cheered each other on. It's this c spirit that I'm sure we'll be keen to encourage next time.

Oh yes, there will be a next time.

I'm leaving it in the more than capable hands of my good buddy Dave Costello (to whom the idea to run the night, and most of the hard work that went into it, should definitely be credited) to work out when that will be, but even though I'm not sure when the next gig in going to be, I'm almost certain that it will be brilliant.

It will be open to all ages, and we've talked about kicking off a little later to ensure everyone has chance to get there, so that's two good things going for it already.

And, having overcome several challenges this time around, the only challenge for the next show will be finding bands who can top what we saw on Saturday, because seriously, Olly Squires, Moody Tuesday, Dirty Little Minds and Colour Me Blind will be a tough show to beat.

We're sure to find some acts who, if not necessarily beating the aforementioned artists, will at least be able to match them in terms of great songs and even greater stage presence.

When we do, we're all going to get together in that big room again, cavort about a bit and have a jolly good time, and it would be ace if you could join us.