Home sweet home.

At last: the gig is past, the flat has entered the 21^st century and has an internet connection and I can write this from the comfort of a Sunday with absolutely nothing to do.

First off, thanks to everyone that came along! I was amazed by the number of people who made it - again - in response to our traditional barrage of TM spam. Now, onto a rather subjective review of the gig. Apologies for the navel-gazing self-absorption that is to follow.

The set-up for the gig went without incident, and even by 8 pm, with 8 Million Ways to Die strapping on their guitars and about to play, I was still feeling excited as opposed to nervous. Their set went impressively smoothly: for a band that had only been practicing together for a matter of weeks, they played and sang with relaxed competence. I started to get nervous.

(I'd seen Keith nodding frustratedly towards his snare at one point, with an expression that said "if I had a free hand I'd smack my forehead in stunned annoyance", but it turned out that he had only forgotten to turn it on. I'd go on to replicate something like this with alarmingly familiar results, but more on that later.)

Proxy, basically, rocked. Andy's introduction of the band waltzed knowingly and gleefully into Spinal Tap territory and the audience loved it. Like 8MWTD, they're consummate musicians and again, I think, this gives them a relaxed air and ability to play through setbacks like Thomas' guitar getting tangled up in a mic stand without freaking out. A repertoire of genuinely sing-a-long tunes helps, I suppose! I continued to get nervous.

We climbed on stage around 10 and strapped our guitars on, checked our effects settings and lanched straight into Dead On *. We played as tightly as we ever have before, and the new bass + drums intro worked better than I could have hoped.

Mart introduced us (to general crowd approval, I think) and we played on through the rest of the set. At the time it felt rocky rather than rocking. We made some horrifically obvious mistakes (a favourite being that a few songs just sort of vanished rather than ended), including, in retrospect, a hilarously idiotic move on my part: I played the entire first verse of Seven Nation Army a full tone too high.

I realised my mistake half way through the verse and stared at Doug with utter dread. "I'm playing it too high," I mouthed at him. This, however, was not my worst mistake. We reached I Predict a Riot and I picked up my beer from beside the bass amp. "Odd," I thought. "Does the red light mean 'on' or 'standby'?"

I looked a little closer. "Red: standby", it read. "Christ on a crutch," I thought. "Not again."

Sigh. I switched it on in time for us to play IPAR really rather well, and to follow it up with a encore of Happy 2/34^th Birthday.

It turns out we've got some solid original tunes (Dead On, One Thing and Happy 2/34^th Birthday stand out as being most fully-formed and backed up by audience approval) and covers to which we do justice rather than murder, but what we lack is gigging experience.

The best thing for me, and something of a revelation, was Mart's vocal performance. The majority of comments I heard about our set were along the lines of "Mart's singing was great! He's a good frontman." I'd never doubted that he could sing with the best of them, but it was the lack of nerves that amazed me. I think Doug and I had both regressed to some year-past state of marginal unease, but Mart carried it off superbly. Ash also took on the keyboard parts without fuss and probably out-played most of us without batting an eyelid :)

From my point of view, TM's slot at the gig was a bit like (please forgive the terribly nerdy analogy) Luke Skywalker's X-wing: unpredictable and rusty, but basically cool. I can't wait to do it again (mainly to prove that I can actually play the bass) and with any luck, that'll be mid-April. Bring it on!

P.S: With reference to a previous comment, Dave says my hair has gone a bit WarGames. Hmm.

* This version of Dead On was the sole survivor of a 6-hour recording session at Berkeley 2 about 6 months ago. There's always been a good song in there, but I think this gig was the first live outing that really did it justice. Austen in particular was generous with his praise and that was the first point that I started thinking that perhaps we hadn't quite so terrible as I'd initially thought...!