You'd think so wouldn't you?

It all started 6 months ago, when my significant other (being of the drumming persuasion and with very suspect taste in music) came up with the bright idea of putting a Country covers band together. “Yes dear” I responded, as I do to most of his prolific bright ideas. However, this particular gem seemed to stick and off he went recruiting musicians left right and centre. Next time I looked, we had a five-piece band, ready, willing and able. I might add at this point that all but one of the new incarnation are members and ex-members of the other band we're in - an eleven piece 60's and 70's soul band. After six years of Mustang Sally, it wasn't difficult to persuade them to have a go at something a bit different!

Then came the difficult questions. What kind of music do we want to play? What shall we call the band? How many chocolate biscuits can four blokes and a girl eat in one sitting? Thankfully, it didn't take too long for the country theme to mutate into a generic 90's thing (although we did have to keep a Shania Twain number in, just to keep significant other happy). Somehow we managed to rustle up two sets worth of songs without too much bloodshed. Naming the band was another matter. Anyone who has ever had to think of a name for a band will know that there's a very fine line between pretentious and downright silly. We spent weeks trying to be inventive, trying to be amusing, trying to be clever and in the end we failed miserably. We named ourselves after one of the songs we have in the set – HALO (the old methods are usually the best!)

So we had a band, we had a name, we had a bunch of songs that we were rehearsing furiously (every Monday 7.30pm, live in our living room ...) Next job was getting somewhere to perform. This proved to be more difficult than we expected. We did our research up front and went to check out the competition in a few local pubs. Our general conclusion was that most bands that are prepared to play for a tenner apiece and all the crisps you can eat (the going rate for most pubs apparently) aren't exactly going to give the Gallaghers any sleepless nights. They tended to mainly consist of either ageing rockers singing Dusty Springfield to raucous chords and feedback or a bunch of spotty teenagers murdering Brit Pop with the Fender copy Mommy bought them for Christmas. So armed with our wealth of talent and experience (and a small dash of smug arrogance) we made a few calls to offer our services. Several calls and a dose of humility later, the general response had been “Ah well, y'see we can't risk it, you being a new band and all that - you might be crap and scare the punters away”. We persevered though (and grovelled a bit) and we finally managed to find a brave publican willing to give us a go! It was booked - our first gig. Success! That's when the shakes and the night sweats started.

Maybe I should explain why the prospect of our first public appearance filled me with such terror. True, I have a lot of gigs under my belt BUT (and here's the cruncher) up until now I have always had someone else doing the talking. I have had most of my experience with two bands – the first being a dance PA where a hyperactive MC leaped around me shouting profundities such as “MAKE SOME NOISE !!!” and the second being an eleven piece band with three other singers to hide behind. This would be my first time out at the front, all by myself, having to actually talk to the audience instead of just singing at them. Like the bride who dreams of walking up the aisle naked, I had a recurring nightmare of standing there in front of everyone I knew with my mouth open and nothing coming out. My day job involves working with computers, you don't have to talk to them (you can if you want, but you tend to get funny looks), so I've never had to develop the ability to stand up in front of a group of people and be amusing. This more than anything was what scared the living daylights out of me. Friends have said to me many times that they couldn't do what I do, get up and sing in front of people, but believe me, having to think of something to say in-between the singing that doesn't make you sound like a total dork is far more difficult! While the rest of the band were getting more and more excited as the big day approached, I got more and more fraught and began to wish we'd never started the whole thing!

However I managed to retain my sanity in the run up to the main event. When the fateful day arrived we had everything organised with military precision:

6.30pm - Load gear into grotty, clapped-out transit hired from “Honest John's Vans!”
7.15pm - Arrive at venue
7.30pm - Unload and set up
8.15pm - Thorough sound check to avoid all possibility of embarrassment
9.00pm - Hit the stage and rock the house to rapturous applause and adulation!

Everything started well - the boys arrived to load up on time, we arrived at the pub on time, we got everything in position and plugged it together on time – then we hit the “ON” switch and nothing happened. A big, fat silence. Oh, there were lots of lovely flashing lights on the desk but zilch coming out of the speakers. Half an hour and a lot of head scratching later, still nothing. My suggestion of hitting it with something blunt didn't seem to be helping matters. The room by now was filled with people, the landlord was tapping his watch and I was breathing rapidly into a paper bag. I decided I couldn't bear to hear the words “well it worked last time we used it” one more time without throwing up, so I decided the best course of action was to lock myself in the loo for a bit.

Twenty minutes later I heard the wonderfully amplified sound of “Two! Two! Two! Yep, it's working” – I still have no idea what went wrong or how they fixed it and I really don't want to know! Seconds later a violent hammering on the cubicle door signalled my cue. So great was the relief that I had by now totally forgotten to be nervous about the actual gig – I had been too worried about how I was going to tell everyone “thanks for coming, but we'll be off now ...” before running for the door in shame. Someone was smiling on us - this was it, time to put all that hard work into practice. We hadn't had any kind of sound check, but what the heck! Wasn't that what we were paying a soundman for? He could twiddle knobs to his heart's content once we got going! Holding my breath I jumped on stage in my new “does my bum look big in these?” stretch flares and smiled at the crowd of faces in front of me. Then off we went into our first song - What I Am by Edie Brickell (or Emma Bunton, depending on how old you are).

Four minutes later, as the last chord died out I held my breath. Then it happened. Applause, whistles, cheers and lots of them (most of them from my Mum, but they still count!) Song after song and the response was the same. Gradually I stopped feeling like a tailor's dummy and more like a performer – the jokes weren't funny but hey, who cares? We ended the night on Natalie Imbruglia's Big Mistake and nearly brought the house down – take it from me, you don't need drugs with a high like that. The pub booked us again and we handed out a stack of business cards and tapes, so the prospect of future work looked good. The euphoria didn't wear off until about 3am that morning, when I finally managed to come down enough to get some sleep! Even being stopped by the police on the way home hadn't dampened my spirits (I told you that van was dodgy).

Was it all worth it? Oh yes...

For further information about HALO, please e-mail pd.wright@freeuk.com or telephone (01422) 244239.

by Paula Hollingworth.