Hayden’s Blog

Take the bypass. At all costs.

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Well, it’s only been about a month since I started this blog and already I’m getting slack at updating it. The Brunettes have played the first two shows of our NZ tour, and The Cosbys played their last show ever last night, so let me update you on all of them in different posts (WHEN I GET TIME…), starting with Hamilton…

Diggers Bar, Hamilton - 20th April
Basically Hamilton sucked balls. Well, most of it did. We had about 15 paying people come through the door of the terrible bar we were playing at. There’s something that doesn’t really sit right in your mind when you arrive at the venue you’re playing at that evening and a covers band is setting up in the front room - their name on the blackboard, no mention of your show.

“Oh, hey, you guys are playing in the back room tonight.”

So there we are, setting up in the back room of Diggers Bar in Hamilton, while a covers band called Next of Kin are sound checking Tracy Chapman and Sublime murderation. Still, we try to keep positive. People will turn up, Hamiltonians listen to original music too right?

Pie Warmer (Ed Cake’s new band, playing support for us) start up the night’s entertainment, trying hard to compete with the sound of bad covers and drunken middle aged women coming through the wall. They’re really really good. I’d heard lots about them, especially the song ‘Crappy Street’ (which The Cosbys have been secretly hoping is a homage to ‘Cosby Street’. We can dream…). Their set is short but very sweet.

Pie Warmer. Photo from petrajane.com

Teenwolf are up next. The crowd hasn’t really grown as much as we’d hoped. The ideal formula is
Crowd size at start of headlining act = 2 x crowd size at start of 2nd support act.

Teenwolf are really good too. I haven’t seen them in ages, but they’re as tight and erratic as ever. I love their MySpace description of what they sound like - “The Gilmore Girls and a punch in the face”. It’s probably the most accurate description of a band I’ve ever heard. The thing that really impresses me about these guys is that they’ve played so many gigs that Chelsea can get absolutely shit-faced and still hold everything together perfectly on the keys. Not that she was that drunk on this particular occasion. I’ve also never seen Bradley out of form on the mic. I would have no throat left if I was him.

Teenwolf. Photo from petrajane.com

So, we’re up next, and over the course of Teenwolf’s set there have been about 3 people come through the door. We don’t let it phase us though, in fact it feels really good to be able to have a dress rehearsal before our Auckland show.

After a short while of stuffing around with gear we start the set with B-A-B-Y (the first track off the new album)… and I miss my first note. But fortunately I recover and we play a pretty good set, apart from the long gaps of nothingness in between songs. It was funny though, it didn’t really even feel like we had to say anything while we were messing around in the gaps. Someone would sum it up pretty well later in the night when they said the gig was “like each band showing the other bands what they were going to play at the gig in Auckland… in some sort of extravagant living room… in Hamilton.”

The Brunettes. Photo from petrajane.com

Heather and Me making a ‘b’ (During B-A-B-Y). Photo from petrajane.com

Packing up pretty much cemented the lets-never-do-Hamilton-again sentiment that had dominated the evening. We had to lug all our gear through the packed front room, squeezing our way through drunk middle aged people dirty dancing, this time to Dave Dobbyn. At the van we had to endure the clash of 2 different covers bands (the bar next door to diggers had a band playing System of a Down covers), plus a DJ playing 90s hits at the loaded hog. We just wanted to leave. We did. On the way home it was foggy. We bought food. Jonathan threw his pie at a truck with a picture of New Zealand on it. He hit Stuart Island.