Transit of Venus

I have a lot of people to thank, I’d like to start with the awesome band!

Tory Staples, whom I’ve worked with on and off for the past five years, amazing drummer, amazing friend.  This project wouldn’t have lasted five minutes without his enthusiasm and support.

Marcel Bellve whose music I have always admired, it’s been a fantastic experience working with someone from one of my favourite bands!

Mat Bosher – our last minute life saver! Did an incredible job of getting everything together with such short notice and such good humor.

Plum Green – The cheesecake, the false mustache, the beautiful voice! And of course all the invaluable girl talk and moral support.

And special thanks to the behind the scenes crew…

Anthony Corban doing all that projectory stuff and generally helping outwith anything that need doing urgently

Michelle Klaessens from The Rock Factory was our fantabulous hard working sound girl and recording engineer for the night

Tyle Burke was there doing wonderful things I didn’t really know much about. Herding film students, jumping behind the sound desk when Michelle came on stage later in the evening.

Tim and Rilland made us a great pair of emergency last minute ushers hehe

The TAPAC crew Scott and Calvin who helped out on the night

And of course thank you to everyone who came along and watched the show!

It’s two days after the show now. I’m totally at a loose end, taking a weekend off to catch my breath before I get stuck into work next week.

What the show was like for me…

I was very worried leading up to the show, because I had never done anything like this before. Kinda a big deal to me.  I probably got a little stressed out (ok a lot) over all the things I had to remember not just in the playing of the show but the organizing and responsibility.  I guess the most accurate way to describe it is that I was terrified out of my wits that the show would be a failure, things would go wrong, no one would show up, and all my hard work would have been wasted.  Luckily that was not the case!

We started at about 11am that morning, met up at The Manor rehearsal space to work on a couple of things.  ”The curse of Nosferatu” has reared it’s ugly head in the form of incessant scheduling nightmares for this project.  We gave practice our best shot with which ever band members were there at the time.  By the time we had everyone in the same place at the same time it was halfpast three and time to load out! We got all our gear to the venue around four and began to set everything up. I had been almost in tears because I thought I had lost my box of leads, turned out I hadn’t and then I felt like a complete fool for over reacting. Set-up and sound check must have taken us through till about 8-8:30pm, I had been running off during sound check to put my make-up on and get dressed because I didn’t want to get caught short of time.  The whole time I was on edge and the adrenaline was causing me to bounce about the place and burst into nervous giggles, or snap at people for no real reason.  I had managed to not have any ushers arranged but thankfully a couple of friends stepped into the role. I had no one organised to open the curtain (first gig ever with a curtain you see!) so my Dad was dragged backstage to do that job.

It was almost nine o’clock, miraculously the band were all onstage behind the closed curtain. Matt and Marcel began playing some atmospheric music and I suddenly realized in my panicky forgetfulness I hadn’t lit the candles on my piano. I waved frantically at my Dad to not open the curtain while I tried to quickly light them.  Got that done, sat down, the curtain opened and the show began.

As I played the nervousness started to fade and I began to enjoy myself. It is nice getting to perform without having to put on a performance. The movie provides the visual side of things and you just get to concentrate on the music.  By the end of 84 minutes my arms were ready to drop off! Playing for that long with no stops was quite an intense experience, at times I couldn’t hear the rest of the band over my piano and just had to hope and trust we were playing the same thing.  The show itself seemed to fly by. 84 minutes was over so soon but I was so exhausted.

After the show I came and said hi to friends and family who had come along. All the feedback I heard was really positive which was nice after all the work that we had done.  When we’d had enough of a break and a few drinks we went back on stage for a jam and played to the few people who didn’t have to work the next morning.  This was a really fun part of the night. Michelle got up from behind the sound desk and jumped on keys, I stole Marcel’s guitar and we played some Amperzahn songs and some ToV songs, some with Ant on bass some with Josh, then Marcel jumped on Matt’s guitar and Tim jumped on bass followed by drums and played Doing OK (with the drum battle), I don’t know how Tory survived, he is such a hard out drummer! And then 2/3rds of AntiVenom were there so dragged them onstage and I jumped on drums for a song.  Admittedly I’m not the best drummer in the world (ok ok I suck!) but it was awesome fun!

Eventually the fun had to end, we said goodbye to the last few people to leave and then began the pack-down and load-out process.  This is the part of the night I hate the most. When all I want is to relax after the show, but instead I have to disassemble pianos and roll up leads and put my sneakers back on for  heavy lifting! I ended up with big bruises on my knees from toppling over climbing in and out of the loading dock.  I got home by 2am, tired and grumpy, but woke up feeling really pleased with how the show went, and feeling kinda silly for being so tired and grumpy towards the end of the night.

Pene from AntiVenom took a few photos during the show… here ya go!