The Lion, The Flu, And The Drummer

Submitted: 2007-11-28 14:02:07

So, last night (Tuesday 28th November) saw Syst3m 32 playing another of their now famous Golden Lion gigs, and boy was it a winner!

First port of call for the evening was a short band meet at Rich's new pad, conveniently located just around the corner from the Golden Lion... get in! So, the guys joined forced before heading off to the pub to get a short practise, some tuning and chatting in. Nice place Rich! Expect plenty more band meets there!

After our little get together it was time to head down to the Golden Lion in the hopes of getting a spot and playing a few numbers from our set for Friday 7th December to see how they went down in front of a friendly audience. First glance at the pub suggested it was going to be a very quiet one indeed, but The Golden Lion can be deceptive and soon the chairs were filled and there was a positive fight for a spot amongst the regular talent that gathers on a Tuesday night.

Having our own fan club there that night (in the form of band member Richard Woodstock (when he gets his arse in gear) and Rich's parents) certainly meant the pressure was on to make the grade and come up with some sheer awesomeness that made us worthy of gigging. Preparations were made and Syst3m 32 were all ready to go on. At this point I should stress that I was suffering from a very nasty cold at the time and so things were not going to go quite as well as we may have hoped.

So, we stepped up. But, not just Syt3m 32 for we had a cunning plan! A resident drummer who just happened to have brought his drum kit on the evening (bearing in mind that Nigel wasn't able to make it) and played for just about every other person that went up, was grabbed by the cuff of the neck, sat down at his kit and told to keep a beat! He was willing and very much able so we began. And he was amazing!

After a very good start on Crazy, that sounded like one of our best performances ever, we began our first ever live performance to an audience of our own songs, and to see people tapping along and enjoying themselves was certainly a boost! Despite the nasty cold, the vocals weren't too off and being backed by the filthiest sounding electric guitar made it all the better!

So we continued through to playing 'In This Great Land' and despite me telling Greg (the drummer) not to bother with this, being complicated with stops and starts he still played and managed, extremely well to keep the beat and get the stops and starts where they should be. A pure genius behind those cymbols!

Our only grievance of the evening was with the introduction to Warning, which we know is complicated as Nigel has struggled with the beats. After about 6 attempts to get the song underway things finally took off and we played our last song for the evening, which ended up sound pretty good too.

All in all it was a very good evening despite the few problems with vocals and lack of a drummer that knows our songs! I'll leave Harley to wrap things up with his take on the evening:

Gentlemen, well done on an excellent performance last night. Practise is at the music coop 8-10 on Thursday night. This will probably be our last the chance before the big gig but if last nights performance was anything to go by I think we can be reasonably confident. Alex, hope your feeling better, you were a real trooper to go on in the state you were in last night. Richard, love the new flat. Matt, love the new bass and last night was her baptism...

Thank you *bows*

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- Posted by Alex Hall

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