Becoming a band in London (2/12): Getting our bearings and first gig
The perplexing events found in part I of this story, which shall be henceforth referred to as ‘Shock 1’, left us in a state of bewilderment. Nonetheless, morale was still good. We had 5 songs, some new ones in the works, and felt we were building a strong identity, sound-wise, for Electric Tuxedo. We were on a good streak creatively. The summer of 2014 was particularly lucrative on multiple fronts, not only in terms of composition and recording, but also in terms of performing live.
Where to next?
We never actually performed together prior to the that summer, as we acted more like a production house than a band. But once we had a half-hour set (six songs, the 5 prepared for Shock 1 and a new one we really fancied), we decided it’s time to up our game and smash the live scene. We rented a studio in Bucharest, Romania and invited a videographer friend to document the ‘historical’ event. We went through two tracks, the OG ‘Even Perfection’ and one which is still dear to our hearts called ‘Unique’, practiced them until we could perform something that, looking back, vaguely resembled music, and then asked our friend what he thought. He paused and said: “It’s… fine for your first time, but… you’ll practice some more, right?”. Can’t say we were off to the races. Nonetheless, we were confident that we could pull off a live set. Confident enough that we started asking around for gigs.
We were extremely lucky that a radio music producer friend was involved in organizing a Romanian music festival called fEast in London the following October. We made it on the bill and were hyped, as the show would be held at The Garage in Islington, a prestigious venue. We thought that this would be the moment we’d tell the world ‘We’ve arrived!’.
First gig
Contrary to what you might think, given the narrative so far, the lead-up to the gig and the show itself were really good. Except for a brief moment of panic in our dodgy under-the bridge rehearsal space in West Ham when we thought we can’t pull it off, the songs were sounding great. We set up our online profiles on the relevant platforms of the time (more, much more on that in a future article) and we put a few demos on YouTube. We were ready for the show.
We were on first. Loading, soundcheck and everything that preceded the gig were bizarre experiences. While everyone was professional and courteous, we were thought of almost as a ‘kid band’. No one had heard of us, we didn’t have a strong online presence, and we barely had any recordings. It made sense. But it still felt weird. But we didn’t let that phase us. We went on stage and gave it our all. We put on a great show and people really got into it. Everyone who was a bit on the fence before came up to us all smiles and congratulated us. We gave interviews, we had people asking about us, and we had blogs writing about us. It was a great feeling. I think you can imagine what it did to our egos. And it was only the beginning of a great rise before an even greater fall.
To be continued next Saturday. In the meantime, you can follow our journey on Instagram and Twitter @electrictuxedo. Thanks for reading!
