Infinite Prattle Podcast!
Hello, I am Stephen, and I prattle! Potentially, infinitely so...[some have said]...
On the show I chat about EVERYTHING that intrigues me, such as life, the world, people as well as memories, things personal to me, things I like and all directly into your ears!
Along the way I am occasionally joined by some interesting guests who share their stories and 'Prattle!' along with me.
The podcast is completely Unscripted & Unedited and ideal for a casual listen to take you away from daily life or to enjoy on a walk or commute!
Infinite Prattle Podcast!
5.19 /// “Octagon Temple": Our Unforgettable Debut Gig…
What happens when a band’s name is inspired by a random book selection? Join me, Stephen, as I unveil the amusing transformation of our band’s identity, from "Lasers to Sun" to the quirky "Octagon Temple." Inspired by our bass player's wife's national trust heritage book randomness, this name oddly perfectly encapsulates our unique sound and style.
Experience the thrill and chaos of our debut performance at the Earl of Chester in Crewe, a gig secured through our guitarist Steve's connections. Laugh along with our journey and the camaraderie that makes performing live an exhilarating experience for both band members and our audience.
Feel the pulse of live music as I recount the mix of nerves and excitement that colored our first gig. From the challenges of memorizing lyrics to the spontaneous encore of a Nickelback song, every moment was an adventure. Discover how we navigated setlist adjustments, speaker placements, and the joys of audience interaction that made our performance unforgettable. Revel in the emotional reward of being a frontman, as I share the fulfillment and unforgettable memories of living the dream of entertaining. If you’re looking for a story of passion, music, and brotherhood, this episode is sure to entertain and inspire.
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Hello and welcome to Infinite Prattle.
Stephen:On today's show I'm going to be talking about my band's very first gig.
Stephen:Stay tuned, hello and welcome to Infinite Dreadle, unscrupted, unedited prattle on everything Hosted by me, stephen, listen, like, share, subscribe and enjoy the show.
Stephen:Very good day to you all. Thank you very much for joining me again on Infinite Battle Podcast. I am Stephen, as the intro suggests, and if it's your first time here, welcome, welcome, welcome. And if it's not, what are you doing with your lives? Yes, I just wanted to say, but not what you're doing with your lives. I appreciate the support is what I mean to say. Yeah, thank you very much for joining us and, um, yes, as as suggested.
Stephen:Uh, I am going to be, um, talking today about my, not my band, but the band that I'm in. I'm gonna say it's my band exclusively. Uh, our first gig. Excuse me, my throat's a little dry still. I should have drank plenty of water last night. That's the first error and I ran out of water and should have stopped and got some more. Um, but yeah, spoiler, it went all right. Um, I'm not gonna save that to the end because why would I? But yeah, it went all right. I'm, you know, I think, the band. You know, I love the guys I play with and they're just, they're just, you know, they have such talent and ability and it's just. It's just an absolute pleasure, to be fair, it's just an absolute pleasure to be in a band with them all and um, yeah, um, firstly, I'll address the, the name change to the band. Uh, we, we changed the name of the band from um, shit, I've not dropped anything on my desk for a while during the podcasting, so you know I'm not. I'm not gonna address that. Yeah, the um.
Stephen:I think the first thing that, um, we, we kind of discussed it was a few weeks ago when we, when we booked the uh, when we actually booked the gig, was are we, are we going to actually keep that name of? Uh, lasers to sun? And um, we kind of decided that we weren't going to and that was only like a working name, and we kind of all agreed, like I, kind of, like lasers is done, I'd have preferred phases system. I think we'd have got sued off paramount. But um, yeah, we kind of we kind of all agreed that, um, you know, lasers to stun probably wasn't, you know, maybe give the wrong tone or maybe make people assume you know what, what we were about? Um, and yeah, I, I, I just I just think it was uh, I just think it was a good idea. So, yeah, we didn't.
Stephen:Really, we, we had a bit of a meeting, went to a pub and um, we kind of had a little bit of meeting about that and um, we uh, we all kind of liked what we settled on in the end, but how we got to that was basically a. The bass player was just talking to his wife about it and I think she'd made the suggestion is like why don't you just pick a random book off the shelf and um, and just point to something and see what it says? And, um, I was like that sounds like a cool idea. So they did that and it was a national trust uh book which is a like a heritage charity in in britain, uh, who look after like, stately homes and old buildings and parklands and stuff. And she basically pointed at, um, pointed at something, and it was octagon temple, which is shrubber hall, which is in staffordshire.
Stephen:It has a has a building called the octagon temple, uh, and and that's what it was and um, it just made me laugh, um, but basically we I think the thing that made me laugh was when, when they told us about it and it was in the chat and stuff that they showed they took a picture of octagon temple, um, but we were, we were only a fingertips length away from being called the blessed virgins, and I thought that was hilarious because fingertip, fingertip, length away from being blessed virgin sounds like a punk or prog rock band name for me, so I think I think that just made me laugh even more so, um, yeah, so we are called Octagon Temple, uh, which I like, and I think it's a, I think, I think it's a good name for us and I think that you know, um, if we change names again, then we may early, early doors, but I think we'll probably settle on that.
Stephen:It seems to go down well. We told people the band name. It seemed to cause a bit of intrigue, and but that's the secret, the secret's out, that's how we got the name.
Stephen:So, um, you're in the know um but, yeah, we, we had the first gig at the Earl of Chester in Crewe last night, uh, which is where Steve the guitarist, he works there behind the bar, so that was kind of like how we got the into that and yeah, we just, we just weren't a setup. I wasn't really that nervous. To be honest, like I'm the lead singer I suppose you go through this it's a five-piece band. I'm the lead singer, play a bit of rhythm guitar as well, um, and we have tom and steve on guitar and both do rhythm and lead, and we have adrian, who plays a fantastic bass, and reese, who is a phenomenal drummer, um, but they're all phenomenal. You know, I I actually feel like the, the weak person in the band, um, to be honest, especially with guitar playing and stuff like that, like I used to be, I've said in previous podcasts, a couple of series ago, that you know I used to be quite apt and apt. That's not right. Adept Is that the right word? Oh, my God, my brain. I'm old and I can't take late nights. I'll get used to it when we're on world tours. But yeah, we kind of all have our own talents.
Stephen:I'm a singer and people say my voice is good. I'm quite modest with it. I don't well say modest, I just deny it. I think I think I can't hold a tune, but I just need to get better. I need to strengthen my voice a bit, be a bit more controlled sometimes and just learn how to save my voice as well.
Stephen:Last night I made a few mistakes. I don't know whether people picked up on it, maybe did missed a few notes, but all in all I I feel it went well. Uh, for me, uh, I think we all made a few little mistakes. Uh, I think reese was probably the one that carried us through the most. To be honest, um, there was a couple of endings of some of the songs that we didn't quite finish how they should have finished and they finished maybe a little bit weak, but you know, again, as a spectator, would people have noticed? I'm not, I'm not 100% sure people will have noticed, I'm not sure. But yeah, all in all, I think it went well.
Stephen:It was our first gig at the end of the day and even though, like, the band's been together like probably just under a year and we got together, I think officially, officially, our first like practice was like Januaryuary or so end of january, and we only meet like once every two weeks and we've all had holidays and stuff. So we've never really been at full strength for every single one of them. So I would say we've we've probably only had, I would say, probably like 12 or 13 practices in the year, um, probably more than that on average for the band, but like 12 where we've all been there, maybe maybe 15 um, and then a couple where you know there's a few where obviously people have been on holiday and stuff. So we've not been to full strength and they don't. I don't feel like they count, because even though you can like have a bit of a piss around and a bit of a practice, you're bumbling along through the songs because at the end of the day, you are short of a person that's filling a role, so you're always like very conscious that you're covering their role or, you know, is this how it would sound? So, yeah, so I, I'm quite proud of us, to be fair, that you know, we got through our gig last night and we'd only played a couple of songs a couple of times, um, and I think we did really well. I think we did really well and we should, we should be proud of ourselves and I think we're all looking forward to the next venture out.
Stephen:I think there's a few things to polish, as I say. Like for me, I need to saw me in a monitors. Now we have a massive, nominally brilliant piece of kit that Tom, that Tom got for us, and it's basically I don't think what it's actually called which is where we basically we plug the amp into it and we plug the speakers into the amp and it's almost like the audio controller, but it doesn't have a controller on it because it's all done through an app or through a computer program. But the great thing about it is it enables us all to buy. We've all bought a Behringer receiver thing about it is it enables us all to buy we've all bought a behringer um receiver, so basically we can all get the signal straight from this thing. And the app allows you to have a front of house, so a front of house um mix, so basically what the audience is hearing, and then we can then all go into the app on our own devices and each person and band can have a customized mix for themselves which doesn't affect the front of house, what the audience is hearing.
Stephen:Uh, and it's brilliant, but I think I don't think we took enough time last night to kind of set up properly. I think we should have had a bit more of a mess around and stuff. But, um, yeah, that's neither here nor there. Really it was, it was. It was in what. It's what it was. It's what it was.
Stephen:Um, yeah, I, I just drooled with my in-ear monitors because the whole idea is you can hear your own mix, so I can hear myself singing, so I know how close to be to the mic, so I can kind of hear what the audience is hearing, in the sense of, um, if my mic needs to go up and down, um, and I might, I might speak to tom about saying, can I have the main mix of mine as well, so I can tune my own mic and he can just fiddle with the details. If that's not a good idea, I don't know. And then I can have my own mix for my ears as well, um, flick between them, uh, but I don't know, I don't know what the best thing is. So the thing, the thing is, last night as well, the pub we were in, uh, the, the audience were great. So, thank you. If you listen to this and you turned up then. Thank you, and the reception was really good. We had great feedback.
Stephen:But the where we were, it was quite difficult because we were in like a side room and there's like a and almost like a serving hatch, there's like a door and then like a hole kind of where a window would have been kind of thing, which was open and we were trying to force the sound through there. I think that's where we struggled a bit last night, because there was a bit of reverb and obviously then we couldn't have the speakers elevated above the height of the crowd, which is normally what you do. You normally have the speakers as high as you can get it, so it blasts the sound over the top of people. So then the people at the back are getting the sound as well as the people at the front, and it's not all being absorbed by people and furnishings and stuff like that, and we couldn't really do that last night. So, uh, I believe, towards the back of the, the pub, it was quite quiet, uh, which is not ideal. Um, we know these things. Sometimes you're restricted by your own ability and sometimes you're restricted by the environment, and this was definitely an environmental thing and, um, we'll either try and fix it better if we go there again or we'll just have to just expect what we expect, uh, for next time. Uh, but people wanted us to go back. People were saying, like I hope you're coming back, like it was great, so really nice feeling to to get through that gig and it went so quick, it went so fast.
Stephen:I was almost disappointed, like I was. I've got the lyrics on my ipad just in case I need them. I had to glance at them a couple of times last night. Um, I'm gonna try and get them to memory, but it's kind of a nice safety net to have them there. Um, I know it's a bit of a cheat, but you know I'm not a professional. Um, so I am, I am gonna commit them to memory. I'm gonna try and make the extra effort so I can stand there confidently and sing the lyrics. So I actually think that would help my performance rather than feeling the need to have this safety net there. But anyway, um, what was I saying lost me on train of thought. Um, yeah, but it was just nice. It was just nice to have that.
Stephen:Oh yeah, I was scrolling through the set list, I was scrolling through for the next song and I was like because I'd gone, because we changed the set list a little bit. So when I I'd made the set list I was scrolling through for the next song and I was like because I can't because we changed the set list a little bit. So when I I made the set list with the lyrics and I was scrolling through and it was like, oh, is this like the last song with the first set already? Wow, that's, that's mad. And then I think the second set went better. So we had 10 songs in the first set, 10 songs in the second set. Um, took us about 45 minutes to get through probably each set. Maybe a bit longer for the second set because we did a couple of extra songs, um, but yeah, it just went really quick.
Stephen:And then even the break, when we was walking around, I was trying to get around to people that come to to say thank you and and before I knew it, like aid was saying, like steve, you need to come back in, we're gonna start again. I was like really, what the hell? But I probably should have looked at the clock when, uh, when we finishing, because I announced that we were going on a bit of an interval kind of thing, and I never looked at my watch and I probably should have done so. I could keep a timer on that 20 to 30 minute interval. So yeah, it was great fun.
Stephen:To be fair, I think the second part went better. We moved the speakers in the second set. I changed my microphone. There was people saying they couldn't hear me, um, and I'm not sure whether I needed to change my microphone. I think moving the speakers actually solved the issue for us. But, um, yeah, it was just the second set just seemed smoother. And the second set went even faster. Um, it was. It was crazy how quick it seemed to to go. And when I got to that last song, uh, we ended on two christmas songs last christmas and wish it could be christmas every day. And when I scrolled to the next song, and so it was last christmas, I was like hang on, that's like the last two songs now, like what's going on.
Stephen:And then we decided to play a nickelback song for the encore, which we'd only played once in aids house as an acoustic thing, decided to potentially add it to the set as a maybe encore and we kind of had a bit of a debate and then we said we were going to play it live on stage. We were doing this debate live kind of thing, like saying, does anyone want more? And everyone was like, yeah, we want another song. And I think they could have gone for a couple more songs, if I'm honest with you. And then I turned around and was like, right, we're playing this. Then and I was a bit dubious because I'd never, I'd only sung it once, and even it's a famous song. It was, uh, how, how, how you remind me by, uh, by the great nickelback. Say what you want about them, but you can't deny that's a good song and it's you're so well known. And um went down. Well, everyone was singing along and stuff. So we decided to play it. But it was kind of funny because we were like, oh, we're going to play it because it's easy. And then the guitarist was like what the chords? So I just said to the audience I said, excuse me, while we learn the encore live, before we play it. So everyone was laughing. So it was kind of good.
Stephen:It's kind of nice being the front man, because I don't have, I feel less stress, I think in some sense, because if I make a mistake, it's almost like I can kind of pass it off as deliberate of not singing a lyric. I can say, oh, I want the crowd to sing it. Or as long as it's not quite obvious that I've made a mistake, I can kind of get away with it a bit more. My guitar playing on the on the tracks is kind of not particularly necessary, it just adds a little bit more depth. So if I decide not to play guitar on a song, it doesn't make too much of a difference and um, so I feel like I I have like an easier, easiest job and kind of like being that compare and kind of being the showman and stuff.
Stephen:It comes quite naturally to me. I feel um well, especially once I'm in front of people. I kind of it comes quite naturally to me. I feel um well, especially once I'm in front of people. I kind of get that on stage persona, um, and it was nice last night to be in that position and just bringing joy to people and um, it gets me a bit wet-eyed, to be honest, because that's what I've always loved to do and I, you know, say you want, but you know, people say I always have dreams to do stuff. But I feel like my vocation in life Was to partly be on stage Just entertaining In whatever capacity. It just brings me so much joy. So I'm hoping that we can Carry on with Octagon Temple.
Stephen:We have a Instagram. If you would like to go and follow the band, it is at octagon temple band on instagram and, uh, you can obviously send us messages and and follow us on there. Um, at the moment I've got it. It's like you have to request to be a fault to follow, but I'm trying to take that off so anyone can just follow, because it's a bit annoying because I have to go in and like, accept everything. So I'm trying to get it so like it'll just go through, kind of thing. But yeah, so if you go there, just have a look. We've only got a couple pictures at the moment. I'm hoping this week I can edit some of the videos that people have sent us and do some little reels and stuff like that for the, for the um, for the Instagram.
Stephen:The first gig. All in all, I think for the first gig, like, I feel it went really well. I feel it went well. I think you know we've got that one out of the way now. Um, that was the nerve-wracking one like what people are going to think of us are like, because we think we're not too bad, like we're not, we're quite modest, but we think we're pretty good. Um, and the feedback from last night that like kind of shows, like I've got a few, I'll read a few out, that I've got me phones I might post these on to onto the octagon temple, is there just as, just as a little montage but and a couple of feedbacks we have. So these are from friends and friends of friends and family and some work colleagues that came. So so one of my mates for so this was your actual first time playing out live. If so, what a great start. I hope you enjoyed it and there's plenty more to come.
Stephen:Um, someone else said sorry you couldn't stay to the end, but really enjoyed it. Very impressive for a first gig. You have a bit. You had a bit of a crowd cheering the band. Um, someone else said well done, steve. Octagon heaven. Uh, sounding good. Um.
Stephen:And then someone said I've just seen a video from your gig. Pretty amazing, mate. Hope it went well for you guys. Um, and then my, my mother-in-law said you should all feel very proud of yourselves. You did an amazing job and we've had a great night. Thank you all, um, but yeah, people, people have pretty much all said the same thing. Like you know, they enjoyed themselves and and you know everything was, everything went well and there's like a few little mistakes. But I spoke to my missus this morning my wife should I say Such a corrup, corrup, corrup that word, oh God, I think my tongue doesn't work in my mouth today yes, and she said, like you know, having them little hiccups and mistakes kind of makes it more human, makes it real and kind of connection to the audience and like, even though, like, we'd love to not make any errors at all, but the odd hiccups gonna happen and uh, hopefully, as the front man, I can kind of smooth that out with the audience. Uh, we did have a yeah, we did have like granny invade the stage, um, but we kind of we I kind of helped deal with that a little bit.
Stephen:It was kind of a bit of nerve-wracking. I was kind of like what are we doing here? I can see why, when big acts get people in the stage, how nervous it makes them. I mean, it was our first gig and I was thinking what's this woman going to do. So I think when you're that famous, you probably think what is this person doing? Because you do get fanatics, don't you? So, yeah, but I think the band's going to meet up this week to kind of discuss it, get some feedback and then hopefully get some gigs. I sorted an email out for us and the Instagram page, so hopefully we'll start getting some followers and we can get names out there and get some gigs going and just hone our skills. And first crew, then the world, I suppose. Yeah. So if you'd like to follow the band it's octagon temple band on instagram we'll hopefully see you at a venue soon. Fantastic.
Stephen:Thank you very much for listening, listening to me ramble about the band once more, but it's a big part of my life at the moment. I'm still got the other band bubbling away in the background and the only next thing we've got booked in is one for the other band members. He's having a party next year, so we're all going to play there. So that's the first march. We definitely have another one booked in, but yeah, it's just going to be getting stuff sorted and getting our names out there. So I've got a couple lined up so hopefully we can get a few booked in for January, february time. And, yeah, get our names around. I'm looking forward to it. I feel really good after that first one, so I'm going to stop rambling about it now. I'm still at a bit of a high.
Stephen:I think I just wanted to share with you guys and update you on what's going on and uh, but, yeah, if you just go and follow us on Instagram and you'll get all your updates there as well, so, um, yeah, thank you very much, uh for listening. You can also follow me on Instagram. Uh, infinite Prattle. Um, and you can subscribe if you like. You can go to the YouTube channel and watch my vlog that I did when I was in scotland. There'll be more of them to come. Um, I may even do a little vlog about the band and share some videos and, you know, inspire some videos of the band within that video. I think that might be a nice thing to do, uh, and share that out there, uh, but in the meantime, take care of yourselves, remember, keep on prattling you.
Stephen:You've been listening to Infinite Drattle. Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, go back and listen to some others and please continue to listen. Your support is much appreciated. Please like, share, comment and subscribe, and I'll speak to you all again soon. Take care.
