After Saturday’s show in the unusual setting of a grammar school hall to a crowd of people in black ties and cocktail dresses (often both at the same time!) we were back for a Sunday slot at our favourite live venue – the Duck and Drake in Leeds – where anyone wearing a tuxedo would almost certainly get chinned.

After too many years of playing to contemplate, I’ve come to the conclusion that actually the critical ingredient in a successful gig isn’t the strength of your playing, the style of your music or the length of your hair (*offers prayers of thanks*). Instead it is driven by a weird nexus of the venue, the crowd and the band’s ability to communicate. We’ve done some gigs over the last couple of years that have been riven with equipment failure, woeful playing, injured vocal chords and muddy sound and yet somehow have been roaringly triumphant. Conversely, we’ve played gigs that have been technically faultless but have had all the convivial atmosphere and joie de vivre of a depressives’ convention.

The Duck and Drake is steeped in music. It is built on live bands and real beers and as such it attracts a varied clientele of people in tassels, hats, leather and beardage. People come because there’s a band on, rather than walking through the door and rolling their eyes as they see some lads carrying in some amps. In fact, over the past couple of years we’ve started to actually recognise some of the crowd

Prior to the gig I was a little worried. The previous night had been oddly unrewarding, but in the tradition of “mach schau“ we’d done a full hour and half without a break and I’d stretched my voice beyond its limits. There was a time that back-to-back gigs in those sort of circumstances would have meant a set of me gargling ineffectually into the mic like one of those guys who lost their vocal chords in ‘nam and have to speak through a throat mic. Today my throat is, luckily, made of sterner stuff.

So it was that 2 hours of fabulousness ensued as we blasted through the set with brio – feeding off the alchemy of the crowd to blitz the various musical errors we committed into the dust. Halfway through the second set, my voice had been reduced to rubble, but thanks to my newly-discovered screaming technique and the liberal application of echo on the vocals I’ve discovered I can kind of hide it.

Highlights included a box of Iranian jammy dodgers, some Northern Soul/Wigan Pier dance madness, pork pie hats, a man with approximately £300′s worth of skunk in his inside pocket, a pint spilt on the electrics, some guys from Newcastle, rapping in a flat cap, £80 in a bucket and the promise of more regular gigs.

If you came, thank you for doing so: genuinely it’s the crowd what makes the gig.

Setlist

A ludicrous 30-odd songs these days, and we missed some out!!

1. Substitute: The Who
2. I Still Don’t Understand: Superset
3. Where Have All the Good Times Gone: The Kinks
4. Queen Bitch: David Bowie
5. Bottles of Pills: Superset
6. Little Green Bag: The George Baker Selection
7. Paperback Writer: The Beatles
8. Everything I Want: Superset
9. All Your Love: John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers
10. Beetlebum: Blur
11. All Or Nothing: The Small Faces
12. Come Together: The Beatles
13. 404: Superset
14. Seven Nation Army: The White Stripes
15. As Soon As You Thought It Was Over: Superset
16. Bang Bang: Nancy Sinatra
17. In The End: Superset
18. Can’t Explain: The Who
19. All The Love in the World: Superset
20. Black Dog: Led Zeppelin
21. Last Nite: The Strokes
22. Gangsters: The Specials
23. Until Tomorrow: Superset
24. Are You Gonna Be My Girl: Jet
25. Eye Know: De La Soul
26. Waterfall: The Stone Roses
27. Tin Soldier: The Small Faces
28. A Town Called Malice: The Jam
29. Green Onions: Booker T and the MGs
30. Step On: The Happy Mondays
31. I’ve Got You (I Feel Good): James Brown
32. Sympathy for the Devil: The Rolling Stones
33. Loaded: Primal Scream
34. Communication Breakdown: Led Zeppelin
35. Money: The Beatles

On the subject of rapping

Way back when, we used to do a vaguely comedic rap. As one of our songs ended, we’d strike up with the rhythm section of the Stone Roses’ I  Am The Resurrection, over which I would perform The Only Rhyme That Bites by long-forgotten Mancunian rapping also-ran MC Tunes.

Over recent weeks, we’ve been toying with Eye Know by De La Soul and once more dipping our toes in the world of hip-hop. It’s a fabulous tune but, as you will know, based around rapping. Lord knows what’s possessed us, but with the aid of a sample trigger (apparently) it’s become possible to actually do a song like that. So it was for 3 glorious minutes I found myself bouncing at the front of the stage, in a flat cap and beard, rapping. We might even do it again, but it is waaaaaay out of my comfort zone.

I respectfully submit that we are the only band you will ever see that will play Bowie, Led Zep, De La Soul and Blur in the same set. Consider yourselves lucky!

Via some circuitous route we know some guys from Wakefield Hockey Club – a venerable and successful sporting institution – and have done a few gigs for people associated with them. One of them, last summer, saw the first recorded instance of breakdancing at a Superset gig and very nearly someone leaping from a balcony.

They’re quite the crowd!

Saturday saw us turn up to play their annual awards ceremony. Now if you know or have seen us, you’ll know that we are generally the following things:

1. Shambolic
2. Badly dressed
3. Sweaty
4. Extremely loud

Thus, when we turned up at the venue – the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield (ex-school of The Crossbow Cannibal and the Acid Bath Murderer, fact fans!!!) we were a little taken aback to see that it was:

1. Huge
2. Posh
3. Populated by people bedecked in finery

The stage was of sufficient size to have comfortably played host to every single member of the Brand New Heavies, Queen and everyone who has ever played in a band with Johnny Marr. Colossal.

Luckily, the size was such that it allowed us to deploy the enormous banner that Brendan constructed in his own free time – see the above picture for a sense of scale and wonderment at B’s stitching. If the band ever goes tits up, a career in haberdashery awaits.

As a gig, it was a little hard to gauge. I do vaguely worry about the band’s suitability for formal occasions, given our general noisy scruffiness. The support act (of a kind) was a 3 course dinner, some speeches and some award presentations. The crowd were in tuxedos and frankly saliva-inducing dress/stiletto combinations. Everyone was seated around large round tables and ice buckets and so on. It wasn’t your typical rock crowd, that much is for certain.

As we stood behind the curtain for what seemed like 47 hours, it seemed like the crowd would be extremely boisterous. When we actually started playing however, it was 10:30 and people were already drifting outside for fresh air, going into town and so on. Also, they were full of hefty portions of food and presumably a fair deal of beer. Resultingly, it was an oddly muted affair from where we were stood. While we played pretty crisply, the huge cavernous setting, the height of the stage, the distance from the crowd and the general ambience meant that it felt relatively subdued. There was some dancing, but no breakdancing. There was applause, but none of the riotous, bellicose cheering we got from the guys last time around.

We’re perhaps more used to standing pretty much toe-to-toe with a crowd, so if we didn’t come across as well as perhaps we should it’s just a function of the general stage/auditorium layout. After an hour and a half of rock, we judged it the right time to break out the DJing and a series of disco classics got a few more people onto the floor.

So performance-wise enjoyable and largely very crisp, but as an event somewhat stymied by the format of the evening and venue. Nonetheless, a good time was had by all, and we hope to back for next year’s show with some Freddie Mercury style stage moves so we can do the venue more justice!