Second Keep your ears Peeled at Bar Monsta, Camden on
Friday 16th February 2007
Lineup: Digital - the New Order / Joy Division tribute act and Rolo McGinty from The Woodentops doing a DJ set
With the launch a reasonable success, the night was back on track!
But it wasn't out of the woods yet. I couldn't make it free entry every month, and there was the fear that charging to get in might cut the numbers.
Once again I was looking for a band who could pull the crowds.
I thought of getting The Smyths back - it was nearly 6 months since they last played and had shown they could pull a good crowd. Unfortunately they were fully booked, but they suggested a band they often played with (and indeed shared members with) Re:Order - a New Order tribute act.
I looked into it, but it was going to be pricey, and I wasn't sure that New Order had the same kind of pulling power that The Smiths had.
Then I came across a less well known but equally good tribute act called Digital who did both Joy Division and New Order songs.
The lead singer was telling me that they got fed up never having enough time to do as many songs as they wanted, so I asked them if they would do two sets - one as New Order and one as Joy Division. They jumped at the chance, and only charged $pound;250, which was half of what it would have cost for any other New Order tribute. Bargain!
Along the way I'd been speaking to Rollo McGinty from The Woodentops whose album Giant I listened to a lot back in the 80s. Alas although the band had reformed, I couldn't afford to book them - but he did offer to DJ for a very reasonable rate.
Things were looking good, until someone told me that Bar Monsta had been closed down. I immediately went down to investigate and sure enough the door had been boarded up. Talk about disaster!
Fortunately, I managed to get hold of Mick, and I won't go into the details of the problems the venue went through, but suffice to say he was on top of it.
Everything was looking good, until the night of the gig when I got a phone call from the band, "We've just arrived at the venue and they've told us there is an R&B night tonight".
It turned out that the landlord had taken back the venue and got Mick to run it for them. But they wanted to do an R&B night that night, so instead of a 2am finish, we had to be out by 11pm. Bang went the featured artist set of HMHB that month!
The night went well otherwise, Digital was a great band in their own right, and playing fabulous material. For me I'd have preferred New Order to play first and Joy Division to headline but they preferred New Order to headline and at that price I couldn't really argue.
Rolo's set was fabulous, not enough of his own material was my only complaint, and I'm not sure many people knew who he was. But it was an honour to have him there.
The best thing about the evening was that not only was there a good turnout, but I recognised many faces from the month before - a sure sign that the new format was working and we were starting to build a following of the more discerning Camdenite who was over the moon that we were playing HMHB, Mary Chain, Fall as well as lesser known gems.
Read on: Third Keep your ears Peeled Night with Mr Solo (from Dave Devant and his Spirit Wide)