Venues we've played at

(those I remember, anyway)

North South Dining Room
Heritage Hotel
Breakers Pool Hall
Governer Hindmarsh Hotel
Adelaide Unibar
The Cloisters
Queens Head Hotel
The Brecknock Hotel
The Equinox Bistro
Gaslight Tavern
Brompton Park Hotel
Milang Football Club
Aldgate Football Club
Federal Hotel
Red Lion Hotel
Elizabeth Tavern
Gepps Cross Hotel
Brahma Lodge Hotel
Sailmaster Hotel
Lighthouse Tavern
Alford Hotel
Cornucopia Hotel

Sailmaster Gig

North Haven, SA - November 27, 2004.

You could be forgiven if you thought Odd Sox plays sea shanties, judging by the nautical nature of the venues we’ve played at recently! This hotel is a large modern venue, built overlooking one of Adelaide’s marinas. We played at floor level in the main bar room, with the dining area visible about fifty metres away, the boats at the moorings in sight beyond the outside decking, on which were outdoor tables and chairs. The social club had their christmas show and booked us as their preference. The publican here apparently doesn’t like bands so I doubt we’ll play here again. Never-the-less, not a bad evening.

The room was big, long, and carpeted. This made the sound different yet again. Though licensed to take over 500 people, I reckon we were playing to around fifty at any given time. A lot of young ones went and played pokies awhile, but they hung around. So in numbers, not too bad.

We only got to play for three hours, which made it relatively light work as gigs go. We only played three sets (the middle one being about an hour long).

First set was a bit stilted, I realised I had no foldback on our side of the stage. At the end of it Sox and Steve were shaken, thought it had been terrible. I think that’s because they normally are next to each other on stage and this time I was next to the drums and Steve on the wing, they couldn’t hear each other. When I think of some gigs I’ve played, I’m personally always thankful when I can hear ANYONE at all, myself especially!

Anyway, the second set started in the same hesitant vein, but picked up massively after High Voltage (which we pulled off as well as we ever have). The audience was visibly responding to the back of the dining room. This was a very long set, and some of the band were feeling tired by the end of it. Nancy threw in (unexpectedly) a medley of old fifties numbers at the end, audience loved it but rattled some of the band. Set us up okay for the last set.

Before we knew it, time to pack up and leave. For once (the only time?) we actually finished at the advised time and were home around 1am. This would be one of the easiest shows we’ve done in ages.

From my perspective it was good fun, not a huge crowd but big enough to get a sense of audience appreciation. Dancers were up for most of the second and third sets. I certainly enjoyed being near the drums (but I think that will be the last time for a while). I was experimenting a bit with different styles of rhythm chops, as always trying to think of ways to emphasise the music in a way that fits with our 4/4 style and doesn’t leave me or the listener either confused or bored. There certainly is more to rhythm guitar than first meets the ear!

Lighthouse Gig 13/11/04

Lighthouse Gig, Port Adelaide, November 13 2004

A week later we played at the Ales and Sails Hotel, by the Lighthouse at Port Adelaide. The pub is better known as The Lighthouse.

Once again, played in converted dining room, this time on the floor. The pub didn’t have meals on, so we set up a couple hours before playing and had a sound check about a half hour before starting at 9.00 pm

There were about 40 people at the start of the show, of which we knew about half. Not too many more came in (I think the peak numbers was 60 at most if you include the front bar crew in the attached room), but there were still 40 people there four and a half hours later when we stopped.

We played five sets of slightly more rocky music than at Walaroo. The barstaff liked us and we’re now booked to play there on new years eve.

Steve was more comfortable on his leads, Sox appeared to be enjoying himself more (he had been a bit ill the week before). The tempos were much more regular than they had been, and the sound check made quite a difference. Only problem I thought we had was a consistent one, starts of the songs were really sloppy.

We were all much more pleased with this show, no major disasters. Each gig is a noticeable improvement to the last, the next should be a ripper.

Cornucopia Gig, Wallaroo, 6 Nov 2004

Flowing from the Alford show came another gig, at a nearby town called Wallaroo two weeks later. It was in a old hotel, huge and rambling and full of mysterious angles and passages. The show was a private one, a surprise party for the pair who had been publicans for the past ten years, put on by the locals. Over 200 people paid $20 each for a ticket, the pub was closed for the night and the front bar invited into the dining hall for the party. Amazingly, despite the honoured couple being the publicans, it was a total surprise for them. They were flabbergasted. The proceeds for the night went towards a holiday voucher for the lucky couple. They must have been quite special for such a show to be put on in their honour. We played from eight to about 1.30 am on a long shallow stage. The night was organised by one of the barmaids, who had seen us at Alford and liked us so much that she asked us to play at her pub.

The people really enjoyed it, had people dancing from the second song. A handful came up from Adelaide, which was really good to see. The locals loved it.

We played four sets. Technically, our greatest problem was in the levels department, we didn’t have a sound check and the acoustics of the area worked real weird (levels were significantly less than at practice and the treble had to be down). We tended to accelerate the tempo as we played, which was also a consistent problem. Overall however, it was pretty good. The publican said that if he hadn’t been leaving, he would have had us play there once a month.

Pretty cool, for a band’s second gig.

Alford Gig VIII

So, there we were in the dining room area at the Alford Hotel. A pretty cool show proceeded to happen. We had them up and dancing midway through the first, quieter, set.

We bring along our own gear, including coloured lights (!), so we usually have things humming nicely in a technical sense as regards sound production on stage. The real master of this is Terry. He also owns the PA system we use, the electric heart of the band. He controls it all from his mixing desks and racked up gear, usually set up at rear of stage.
So, at Alford, there we were in the dining alcove, having done a sound check hours before to an almost empty pub, about to play a song we’d only just decided upon. And this was knowing that there were a couple people in the crowd who were representing other pubs and clubs in nearby towns, a truly tupperware kind of moment. And it worked.

Alford Gig VII

And, as we like to be on stage as much as possible, out we went to play the song we had just chosen.

New note … I’m wondering whether I should put up gig lists somewhere on the web?

The way this blog is developing might be becoming obvious by now. I will tell a long term story, in this case our first gig. That gives me something I can always write about which is interesting to myself, and I hope to you, my valued reader. Interspersed through these long topic postings will be diary style bits, a running record of our activities and events. In other words, I’ll write what I like within limits set by my devotion to you.

Alford Gig VI

As always, however, the spirit of reinventing the wheel had taken hold in our band. The first sign of this malady appeared when we had spent a while figuring out where Steve should be located on stage so that he could change from keyboard to guitar without cramping either him or the rest of the band. That had taken a while. So it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise to find us, at 5 minutes to eight, all huddled together, as bands often do in such moments, undergoing a collective self doubt in our ability to play the first song. With a minute to go, we decided to put another song in its place.

Alford Gig V

Nancy had sorted out, through a process of trial and error and consulting with the other members of the band, five brackets of music, the last being an encore if required. We’d all sort of agreed to it at our last practice the previous Wednesday. So you’d think all would be okay for the first bracket, the first song of which was one we had been playing together in public as a six piece band for a couple of years.

Alford Gig IV

The Odd Sox is an all party five piece outfit. Nancy sings, Sox drums, Terry plays Bass, Steve plays guitar, keyboard and harmonica, and I, Mark, play rhythm guitar. We have a repertoire which varies from country rock adaptions, through classic blues, rock’n’roll, to hard rock verging on heavy. In other words, our music varies from Johnny Cash to ACDC. The interesting thing is that, as Requiem, we managed to pull this off in all sorts of venues to all sorts of crowds and we did return gigs at most places we played. Anyway, back to Alford (which, by the way, was a ‘return’ gig as we had previously played there on Easter Saturday) …

Alford Gig III

We knew there were a couple bands playing up the road at Port Broughton, a holiday oriented town many times bigger than Alford, one at least of which had a bit of a ‘name’. In other words, there was competition, and some people at least were chosing to come and hear us. Another good sign.

I’ll leave this here, see if there is any response to this blog. If there is, I will continue as the spirit takes me, hoping to document in some way the fantastic experience of being in a working rock’n’roll band. It’ll be a great story I am sure.

Alford Gig II

It was a cool gig. We were set up in the dining alcove by 5pm, when some of us observed a civil wedding ceremony in the courtyard lying at the centre of the pub. Then it was time for a quick sound check, and then time to join the other diners out in the courtyard for a barbeque. There seemed to be more people around than there had been the Easter Saturday when we had last played here.

We were due to start at 8pm, the time the publican had advertised in weeks previous (she said she’d got “lots” of phone calls making enquiries). There were a few familiar faces, but there were lots that I didn’t know. People seemed to be coming in from surrounding towns in ones and twos. This is always a good sign.

Alford Gig - 2nd Oct 2004 - I

Alford Hotel – Saturday, 2 October 2004

Odd Sox played its first ever gig last Saturday night at the Alford, a farming hamlet lying roughly midway on the Kadina-Port Broughton Road in South Australia’s lower mid North region, just beyond the copper triangle at the top of the Yorke Peninsula. Twenty dusty miles from the coast at Tikara, Alford is a spot on a straight two lane highway where is collected a bowling club, church, primary school (soon to close), fire station, war memorial, tennis courts, deli and semi-permanent garage sales. It has an advertised population of sixty people. It also has a hotel, the present building dating from the early 20th century, situated on the South Western edge of the town on one of Alford’s half dozen or so streets. You can see the highway from its shady front verandah. Here we played our first gig as Odd Sox.

We are a five piece rock band, and were all members of ‘Requiem’, the predecessor band which floated around Adelaide for a while, playing about a gig a month for the last three years. You could say it was Odd Sox playing a requiem for Requiem. The gig itself was advertised as Requiem, but we knew the truth.