Where have you played since?Um, there are too many to mention, there is a definitive list on our website, but the highlights include Bath Spa Uni, Bournemouth Uni, The Bierkeller (again), Moles Club, The Stroud Sub Rooms and the Rescue Rooms in Nottingham (Rock City’s Baby brother)
What’s the best gig you’ve played and why?
Leese – Glastonbury Sub Rooms – They had lost their license the week before, so only had a limited range of soft drinks (and some kind of weird mushroom tea.) Everyone was smuggling in vodka, and the support band was Daisy Cutter – A Devon Thrash Band. Then, on the way home, it snowed, so we were doing 10 – 15 miles an hour up the M5 until we persuaded the driver to stop, and we had a snowball fight on the hard shoulder.
Marcus – That rare gig where everyone on stage is really enjoying themselves, and so they are feeding the energy into the crowd, where it is being fed back again.
Matt – For sheer craziness Boxing Day 2005 – we played in a pub with a standing capacity of maybe 50 people, before we got the bands kit in. (And at the time we also had a keyboard player.) – At one count there was well over the legal limit of people in the place, and they were outside in the street as well so we were surrounded. We had to do so many encores, that we more or less ended up playing the whole set twice.
Pete - What's the best gig you've played and why? The Bristol Bierkeller was a great gig because we were all so fired up for it and the crowd reaction was wild, exciting and electric. Pretty amazing considering most of the crowd had never heard us before but they danced to every song and screamed for more.
What do you think of the local music scene?
Marcus - Aside from the perrennial problems of lack of funding, venues and sheer apathy by the "music loving" public who are just content to be spoonfed with easily digested formulaic pop porridge, and there seems to be no real intelligent rebellion in todays youth, it's been replaced by "gangsta culture" and lack of engagement.. moan moan, whinge whinge, it's not like it was in my day, etc..
Leese - What music scene?!!?!
Matt – For a town like Cheltenham, with the university and Gloucester on its door step, it is in the main undersupported. There are a lot of venues trying to put live music one, so I don’t know whether its oversupply, too many bands refusing to play as they wont get more than a case of beer, or simply too many people who are in bands and are busy rehearsing in the week when other bands are playing. (Or it could simply be apathy)
Pete - What do you think of the local music scene? There are plenty of talented local bands and musicians around, but little way for them to play to bigger crowds as we don’t have many larger acts playing in the few big venues Gloucestershire offers. The scene still needs development and support from acts, venues, press and radio.
What’s the best thing that’s happened to the band so far?
Managing to spend some decent time in a studio without falling out, Pete playing a whole gig without breaking a string, 2 BBC Radio appearances, the growing friendship we have with each other, the way we can listen to recordings from 2 years ago and see how far we have travelled.
What else should we know about you?
We are currently in negotiation with a number of festivals for this year, including some paid appearances, which is always nice. On top of that we organise regular shows (they tend to be out of town though) where we get large numbers of people attend, so if any other bands out there want to talk to us about playing at one of our shows, look us up.
According to the Pringles Unsung competition we are amongst the top 20 unsigned bands in the Uk currently, and u can come see us play at the 2 Pigs Cheltenham on march 16th! See you there.
An autumn tour round some of the Fleshpots of Europe is in the Early stages of planning, so we may well be on the lookout for someone to do sound, lights and just drive us about.
http://www.myspace.com/wearethepresent, http://www.the-present.co.uk, moonbeamer72@hotmail.com