The night started With Meisha. Sadly when they came on stage at 8pm the venue was almost deserted.
To make things worse the sound was awful. The keyboards were way too prominent and this detracted from the overall sound and enjoyment. The dozen or so fans present were vocal in their support but with so few people there was simply no atmosphere.
The vocals were good and the music might have been good with decent sound but its hard to tell when the sound is so bad. By the end of their set the audience had grown to around 30 people – still an embarrassingly poor turnout.
Next up were Suzerain, who had a much rockier sound than Meisha. They too had sound problems but these were at least resolved fairly early on. Disturbingly the keyboard player was getting electric shocks from his microphone – never good !
By this time the crowd was up to 60-70 people – an improvement but not great.
By the time headliners Auction for the promise club came on, the crowd was a more reasonable size. The three piece put in a good performance but again the sound was poor and this meant that a lot of the melodies were lost in the mix and this really did mar the performance. Despite the poor sound the band were enjoyable to watch, and in a decent venue would be well worth going to see. Sadly despite its history the 100 club is not a good venue – the layout is bad with a pillar blocking the middle of the stage and the acoustics are bad.
This was my first time seeing the bands on tonight’s bill. All three bands did well but the poor sound and low turnout meant their wasn’t much of an atmosphere despite their best efforts. In a decent venue with a good crowd this could have been a great night instead of just a good night.
If you get chance to see Auction for the promise club then you should definitely go and check them out.
