Wednesday 5 December 2012

Matthew Rigby / Waves

Name: Matthew Rigby

Band: Waves (facebook.com/wavesuk)

Where: London, UK.

My name's Matthew, I sing in an acoustic project from London called Waves.

About 18 months ago, whilst under our previous name, we were asked to play a fairly well known venue in South East London as main support. With the chance to play close to home and to bring all our mates along we thought we'd give it a pop. 

In the build up to the show, I was getting phone calls every other day [from the promoter] insuring we were bringing enough people to the show and explaining our payment on this basis, he even woke me up at 6am on a fucking Sunday.

Upon arrival to this "reputable" venue we were greeted by the barman, who had no idea who we were and what was happening, other than that the sound man was running late and the promoter was on holiday. There was absolutely no promotion for the show whatsoever, except for one poster up in the shitter.

Still eager to play despite a little frustrated at the lack of promoter and sound man. We had a few games of pool to kill time till the sound guy turned up.

About 9pm, an hour after we should've played and no other bands in sight, the sound guy turned up fucked out of his brain "ready" to set us up.


We got ready for sound check and explained our usual set up, he completely ignores us and asks us to play as soon as sound check has finished.

Still no sign of the other bands, we agree to play first to our mates and the barman.

Halfway through our set another band turn up, peer inside the door and leave again. Salt in the wound. 

About the same time the sound man and the bar man start playing pool, paying absolutely no attention [to us] whatsoever. We ask about five times for more in our monitors to no avail, so end up getting one of our mates to do it.


Then the powers that be cut the power and pulled us off mid-set because they'd decided to close.

Very annoyed, we ask the sound man about our fee. He has no idea what we're talking about and says he'll going outside to call the promoter.


He then gets in his car and fucks off back to his hole. 

We tried to call the promoter ourselves from the number he'd called us on about 20 times to make sure we held up our end of the deal.


And found that the number was no longer active.

All I can say is that I'm sure it's not the only time he's pulled this shit and if so, he must go through a A LOT of sim cards.



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