Epiphany I

A while ago, I wrote a post about songwriting aptly named 'songwriting.' In it I made reference to my band, Delayed Finality. Well it is now my duty to tell you why I can't carry on with Delayed Finality. It was, as says, all down to an epiphany.

Bands, especially student bands, tend to phase in and out in all matters and styles over years and if your in a town with very little musical input then it's not hard to see why. If I ask you how many famous bands come from my home town, Lincoln, chances are you probably won't be able to list many. I can give one. I Was A Cub Scout were a 2 piece synthrock band from Lincoln that got some decent airplay and even managed to play at Download Festival. Thier drummer is now drumming live for La Roux; pretty good stuff. But that's from a population 85,000. Two people cracked Lincoln and got out. And then only one of them got further. That's another 84,999 people. "What's this gotta do with your band?" I hear you ask. Well, it goes to show nothing is impossible (a personal quote of mine). It may seem that Lincoln is lacking on the entertainment front; a place where nothing's going to get out its Roman walls. We always had that 'what if?' feeling. We tried but I think it was down to one pivotal point, on what I like to call, the LLC - Lincoln Live Circuit - which were mainly pubs. Good pubs.

Our favourites were two venues that were brimming with people back in the 2008: The Travellers Rest and The Duke of Wellington. The Travs (as it was called), under control of Aurora Promotions, was set up in a function room and had a basic but brilliant set up. A stage, 3 microphones, a drumkit, light effects, the works. Del-Fin's first gig was held there with about 5 other bands. I can remember one band was playing rather early on in the evening. It was their last gig and there was about 3 people watching them. Then along came 4 teenagers who didn't know what they were doing and stole the show with over 50 people watching. Us. It was a great feeling. I got the chance to perform with my friends and show these people who turned up what we could create. Rowan a chance to show of his solo stuff too. Everyone was happy.

When we played The Duke of Wellington (fronted by Bivouac Promotions) it wasn't as heaving as the Travellers Rest but it was a nice easy performance. No faults; just kept it real. That was really good too. A few more performances happened after that. But then disaster and what I think was the beginning of the end. Our then drummer called it a day days before we meant to go stage. We had to improvise with our knowledge and so with the help of Rowan, we created some drum tracks to play along to live. It wasn't the best. It was wierd playing without a drummer and lacked the realism. But we soldiered on, despite the fault. It showed us that nothing could keep us down. A few weeks later, the Travellers Rest closed down which meant Aurora didn't have a venue and Delayed Finality had lost thier prime hotspot. We tried to revive ourself with a Jimmi and Rowan acoustic gig at the Millers Arms (Bivouac Promos were kicked out of the Duke of Wellington and resided there) but the venue wasn't cut out for bands. There was people fighting for space to perform in; it was a good job it was just me and Rowan. If we were a full 4 piece, we would have been in the same predicament. Although it was good, it wasn't much compared to our first gig. The end was nigh. And it took me until recently to think that it wasn't going to last much longer. But, since I have called it off, it gives us all a chance to try something different. Since Rowan's off to Uni and I'm not until next year, it cleaned the air a bit for him to focus on what he want's to focus on, especially for his course. The same goes with me. I've got a route that hopefully in time will get clearer and clearer. So in part two, I'm going to give you the second half of my epiphany.

As it lays then, Finality is now not delayed but On Time. I wrote a lot of songs (about 20) in three years (Okay, 19 and bit) which is some feat. Some were recorded. Others never got to see the light of day at all. But the band was something special. We didn't spend hours hidden away in a garage playing only covers to tell people 'we're in a band.' We created our own music. We recorded our own music. We went out to entertain. We were, in essence, a semi-professional band. We were in an ACTIVE band. We didn't take ourself too seriously. One song I wrote called Equilibrium was originally called Donderkoodal which came about when I got bored and started to type random words into Google. We had an instrumental break called Attack of the Killer Tomato, named by Matt. It must have been a good job we didn't act too seriously because if one of us let us down, we'd be even more dissapointed. I think we got it whilst it at this stage because if it was at all any bigger and we realised we wouldn't get any further and dissapoint more, not just ourselves. All the hype, money, amount of people who saw us is just a bi-product. What really counted was the experience and memories that we created ourselves...That's the important thing really.