The buildup to my first gig in 8 months, and it’s a cover night–of all things.
Nomar
The buildup to my first gig in 8 months, and it’s a cover night–of all things.
Writing this post-gig, but it’s been 8 long months since I’ve last played in a show, April 2024. It’s now February 2025. Jesus Christ. ANYWAYS!
Last time I played a show was Slowdive Night organized by my former bandmate, pretty amazing turnout I must say. But I digress, I voluntarily chose not to play any more shows after Slowdive Night to give myself a rest after balancing the student life and “rockstar” life for the first quarter of 2024– little did I know that was the last gig I ever played with that band; a short-lived yet learning experience. After all that I really found myself in a place where I was torn between reviving that band or doing my own solo stuff, so what came out of that was the inanotherworld “low hemoglobin” EP as copium for losing that band but it’s all in good spirit now. Long story short, EP released around late 2024, didn’t really give a hoot about playing live as inanotherworld as I never planned to. But the way I was supported by an immense amount of friends sort of made me change my mind, along with the sudden itch to want to play live…
During gigs I’d go to and meet with my friends, they’d ask me about inanotherworld and when would I start playing, I’d always answer with, “Well, if may gustong magbook saken it’s fine with me I guess.” And I was booked. For a My Bloody Valentine cover night. My God. Kind of a full circle moment if you think about it, last gig I played with my former band was a Slowdive cover night, and my first gig as inanotherworld was a My Bloody Valentine cover night, hashtag shoegaze– but in all seriousness, it was not a smooth journey although it was a fun one!
My Bloody Valentine is no stranger to fucked up tunings and a stupid amount of effects to go with, so it was gonna be a challenge to cover all along. Thank God for gear nerds and nerds in general, my goats; picking songs to cover was one thing, learning them was another. But there was another piece of the puzzle, learning MY songs. So me and my bandmates had to learn more than just the MBV songs, on my part I had to relearn them because I haven’t played them since I worked on the EP. Our first ever practice was rocky as hell and I don’t blame the studio but I do think the studio had to do with something during our first practice being somehow unproductive, and I started to get nervous after that because we all had to find available days to rehearse together and it wasn’t easy considering everyone’s extremely different schedules with only less than a month to practice.
Come the first week of February, second ever practice was a day before the gig and I was super nervous because what if the others didn’t practice the parts proper- BAM! Nailed it. Super awesome and productive, the vibes were in the air that day, but one song kept us stalled. The one unreleased song I wanted to play. Good thing there’s one more practice on the day of the gig!
D-Day, Feb. 13th, 2025. I just woke up and thought, “This is it whatever happens, happens.” and the whatever did happen, and it was the moment of the night for me. But before that, I arrive to the rehearsal studio and I’m just filled nervousness and anxiety “what if the people don’t fuck with my songs” “fuck i hope we dont fuck up” “i hope i do good tonight” yet we still pull off at the final rehearsal, we got the new song done to where it’s playable by everyone despite the short time to practice, okay good this is good but whatever happens happens, right? Riiiiiiight. I was agitated the entire car ride to Mow’s, even leading up to dropping off the stuff backstage. So we get there just as the first band has started playing, and I’m already panicking internally at this point, like goddamn I won’t get enough downtime to warm up in Mow’s. We drop our stuff off backstage, get our wristbands and the others went off to eat while I went backstage with my partner and sat down just contemplating what to do when I’m onstage and in front of people who went there to see MBV covers. First band is done, we’re up next. In my head I just say, “Here we go, no turning back now.” As a way to hype myself up a little bit, set up n everything and I introduce us as inanotherworld, I play the first notes of one of my songs while extremely nervous but fuck it I’m already here I wanted this. And the rest of the performance was a blur for me. I barely even remember most of the shit I pulled onstage, but what really stood out for me during our performance and I will cherish this memory dearly because it’s such a funny thing to me, is when we played the new song. It was awesome, not because we pulled it off, but because we fucked up so many times that I just didn’t care anymore, one muted their guitar, the drummer just had a confused look on their face the entire time and forgot the sequences I loved every single bit of that part of the performance, arguably my favorite part of the performance if we don’t talk about the MBV covers.
Gig’s done and some kept apologizing and I just reassured them that I didn’t really give a fuck, I understood the time constraints we had for practicing together and whatnot. If anything fucking up the new song was the least of my concerns. My first gig as inanotherworld is just something I will remember for a long time, for a good reason.