The bands were all great, the crowd was really receptive to all of the bands too which was awesome.  Nobody had that old "nobody's up the front for the first two bands" syndrome, which I think was great and a credit to the people who went to watch seven awesome bands, and did just that.

Despite the gig running overtime, which was partially because I was too stressed out and running around to be a cunt of a stage manager, partially because bands were taking a long time to change over gear and partially because the venue manager was asking bands to hold off up to 20 minutes so they could "sell more booze", I think the night went reasonably smoothly.

Now let's talk about the two days leading up to it.  Take notes...if you want to drive me insane, make my heart stop beating or drive my brain matter into mush...this'd be a good place to start.

12:00pm Friday noon - Drive to Caloundra to pick up OzProg.com t-shirts.  All good, no problems, shirts look AWESOME.

10:00pm Friday night - Symphonies of Steel with Arcane.  Do the show, all good, have a lot of fun, play some cool music.  Brad and I head back to my place...on the way home..."hmm...steering feels a bit weird...".  Driving down my street it becomes clear that I have a blown out tyre.  FUCK!

9:00am Saturday morning - The day of the show - Get on the phone to a tyre place, desperate for them to be able to fix a new tyre onto my car in the morning, because I have to pick a band up from the airport in the afternoon, do all sorts of running around, book into hotels, cart gear from hotel to venue and vice versa (thank god I didn't have to pick up the drums in 3 trips in my car...thanks Dave!), buy water and Red Bull for Template and actually get myself to the show.

1:00pm Saturday afternoon - My car has a new tyre.  I also have a nail in another tyre they couldn't fix, so that is now my spare, and my spare is still on the car.  I go to pay for it...whip out the trusty MasterCard...DENIED! WHAT!?  Let's try this again...swipe...DENIED!  FUCK!  Excuse me oh fantastic and amazing girlfriend...can you please pay for my new tyre so I can drive home and find out exactly what the hell is going on?  Luckily she IS amazing and did that for me.

2:00pm Saturday afternoon - I go online and check my credit card balance...still below my credit limit...but no funds available.  I call up MasterCard and the phone balance says I'm over $500 overdrawn on my account.  My eyebrow raises in strange curiosity, and i press zero to talk to a customer service representative.  My other eyebrow raises and my eyes roll as if to say "pfft...typical" when a strong Indian accent greets me on the other line of the phone.  I try and explain my situation and find out that a large transaction has been charged twice to my credit card.  Being that it's the weekend though, there's nothing I can do about it.  DAMN IT!

So lets recap the situation to where I'm at now...2 hours away from picking Template up from the airport to do the benefit gig, having not checked into the hotel for them and myself, Kylie and Brad (which need to be paid for on check in...something I'm at the time letting my brain stress about when i get to it)...my credit card is over $500 overdrawn because of a mistake somewhere along the line and can't be fixed...and I have approximately $2 in the bank.  Yay!

3:00pm Saturday afternoon - Arrive at the hotel to try and wrangle to pay on check out, but no dice.  Also try and find out if we can cancel one of the rooms, no dice, too late and they'd have to charge for the night's stay anyway.  OK...hey...hi again awesome girlfriend...could you by chance pay for one of these hotel rooms?  Thanks!  Hey Brad, awesome friend and co-founder of this fantastic website we have...reckon you could pay for the other one?  Thanks!

So we now have rooms for ourselves, and Template...so that's good I suppose.

4:20pm Saturday afternoon - Get to the airport to pick up Template.  No money, so no parky.  Instead, do lappy.  So we do laps of the pick up zones, drive out to the big round about, back through the pick up zones.  No Template.  Brad jumps out of the car to go into the terminal and wait for them.  I keep doing laps and trying to call Mike on his mobile, yes...I was making these calls while driving and there's not a god damned thing you or anyone can do about it.

5:00pm Saturday afternoon - We have Template!  All the gear is in my car, all the luggage...and we head to Phoenix to dump the gear.  Get that taken care of, and take Mike, Jarrod and Leigh to the hotel for some chill out time before the show.

6:20pm Saturday evening - I wrangle Template and we head back to Club Phoenix as the doors were officially open, but nobody had the guest list yet so I had to sort that out, plus make sure everything was going to plan.  The original plan of "lets play prog on the PA untill hoops gets there" fell through when that other dude just started playing whatever he wanted and didn't really seem to care when I told him it was a prog night so he should play prog and handed him a huge CD wallet full of it.  When Hoops come in and that other guy (sorry if you're reading this, I honestly don't know your name, but you were cool once it was figured out that I was running the show that night) was slightly more inebriated, it was figured out and Hoops was slipping in the odd Dream Theater track etc.  Go Hoops!

7:30pm (ish) Saturday evening - Etelantulet play...and the night rolls on...the rest as they say his history.

3:00am Sunday morning - Remember those lock out laws we have in Queensland now?  Well they are absolutely fucked.  Who writes laws that mean when a guitarist carries his amp out to his car, he can't go back inside the venue to get his guitar?  I mean seriously?  Anyway the lug out begins slowly by passing equipment out the door to people who have decided to, or accidentally left the venue.  We order a station wagon taxi to come and take the drums to our hotel...which never turns up despite calling twice.  So I did about four trips between the hotel and Club Phoenix transporting Template's gear, the hire drum kit and the band themselves.

5:00am Sunday morning - Due to a bit of an oversight by me, Pete, who was my event photographer for the night had no way of getting home.  Being the totally awesome dude that I am *ahem* I said I'd drive him home.  So I also was lumped with taking a very drunk Andy home also as he lives close to Pete, as do I.  So at this stage all of Template had been taken to the hotel with all their gear, and Brad had been dropped off at the hotel also.  I drive Pete and Andy home, Kylie (my girlfriend) is with us to keep me awake as it's the end of a very long and stressful couple of days and I'm exhausted.

5:40am (ish) Sunday morning - Drop off Pete and Andy.  Realise that we're 2 minutes from home, or 30 minutes from the hotel and decide to just stay at home...thus not sleeping in the hotel room that was such a big pain in the arse to organise getting paid for earlier that day.  Brad just got to have a huge tower apartment to himself for the night the lucky bastard.

I spent most of the night running around like a headless chicken stressing over a zillion and twenty things and probably spoiled my enjoyment of a lot of it because of how much I was stressed out.  BUT...I did have an amazing time, and in the end, all of the stress that I had to go through and shit that fucked up for me that day that had to be dealt with by getting others to pay for shit when it all went cactus was worth it when Template hit the stage and I rocked the fuck out to an amazing band made up of amazing musicians who are some of the nicest, most down to earth and easy to get along with people anyone could ever want to meet.  I have to say a big thanks to James (Metallurgy) and his partner Hannah for watching the merch desk while I got my prog on watching Template.  Although...management asked for Template to hold off a bit on going on, and after some confusion hit the stage with no sound guy present and went into their first song.  Thanks to Jamie for leaping into action and turning on the PA...it was all sorted within a few seconds it seemed.

I also look back on some of the stuff I was stressing about on the night, and confusion that arose, and grumpy venue managers getting up me over things and all sorts that went on...and think to myself "you know what?  A ton of people come along to see a show you put on...they all had a great time, a bunch of bands got to play, you got to see Template live finally, and not only that, you brought them to Brisbane for the first time ever.  Plus, your website can now stay up a little longer and have a couple of cool new things."  I think that to myself and realise that all of the shit and stress I went through, I'd totally go through it again.  I love it.  In the end it all worked out and everyone had a great time, even me once I realised that we wouldn't be DOWN any money and I should just be happy that everything worked and everyone played and pretty much everyone rocked the fuck out.

On behalf of myself and Brad, thanks to everyone who come and made the night so great including all of the OzProg.com people, the people from BrisMetal.com who come along, all of the bands who played and especially Template for coming up and playing and being the awesome guys they are.

Now I just have to plan when to bring them back!