Protocol of Status (Last but not Least)
So often in live gigs, the gig is about the headline act, and the support acts are just warm up acts. Nervous kids with guitars, bands who've got no stage presence. They are literally just there to fill the time between the doors opening and the main band playing. And if people are not showing up till late in the night why would you waste time sourcing quality acts that nobody is going to see? And sometimes the support acts are jaw droppingly awesome, because the booking agent has actually gone and found deadly support acts, and the venue is only half full, so no matter how well they're playing, nobody sees them.
The Noisy Plug sessions confounds this standard practice. It started one October afternoon with a call from Ger in Murphy's. He had this 'mad' idea of setting up two PA systems in the bar, one for the singer songwriters, the other for the band.. “we set up two PA's in Murphys. And people will go, wait, how the hell did they fit TWO stages in that place?” (and people did).
Such a neat idea. Two PA set ups at opposite ends of the bar. One for bands, the other for singer/songwriters, and bounce between them a la Jools Holland.