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10 year anniversary of the London 2012 Olympic commssion

by Hackney Colliery Band

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about

It’s hard to believe that it was 10 years ago to the day that we played what will certainly be our biggest ever gig - a 45 minute set of specially-commissioned British covers at the Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. We played to 80,000 people in the stadium, and then played with Madness to a global audience of a billion people. It was a bit nuts.

So here’s the headline: to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of this, we have today released a little EP of some of the covers we did at the time. It’s available exclusively on Bandcamp, and for a limited time.

You can pick up the EP here for £5, and in so doing you’ll be supporting us as a completely independent band. As ever, we really appreciate the support!

If you’re interested, with the distance we now have from that gig, we thought we’d share a bit of background on it all.

We were approached after someone from the organising committee saw us at one of our regular gigs at the Trinity pub in Borough, back in early spring 2012. It was the first time we’d done a residency in a venue, playing there once a month, and it’s a model that was really great for us at that time, and which we’ve repeated in modified form since, first at the Hackney Picturehouse, then Ronnie Scott’s, and most recently our week-long residency at Wilton’s Music Hall, in March this year. It just goes to show that no matter the size of the gig, it’s always important to give it your all, and we’ve carried this philosophy through to this day!

After a LOT of back and forth on what taking on this gig would entail, and a lot of discussions between us about whether we could - or should - do it, we eventually signed on the dotted line.

It was a huge amount of work getting it all together: coming up with a shortlist of British tunes to cover, then arranging and rehearsing them ready for legendary composer David Arnold, who was Musical Director of the Closing Ceremony, to come down to listen. Luckily, he loved them, and was full of kind words - after the show he said these lovely words about us:
'You were a big part of our closing ceremony, playing with wit, exuberance, musical dexterity and good humour...perfect for preparing a crowd of 80,000 to enjoy a ton of British music by arranging a ton of British music in your own unique style. Thanks so much.'

As our role in the show expanded, more people had to be looped in. There was, in short, a LOT OF ADMIN.

That admin load was compounded by an enormous amount of logistics around costume fittings, accreditation, rehearsal timings and so on and so on. Needless to say, it came at the busiest time of year for musicians, right slap bang in the middle of the summer, and there was a huge time commitment for us all, especially when rehearsals in Dagenham started.

But hey: a gig like this doesn’t land on your lap every day, right?!
The thing is that we had to keep it secret as of course we’d signed all manner of NDAs and the like. Our not-very-secret codename for it was ‘Limpets’ or, in darker times when we found the logistics and Kafkaesque dealings with the organisers overwhelming, ‘Voldemort’. That which must not be named.

Anyway, the day finally came, and we had to be at the stadium early for tech rehearsals, costume and all the rest. It was a hot day like we’re having this week, and we were in thick, traditional ‘banding’ uniforms, made especially for the event. The bit of the stage we were on had the London Symphony Orchestra, then in front of them Elbow, then us. No pressure!

Once it was showtime, all the rehearsals we’d done finally felt like they were worth it, and we played this entirely new set - which, by the way, we’d had to arrange, rehearse and learn in the middle of an already busy summer of festivals playing entirely different music - to the crowd. Playing to that many people is an odd experience, especially when, because the show was taking place in the arena, they are all around you like that, rather than in front of you, as they’d be at a ‘normal’ stadium gig (if such a thing can exist!). The applause at the end of tunes was weirdly delayed because people were so physically far away from us, and it was an oddly empty experience in some ways, though of course very exciting as well.

The set went pretty well, and once the televised show started and we’d done our bit with Madness, we had to clear the stage straight away, and were basically kicked out of the stadium entirely. A bit of an emotional rollercoaster after playing that crowd, and we manage to have a bit of a merry dance of evading ushers for a bit so we could see the show until we gave up, had some beers outside and tried to make our way home.

So overall it was an oddly bittersweet experience. Some of us - myself very much included - had a distinctly bad taste in our mouths about the whole event because of the way some of it was handled from the organiser’s point of view. With another 10 years of experience as a band, we might now have tried to do things slightly differently, but there’s only so much that an independent band can do in the face of giant global entities like this.

Because of the bittersweet feeling about the show, while all this was happening, we organised a secret ‘after party’ gig at The Macbeth pub in Hoxton the next night. We couldn’t advertise this until after the ceremony was over, but we packed the place out and had an immensely cathartic knees-up of a gig. It was really great to get back to doing things on our terms after working on that behemoth of a show, and, to be honest, most of us would probably say that we far preferred that pub gig to the 80,000 seater stadium gig.

Which is lucky, as with the best will in the world, we’re probably not going to be doing many stadium gigs as a band any time soon...
Hope you enjoyed that deep dive into the madness (and, in fact, the Madness) of 10 years ago.

But that's enough about the past. We'll be back to looking to the future in the next update, including some more live shows, new music and all sorts of fun stuff. Do be sure to keep an eye out for all the latest updates!

credits

released August 12, 2022

Trumpet: Steve Pretty, Simon Finch
Trombone: Jonathan Sweeney, Magnues Dearness
Alto sax: Mike Lesirge
Tenor sax: Tom Richards
Sousaphone: Ed Ashby
Drums: Olly Blackman, Luke Christie

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Hackney Colliery Band London, UK

HCB have had a simply phenomenal few years. From playing a 45 minute set at the Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics and sets at the MOBO, Brit and Mercury Awards to live sessions on BBC Two, BBC Radio 2, Jazz FM (UK) and worldwide airplay from many more, from collaborations with the likes of Amy Winehouse to selling out clubs across Europe, these east London musicians haven’t stopped. ... more

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