For quite some time now, the Nottingham Victoria Centre branch of HMV Records (as I believe it is still called despite leaning more towards DVDs, games and headphones from what I can make out) have been staging an hour long gig on a Thursday afternoon featuring local musicians, with the sound engineering done by ROFL Audio. Mainly due to the strange time slot I haven’t been able to make it along, so I made the effort this afternoon for DH Lawrence & the Vaudeville Skiffle Show, a band that I’ve been a fan of for a while now, and who played a NottinghamLIVE session for us last August.

Walking through the doors of Victoria Centre, I noticed how few people were wandering about, I can’t remember ever seeing it this quiet but I try to avoid the place as much as possible since they started attempting to simultaneously do it up and bring it down to the level of Broadmarsh Shopping Centre. Both centres are now owned by a company called intu, who should concentrate on raising standards at Broadmarsh rather than the opposite. Owning both centres is like the Queen owning Buckingham Palace and a static caravan in Chapel St Leonards.

HMV was virtually empty when I arrived just after five which threw me a little as in my head I was expecting to find hoards of music lovers jostling for a good position near the makeshift stage, with the great and the good of Nottingham’s music scene in attendance to catch an afternoon performance. The band played a quality set as always so none of this is their fault, but it was a little bit strange to see customers wandering around going about their shopping while a band played. I’m not sure if this is beneficial to the band or the shop to be honest. In store gigs are a great idea in theory, a chance to get up close to a band and for the band to introduce themselves to a potential new set of fans, (and sell some CDs hopefully). My enjoyment of the band was distracted somewhat by trying to work out why this didn’t work.

My conclusion was all down to timing, but in my opinion it had more to do with the day. Five o’clock until six o’clock on a Thursday afternoon when people have knocked off and are battling an inefficient public transport system to get home isn’t the best time to stage a gig. This kind of promotion might work better in terms of audience numbers on a Friday when people are not only in a better mood because they have finished work for the weekend, but also because they get to finish that little bit earlier.

At the end of the day it’s the band I felt a bit sorry for as they performed as if they were playing to a packed out Jam Café, which makes it a shame that more people weren’t there to see it.

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