T-Bay

We could be soundchecking during the speeches! Could be the best wedding speeches ever.

Thanks, will do!

We are there as the bride is one of my best mates rather than on music choice, luckily a lot of the guests know us well so they will know what we do. We have toned down the set a fair bit, taking out the pearl Jam, Nirvana, Cult etc and chucked in some Darkness, kinks, T-Rex and plan to start with a cheesy version of Marry You, but there are still some heavy ones in there. Hopefully we will have something for everyone. Time will tell! There is also a DJ as we are only playing for a couple of hours so the pop crew can get their fix then.

And we aren’t the usual sort of wedding band so we plan to shake the place up a bit!

* d I c k s not Richards 🤣

Thanks for the advice guys, we are more used to playing pubs and this sort of ‘fun’ has never happened for obvious reasons. It appears they have said yes to everything to the bride and then been Richards when contacted directly. We have come to a crap arrangement but better than it was. It makes it trickier being a mate as the last thing we want to do is to cast any sort of cloud over the day. We plan to go in tomorrow and just have a blast.

Just called them again, they were ‘just about to call me’, another different variant to what they told the bride this morning, which is different to what they told me today and different to what was agreed when the venue was booked but there you go. I have managed to get an extra 15 minutes though which will help a lot.

Yup very much so, luckily I have a lift there and taxi for myself and kit home but the first hour will be stressful. It’s just annoying as if we had known this from the off we would have planned accordingly, it’s the last minute change that is the problem. Still no reply from the venue after an hour and a half which I think is pretty poor.

We have already planned that, even if our kit is piled up ready by the door it will help a bit. Our drummer is very efficient so hopefully he will be ok. I think we will have earned the free bar by the end of the set!

Indeed! And there is a dj to work around as well. My guess is that we will end up sound checking while the guests are arriving for the evening which is less than ideal, or even adjusting in the fly as the set goes on. One positive for that is another friend is a superb musician and is happy to act as our sound engineer for the night which will help a lot (and the desk we are using is his old desk so he knows it well).

Playing a mates wedding tomorrow, plan was to set up in the morning, come home then go back in the evening. Our fee being a free bar and taxi home. All was good until this morning when we are told that we can no longer set up in the morning and will now only have 30 minutes set up time (it takes our guitarist longer than that to twiddle his knobs). We don’t do weddings so half the set up is unfamiliar anyway and having the whole morning this wasn’t stressful as there was plenty of time to get everything spot on. The moan is that all this was agreed months ago with the venue and there was no mention of it being an issue, it’s only become an issue today for some reason. For obvious reasons I don’t want to cause any hassle for the bride and groom as they have enough to worry about but what was due to be a fun evening playing to friends is now a potential pain in the backside and very stressful. Been waiting an hour for a call back just to confirm if we can drop some stuff off in the morning or not.

Our rhythm guitarist is an ex professional wrestler, never needed his services yet but as our drummer is a complete wuss it’s useful to have back up!

Fingers crossed mate, I have suffered from an aggressive inflammatory arthritis for the last two decades and it’s no fun BUT I am continually amazed by how much treatments have moved on in that time. Hopefully they will be able to sort you out and you can be back playing.

To be fair, a well tanked crowd are almost always better than a stone cold sober one.........

Yup, been there and done that. My orange amp and barefaced cabs just sound like mush at the bad one, it’s like I have fitted the worst strings possible ten years ago and am playing through blancmange. It’s frustrating how you can dial in a perfect sound then you get to a gig and it’s totally different.

Learn something you love just for the fun of it, forget the band stuff for a while and just enjoy playing.

Do you play in those rooms often? We use one where the sound is terrible, I have got used to it now and we only use it when our normal one is busy.

Very good price, shame it’s a not a better colour 😞 or perhaps that’s a good thing as I would be a lot poorer if it was a lake placid blue one on offer!

Audio space and them crooked vultures for me as well, both firmly in the Meh camp.

Saw the Cult in Birmingham, Ian Astbury’s voice was stunning, the sound was perfect (something the O2 doesn’t always manage) and a great set including the first ever live version of Edie complete with a strings section. They were brilliant and a good pick me up as I was feeling terrible due to my arthritis flaring up (glad we had seats!). One of the support bands stood out too - The Last Internationale, superb live performance from them.

I tried some Phil Jones stuff and really liked it, but I don’t remember it as being particularly light, in fact I remember it as fairly hefty. Not TE heavy but a good weight all the same.

I think the new one is switchable like the old so you would get a full 500w, but I would check just to be sure. I got the 1000w second hand off here as it came up at sensible money, it rarely goes above about 4/10 in any place we have played. I cranked it up to about 8/10 just messing about when we did a small festival once and the drummer who was late could hear me the best part of a mile away! I changed the valves to give a little more clean head room and that is supposed to lower the overall output a little but I can’t say I have noticed. But wind it right down I can use it to practice in a semi detached without upsetting the neighbours. They aren’t versatile in the way some of the TC heads are as the tone is the tone is the tone so to speak, but you can get a fair bit of variance from the basic controls so as long as you are happy with that then they are great. I would highly recommend them.

Another vote for the supercompact, coupled with a midget it makes a very versatile setup, I use an orange terror 1000w amp which is probably overkill for anywhere I am likely to play but the whole rig can be carried by one person in one go.

I can read music but not fast enough to play by it, some techniques to speed that up would be very useful for many people I would think.