Gasman

Maybe his sister?

A double-header again this weekend (Sat/Sun) for Mustang Sally, once again with a fluid line-up (dep guitarist #1) due to ongoing holidays and stuff. Saturday saw us setting up in the function hall at the Mere Social Club (line-up was D/B+sax/G/KB/Vox+guitar) for a private 70th birthday bash, very well attended by a great audience who seemed to appreciate our medium-octane pop playlist. This list is very much in contrast to the AVGAS-strength guitar fireworks numbers we used to play before our genuine rock-star walked out in May. It does make adding new numbers much easier with virtual rehearsals (and sometimes no rehearsals except the gig!) for simple numbers like ‘Walking on Sunshine’ and ‘2-4-6-8 Motorway’. Compared with, say, ‘Hotel California’ or ‘Echo Beach’ these new numbers are a doddle and the punters do like something really catchy for jumping about to. Pix are from this gig, including one that proves I actually DO play bass! Sunday we played at the George Inn Castle Cary, a gig organised by its enterprising landlady to compensate for the local council cancelling the town’s annual ‘Party in the Park’ on cost grounds – line-up (dep #1 and dep#2 guitarists as KB man away) was D/B+sax/G1+B/G2/Vox+guitar. This pub is a rabbit’s warren of interconnecting bars and rooms so the headbangers can jump around in the hub where we’d set up, while others could eat and drink in relative peace and quiet around the edges! We started at 18:30 and finished at 21:10, so home for an early cocoa; it rained hard during the evening so if the gig had been in the Park, everyone would have been well-drenched… It was another really enjoyable gig with a lovely crowd, resulting in that lovely landlady booking us for NYE – result!

What, Dr Albran?Good call!

"You play music for yourself first, and the punters after" - a very naive PoV I think. This won't work if you want to play regularly to the mainstream public and earn money doing it. - ignore the punters at your peril. However, if you're aspirations to playing in public consist of amusing yourself and your bandmates with 40-minute improvisations on 'Red House' to one man and a dog in a back room somewhere, good luck to you!

As a 74 yo bloke I do need to uprate my image a little - I think I'll try showing a bit of thigh and cleavage on stage this weekend - see how it goes down with the Dorset punters!

Andy Baxter is good - sold my Bongo in a week just now, all other basses in a month or so.

Five to the Bar (if you're into beer and Brubeck...)

The great thing for semi-pro musicians who are otherwise retired or self-employed is that mid-week afternoon gigs are easy to fit in – as of course are holidays and things like golf, although I’m not a fan of either… This being the case for all five of us our band gets regular work playing at the many agricultural and steam-fair shows down here in Wurzel country; typical was the Gillingham and Shaftesbury Show yesterday, playing from 17:30 to 18:45 straight through. First act before us was a pair of glamorously frocked lasses, singing 1940-50 style harmonies a la Andrew Sisters, plus some more recent Post-Modern Jukebox style takes on numbers like ‘Bad Romance’ – I liked it! Following us was a funk-oriented band, with then a big brass ska outfit to finish. This year the organisers had coughed up for a proper mini-Glasto-type stage instead of pallets in a marquee, with a good PA and engineer who knew what he was doing, so we had no excuse for a poor sound! We were using guitar dep #2 from a choice of four – he’s very good. We rattled through a pretty mixed set (see attached), including a ‘new’ rock’n’roll medley featuring sax, where I actually get a total of 24 bars improve – whoopee! I must say that our KB player’s bass lines are worryingly good… Short video attached to prove we were there. Mrs G came along but made a beeline for the show-jumping (she had to give up riding a few years ago but still loves horses). Apparently our band could be heard at the main ring where she was sitting – ‘not a bad bit of sax,,,’ she mused later on the way home, ‘but I think the people doing camel-racing were a bit distracted by it!’ WhatsApp Video 2024-08-14 at 22.22.11_8eeb4d6b.mp4 1x75_minute set_v1.pdf

I've been amazed too! Dep #4 was playing in another band at a mini-fest we gigged at. Our singist isn't backward in coming forward so just went up after he'd finished playing and asked him whether he would like to dep two gigs for us. He said he'd never depped before but would love to try! She sent him our generic setlists, he learned the ones he'd never played before in a couple of weeks, turned up and did a great job on two gigs for us - even helped carry the PA in! Solid gold, that guy... would love to have him permanently.

Late report on two gigs last Friday and Sunday for Mustang Sally, using our fourth dep guitarist who was actually very good and a nice chap with it. Friday was a closed pre-event gig for the exhibitors only at a steam fair near Taunton. Big beer and food tent, a stage made of pallets and a good number of farmers, traction-engine owners and general hangers-on made for an excellent gig. It was helped by a short sharp shower at half-time, driving even more punters into the tent – total about 150. Our native Dorset lady singist did a great job of calling the numbers that the generally rustic crowd wanted, they loved it and we got paid so that we can call that evening a success. Pix are of our setup in the tent and a showman’s engine all lit up (uh-huh-huh!) just outside. The Sunday gig was in my home town of West Bay in Dorset; my being on the event committee was always a good way to get a booking here! We played 15:30-17:00 straight through, including some new numbers. The stages are set up right on the seafront so we had a fantastic sea view the whole time. Sound was surprisingly good given that the nearest land in front of us was Guernsey (60 miles). About 200 people watched us as they ate and drank copiously under the sunshine, so a good time was had by everyone. And another success for our #4 guitar dep. – shame he’s already in two other bands… Next gig is in a seven day's time at a mid-week North Dorset county show; we’re back to dep #2 who is also pretty darn good, so hopefully more to enjoy

Well, that killed this thread stone dead - my apologies!

What version are you using? I'm on 2.1.0 (old, I know) but have no such problem in cutting and pasting. Can you roll back your update?

Seven minutes is by no means the shortest! Back in '73 a classic jazz/comedy band I was with (the White Hot Air Men!) were setting up in the Half Moon pub in Putney for a rehearsal when Bob Kerr (of the Whoopee Band) rushed in and said he needed a band at Heathrow instantly for a paid job. We piled into a couple of cars and followed him flat out to the top floor of a multi-storey car park at the airport, all pretty much in the dark as to why; there was a very small piece of dingy carpet on the floor to make things even more mysterious. Bob told us to start playing 'there's no business like show business' as soon as the lift doors opened, which they did soon after. An American lady singist trio emerged with their minders, we launched into the number, they fell about laughing in surprise, the band all got a kiss and they were then hustled away into waiting limos. Total playing time 60 seconds, for which we got £10 each, pretty good for '73. Apparently this was all about a wager someone had made with the trio saying that the Brits were sure to welcome them by rolling out the red carpet and a brass band... I wish I knew who the trio were - could it have been the Supremes? Anyone had a shorter gig than that? For your amusement, a pic of the band at the Half Moon is attached - I'm the buffoon with the ludicrous beard and alto sax on the left...

Well, doom arrived early for the gig today! Pub landlady at the venue for this fringe mini-fest emailed all five bands last week (booked last November with fee agreed) saying that there would now be no payment, but we could 'pass the hat around' if we wanted. Her rationale was that she couldn't afford to pay any of us as she'd provided a small tent, and 'if we were any good people might want to give us something'. Hmm, my immediate thought was to wonder whether she was also adopting this approach with her brewery, food and staff, but of course not, how silly of me! Our dep gitrist politely declined to drive 100+ mile round trip on the off-chance of getting a fiver towards his fuel. If he had been prepared to do that I would (grudgingly) have been shamed into doing the same (also 100 mile round trip) but in the circumstances I didn't have to, and so the BL pulled the band out of the gig (as did some of the other BLs too). This is a new landlord who apparently has never run a pub or booked bands before. Hopefully, if their client-base crashes as it surely will, they'll soon be in a position where they never get the chance to do either again...

Over 60? That don't impress me much - in my band three of us are 70, 74 and 78 but still rockin'!

Yea verily! To add to my sense of doom, we have another mini-fest looming this Sunday, with yet another scratch line-up; the killer being that the band on before us features TWO of our ex-guitarists!

After a three week layoff, last Saturday my band reconvened to play at a 3-band mini-festival in yet another Dorset village. This was a strange venue insofar as the teas, games and kiddies stuff were in one field, whilst the tractors, vintage cars and music were in the next field up the hill; yes, there was pedestrian access between the two, but only a crazy treasure-hunt navigational challenge round the back lanes for vehicles. I parked on a 1-in-5 slope near the pole barn set aside for bands, but was very grateful later for the Jeep’s ultra-low 4WD to get out after the rain that pelted down - many others needed tractor assistance! So what about the music? We followed a competent rock band with a barely-competent set dictated by the absence of our kb player (on holiday), our still-learning dep guitarist (young guy doing his best) and a rather superfluous fiddle/harmonica playing lady who was there to make up the contracted line-up numbers. Frankly, I wasn’t happy with that line-up nor with the unforced errors littering the sets, nor with the need to play only stuff that I’d describe as cheese and cr*p, because that was all the scratch line-up could manage without falling apart completely but that still happened, of course – crikey, we’ve always played ‘Jolene’ in Fm, but due to wrongly placed capos, panic and fluster-clucking that resulted in three restarts in Db, Eb then Bb, which is what we ended up busking it in! Now here’s the paradox – the punters (local worthies mixed with working farming types) loved us, wanted more (although we didn’t have any more to give) and were very happy to pay us. Moral of the story? I just don’t think there is one... perhaps it's if you get out of the venue alive, the gig was a success!

Love the use of the sweet 60s term 'Hit Parade' - in today's multi-channel streaming world it must surely be meaningless... (unless someone brings back Top of the Pops or the Sunday evening BBC radio chart show!)

We do 2 x 60 usually. After-midnight finishes due to multiple calls for 'One More Song' (never just one) are getting beyond a joke, however nice it might be to feel appreciated!

Good words, good ideas, @Phil Starr - I just wish I could implement some of them! Since the original guitarist left we have had to use deps, or (this weekend) go as a 4-piece as no dep is available. The line-up is fluctuating wildly all the time so the sax set is being parked until things settle down. We are now using the old conventional PA but only vox and acoustic guitar go through it on gigs with minimal foldback, I'm back to using my bass rig in standalone mode. At rehearsals the singist plugs her mic into a portable combo to minimise load-in/out so the sound is totally unrepresentative so it isn't worth even trying to get my IEM setup sorted - those sessions are really for learning new numbers only. I am already rather depressed due to non-musical family problems, so this whole band fluster-cluck is making things even more difficult.... so should I chuck it in or do a Churchill ('just keep bu**ering on...')?

As told at length in another PA thread, difficulties in getting to grips with our new Bose setup caused my band to split. Not wanting to retell an old story, what were the problems experienced? From my PoV as the sax player in one short set I was never able to get decent foldback from either the Bose or the old PA to hear what the audience was hearing, nor was there ever any pre-gig time to let me set up my Sennheiser IEMs ('not worth it for three numbers' they said, maybe right). I use a Nux radio mic for the sax but feedback issues prevented me from going FoH to hear the mix, so believe me trying to hear what you're playing while competing with mic-ed drums, singers and amplified instruments onstage with a wind instrument is busted blood-vessel, out-of-tune and bad intonation territory. While on my main bass duties, being wireless too (Nux again) was great, allowing me to go out-front to hear the mix during soundchecks. However, although when using the Bose system everything went through the PA, foldback during the actual gig was really difficult to get right because the FB system was just cobbled together from surplus gear and there was never enough of it to give me any at all, so I found myself using my Ag700+Darkglass 1000w cab as my on-stage monitor - ridiculous! So what's the remedy? Pay serious attention to getting the FoH AND foldback gear, volumes and mixes right, and if possible go IEM for everyone - we never did because of a lack of inclination, equipment, time and skills available. Sounds simple, and it can be, but using practice sessions with unrepresentative gear in an equally unrepresentative hall without a sound guy available just won't cut it!

I haven't played with him again yet - that depends entirely upon me honouring my promise to leave the band that he walked away from, and the alignment of several stars and planets... who knows what the future holds?

Yes, me too - in my previous band minus 2 I bought the whole PA (mics and all) and still have it 'just in case' I get to start that ska band I really always wanted to!

AS the OP I owe it to the collective to say how our shared purchase ended! The new PA turned out to be great but only if its sponsor (the guitarist) got to gigs at least 90 mins before the rest of us to set up the local wi-fi, tablet, cabling etc. He didn't seem to mind this, but using the tablet to balance the whole band sound FOH was clearly too much for our roadie to get to grips with. So, he started a mumbling campaign against the sound quality and ease of use of the new system vs the old skool PA which he and the singist owned (they are domestic partners too), and so they eventually issued an ultimatum that the old PA must be used 'until the new one was sorted' (i.e. never, as it would never get a chance to be fully set up anywhere again) The guitarist promptly walked out, joined another band and then sent the other four members £600 each as a buy-out. This was crazy generous considering the year's usage we'd had from the gear. I immediately returned £200 to cover my share of the 33% depreciation that must have occurred, but I don't think anyone else did... Moral of the story? Have a written agreement up front taking account of depreciation and make sure that the gear you get is actually what you really need and have the capability of using!

Surely not 'Boners'?