How was your gig last night?

[dmccombe7]

41 minutes ago, casapete said:

Cheers Dave, we never take doing great venues for granted though. The band has now been going for

over 17 years, and I’ve been with them for over 12. During that time we’ve done a fair few dives and 

places we’d rather forget, so it is nice to be able to play gigs which are better suited now to a bunch

of old geezers ( not including our string section in that of course!).

Having said that, I’m playing at a nice old music pub in Beverley later today with my acoustic duo.

Still get a massive buzz from doing small gigs where the audience are near, and can see myself

doing that for as long as I continue playing.

You have the best of both worlds Pete.  Think the ELO band is more suited to Theatre style venues. Just seems right.

Dave

[martthebass]

Getting back on the horse during recovery from a bit of surgery at the end of June, so a nice local gig just outside Sheffield to get me back into it. The place was distinctly quiet when we were setting up and the landlord was indicating that it was hit or miss for crowd numbers at this time of year. Thankfully the place filled up nicely and we played 2 spots to a packed room. I refrained from Foxton style moves though 🤣. The punters enjoyed the show so hopefully we’ll see a return in the new year.

[martthebass]

47 minutes ago, casapete said:

Cheers Dave, we never take doing great venues for granted though. The band has now been going for

over 17 years, and I’ve been with them for over 12. During that time we’ve done a fair few dives and 

places we’d rather forget, so it is nice to be able to play gigs which are better suited now to a bunch

of old geezers ( not including our string section in that of course!).

Having said that, I’m playing at a nice old music pub in Beverley later today with my acoustic duo.

Still get a massive buzz from doing small gigs where the audience are near, and can see myself

doing that for as long as I continue playing.

I was talking with the guys in the band about your gig at Sheffield City Hall last night and saying what a great venue it was for a bands of your talent. The drummer piped up with, ‘Ive done the city hall……changed out some of the stage flooring for em a few years back’ 🤣🤣🤣

Edited July 30, 2023 by martthebass

[casapete]

1 hour ago, martthebass said:

I was talking with the guys in the band about your gig at Sheffield City Hall last night and saying what a great venue it was for a bands of your talent. The drummer piped up with, ‘Ive done the city hall……changed out some of the stage flooring for em a few years back’ 🤣🤣🤣

Whilst loving doing venues like Sheffield CH, I’d always be be more chuffed if I was doing them with

an originals band like a lot of people on here.
We’ve been fortunate in that there are still lots of people who want to hear ELO’s

music and the theatre environment seems to suit them ( and us!). We do the occasional festival

too - e.g Camper Calling at Ragley Hall in August - but theatres are our mainstay really. 

[silverfoxnik]

7 hours ago, mrtcat said:

Four gigs in four days. All weddings and a ton of driving involved.

 

Weds - (Kent) really uneventful and reserved with most people thinking about work the following day.

 

Thurs - (Manchester) Friendly and enthusiastic crowd. LGBTW wedding with a really cool vibe. Had a lot of fun.

 

Fri - (Stratford On Avon) Bride was lovely, Groom was a grade a **** who was far more interested in getting hammered with his football mates and being as obnoxious as possible. Completely ignored his new wife all night and at the end of the night had to be carried out of the venue.

 

Sat - (Cambridgeshire) everything that's good about being in a wedding band. Lovely couple, great food (proper wedding cake), big enthusiastic crowd and a friendly venue. Also got to meet basschatter @silverfoxnik on the way up who has been an absolute legend and is helping me get a few (rather heavy) bits to another basschatter this week.

 

Time to reintroduce myself to my wife and kids today and cook some nice food and enjoy some family time.

A pleasure to meet you too @mrtcat!

 

Sounds like you've had a really busy 4 days, so I hope you enjoy your r&r time with your family... 

 

I always found wedding gigs to be the weirdest of the lot when I used to do them as part of a busy functions band.. Always seemed to go from one extreme to another, with not much in between! 😁

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by silverfoxnik

[steantval]

5 hours ago, mrtcat said:

Four gigs in four days. All weddings and a ton of driving involved.

 

Weds - (Kent) really uneventful and reserved with most people thinking about work the following day.

 

Thurs - (Manchester) Friendly and enthusiastic crowd. LGBTW wedding with a really cool vibe. Had a lot of fun.

 

Fri - (Stratford On Avon) Bride was lovely, Groom was a grade a **** who was far more interested in getting hammered with his football mates and being as obnoxious as possible. Completely ignored his new wife all night and at the end of the night had to be carried out of the venue.

 

Sat - (Cambridgeshire) everything that's good about being in a wedding band. Lovely couple, great food (proper wedding cake), big enthusiastic crowd and a friendly venue. Also got to meet basschatter @silverfoxnik on the way up who has been an absolute legend and is helping me get a few (rather heavy) bits to another basschatter this week.

 

Time to reintroduce myself to my wife and kids today and cook some nice food and enjoy some family time.

Can’t see the Stratford On Avon marriage lasting very long, the guy sounds an absolute chocolate starfish.

[mrtcat]

3 hours ago, steantval said:

Can’t see the Stratford On Avon marriage lasting very long, the guy sounds an absolute chocolate starfish.

You could see it in the bride's eyes. "Oh god what have I done?"

[mrtcat]

3 hours ago, silverfoxnik said:

I always found wedding gigs to be the weirdest of the lot when I used to do them as part of a busy functions band.. Always seemed to go from one extreme to another, with not much in between! 😁

 

Post covid was a really rough time where it was like everyone had been let out of a cage and was hell bent on being as unpleasant as possible. We do have good weddings but the majority are not really all that great anymore. Between unpleasant guests and hostile venues with over the top limiters it's not as fun as it used to be. Maybe I'm getting too old or jaded. 

[dmccombe7]

3 hours ago, steantval said:

Can’t see the Stratford On Avon marriage lasting very long, the guy sounds an absolute chocolate starfish.

Chocolate Starfish is a new one on me. Made me laugh. 

Dave

 

[Bluewine]

10 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Pete's band are at the top of their game and playing some of the best gigs in UK. Afraid the rest of us are doing similar things to you Daryl.

Other than the HD Museum of course you lucky sod 

Dave

Hi Dave,

 

I can almost say we no longer play bar/oub gigs. There are so many fair and festival gig opportunities in the summer we can afford to pass on bar gigs.

 

We get a theatre gig once in a blue moon. On 9/ 16 we're playing The AL Ringling Theatre in Baraboo WI.

 

Daryl

Edited July 30, 2023 by Bluewine

[dmccombe7]

11 minutes ago, Bluewine said:

Hi Dave,

 

I can almost say we no longer play bar/oub gigs. There are so many fair and festival gig opportunities in the summer we can afford to pass on bar gigs.

 

We get a theatre gig once in a blue moon. On 9/ 16 we're playing The AL Ringling Theatre in Baraboo WI.

 

Daryl

Nice Daryl, How did the gigs go this weekend. ?

 

I do bar gigs with the punk covers band and clubs and larger rock venues with the Glam covers band. Hoping to move the Glam show into the Theatre gigs next year as demand is getting better every gig.

Dave

Edited July 30, 2023 by dmccombe7

[Downunderwonder]

27 minutes ago, Bluewine said:

Hi Dave,

 

I can almost say we no longer play bar/oub gigs. There are so many fair and festival gig opportunities in the summer we can afford to pass on bar gigs.

 

We get a theatre gig once in a blue moon. On 9/ 16 we're playing The AL Ringling Theatre in Baraboo WI.

 

Daryl

Al being the stay at home black sheep of the family?

[gafbass02]

Mine was just insane. 
I took the covers band I play for to my local, where I’ve played literally hundreds of times with other acts and all my mates go etc etc. It’s much smaller than our usual venues, so I knew it would be a squeeze, but I was totally unprepared for the sight that greeted me when I arrived! Cases and cables were just everywhere, it was utter carnage. 
We started playing and a few songs in, the power to our area died. It took ten minutes to get it back on and the router connected  to the iPad for the Xair mixer again. 
 Next song - the mic stand on the guitar amp just randomly collapsed…and the guitarist’s board locked up and had to be restarted. 
Then the power went off again. 
Another ten minutes later we were back in business (again) - when the singer’s acoustic battery ran out. Engineer ran up and switched it while he switched out to electric for a song. 
Back to acoustic again for the next song and his transmitter failed…so the engineer switched it for a cable mid song…

…which failed in the next song. 
 

Then the drummer threw up all over his kit…. A lot.  I mean a LOT. 

Then he did it again….and again…so much it splattered my bass as it bounced back off the snare head. The entire kit and drum mat was just coated in the stuff. And the walls. And the drummer. And basically everything else. 
We stopped.
Singer did an acoustic song to finish the show whilst the drummer went white and scraped chunks off his kit…Gig was over. 

… Until the drummer decided to keep going, and so we pressed on and did three more songs with the poor lad looking very peaky and a tremendous smell hanging over us... Show must go an’ all!
 

Crowd loved it, we had a great time and are being rebooked for a higher fee. 
 

We’ve not had a single issue at a gig in three years. 

I think all three years’ worth of minor niggles caught up with us in one night!

 

Sorry, no pics, the pub was too full of people dancing for the engineer to even see the band and we were all busy dodging chunks!

 

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by gafbass02

[Bluewine]

6 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Nice Daryl, How did the gigs go this weekend. ?

 

I do bar gigs with the punk covers band and clubs and larger rock venues with the Glam covers band. Hoping to move the Glam show into the Theatre gigs next year as demand is getting better every gig.

Dave

No gigs this weekend.  We had the Thursday night show at the Washington County Fair. 

 

If I had a choice I'd pick our 1.5 hour special event shows. It's less work and more money. 

 

Theater gigs are hard to come by. Most of these historical theaters are from the 1920s and there's not many around. Just so happens we have The Bend Theatre right in my home town, West Bend. We probably play there twice a year.

 

Daryl

[Downunderwonder]

So I had to Google it and the circus was indeed founded by 5 of 7 Ringling brothers, from..........Baraboo Wisconsin, who knew?!!? Anyone wanna bet Al stayed home and built a theater instead?

[Kiwi]

9 hours ago, gafbass02 said:

Mine was just insane. 
I took the covers band I play for to my local, where I’ve played literally hundreds of times with other acts and all my mates go etc etc. It’s much smaller than our usual venues, so I knew it would be a squeeze, but I was totally unprepared for the sight that greeted me when I arrived! Cases and cables were just everywhere, it was utter carnage. 
We started playing and a few songs in, the power to our area died. It took ten minutes to get it back on and the router connected  to the iPad for the Xair mixer again. 
 Next song - the mic stand on the guitar amp just randomly collapsed…and the guitarist’s board locked up and had to be restarted. 
Then the power went off again. 
Another ten minutes later we were back in business (again) - when the singer’s acoustic battery ran out. Engineer ran up and switched it while he switched out to electric for a song. 
Back to acoustic again for the next song and his transmitter failed…so the engineer switched it for a cable mid song…

…which failed in the next song. 
 

Then the drummer threw up all over his kit…. A lot.  I mean a LOT. 

Then he did it again….and again…so much it splattered my bass as it bounced back off the snare head. The entire kit and drum mat was just coated in the stuff. And the walls. And the drummer. And basically everything else. 
We stopped.
Singer did an acoustic song to finish the show whilst the drummer went white and scraped chunks off his kit…Gig was over. 

… Until the drummer decided to keep going, and so we pressed on and did three more songs with the poor lad looking very peaky and a tremendous smell hanging over us... Show must go an’ all!
 

Crowd loved it, we had a great time and are being rebooked for a higher fee. 
 

We’ve not had a single issue at a gig in three years. 

I think all three years’ worth of minor niggles caught up with us in one night!

 

Sorry, no pics, the pub was too full of people dancing for the engineer to even see the band and we were all busy dodging chunks!

 

 

No pics? It would have been great for the FB page! 

[gafbass02]

1 hour ago, Kiwi said:

No pics? It would have been great for the FB page! 

I know!  

[Cat Burrito]

Where as Def Leppard broke records in October 1995 for playing in three continents in one day (thank you Wikipedia), we achieved the more environmentally friendly three shows in 24hrs in our local village! Thankfully as I was on mandolin, all the shows were walking distance so I just carried my small pedal board and mandolin around the village.

 

First up was "The Crown" which was amazing for music a few years ago. Whilst stopping short at needing chicken wire, it wasn't a great start. Line checking, the sound guy asked one local who kept saying "turn down" (it's an experienced acoustic duo so nobody was troubling the neighbours). The second we had lost any edge or bite to the sound he proudly announced "Well, I wasn't going to stay anyway!" Needless to say, I just pushed that slider right up! We seemed to play to nobody, only to find out a fair few were sat outside listening. The bar staff charged me £4 for 2 lime and sodas just prior to going on too. They knew we were playing a free charity show for disadvantaged kids so I thought they could have waivered that but I just politely paid it. Such a shame overall though, as a few years back it was an amazing venue for live music. 

 

We then went on to "The Club". This is not normally open in the afternoon and was the one I knew would be a disaster. However, against all odds, there was a small but very enthusiast crowd. We both agreed that it was really enjoyable. We had some downtime between sets so stayed and watched the next two acts. As we left the barmaid made a point of coming over and saying how much she enjoyed the show. 

 

The final show was at our regular haunt "The Blue Boar" so I knew it would be well attended and fun. It was. Much like the Club, we were offered a free drink for providing our services for the charity. We had a family down the front who seemed to love our set. The Dad was straight up afterwards asking about our instruments and we chatted about growing up in the 80s. They were one step further, finding us on social media and writing some really nice comments. 

 

 

It was worth adding, the show was our first since launching our zombie inspired third single. So, although we did the show for charity, it was a good opportunity to plug our new video. And talking of which...

 

 

[Franticsmurf]

20 minutes ago, Cat Burrito said:

So, although we did the show for charity, it was a good opportunity to plug our new video. And talking of which...

Love the video. 😄

[cheddatom]

The Pit in Newstead on Thursday. This was a practise run for our "almost acoustic" set at Rebellion Festival on Thursday. It's a long story but I have to use this "tupperware bass drum" contraption I made a few years ago. Unfortunately the PA at The Pit wasn't really up to the job, so although it apparently sounded fine out front, we were really struggling on stage. Anyway, usual positive reaction from a crowd that seemed impervious to our decidedly average performance. 

 

 

Star and Garter in Manchester on Sunday. There were two great bands on before us - Iconoclasts and Instant Agony. Classic punk stuff really, loud, noisy, and a lot of fun. We were headlining but I don't really have a drum kit I can share with support bands at the moment (another long story), so opted for the house kit which is always great here. Unfortunately, although everything was expertly tuned as usual, I could not get my kick pedal to clamp to the bass drum properly. That combined with agony in my wrist lead to a few errors on my part. Nothing disastrous though, and again, the audience had no idea. I had 2 different people tell me that's the best they'd seen me play! 🤣

 

 

 

 

[cheddatom]

31 minutes ago, Cat Burrito said:

...

 

 

 

great video!

[BigRedX]

8 minutes ago, cheddatom said:

The Pit in Newstead on Thursday. This was a practise run for our "almost acoustic" set at Rebellion Festival on Thursday. It's a long story but I have to use this "tupperware bass drum" contraption I made a few years ago. Unfortunately the PA at The Pit wasn't really up to the job, so although it apparently sounded fine out front, we were really struggling on stage. Anyway, usual positive reaction from a crowd that seemed impervious to our decidedly average performance. 

 

Strangely enough In Isolation did an acoustic warm-up gig at The Pit (ours was practice for supporting Mark Burgess of the Chameleons in Glasgow). We got around the PA problems by doing a bit of lateral thinking with the wiring and my FRFR cab for as a monitor for the whole band.

[cheddatom]

10 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

Strangely enough In Isolation did an acoustic warm-up gig at The Pit (ours was practice for supporting Mark Burgess of the Chameleons in Glasgow). We got around the PA problems by doing a bit of lateral thinking with the wiring and my FRFR cab for as a monitor for the whole band.

If only we had one to hand! Or a normal small bass drum would have been fine too

[Oopsdabassist]

1 hour ago, Cat Burrito said:

 

 

Excellent!  Has Fields of the Nephilim vibes methinks.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Oopsdabassist

[Oopsdabassist]

Sat night at a small pub just behind the High Street in Tring, Not much space and there was a 60th Birthday party going on too, luckily we got em all dancing quite early and the evening ended very sweaty.  Great fun all round.