How was your gig last night?

[Downunderwonder]

Can someone please do the Photoshop, beards and guitars would be great, and see if he can't get it then?

[Downunderwonder]

8 hours ago, stewblack said:

Bandeoke in Bristol last night. Wet night, bar staff said they'd been dead for the week - didn't auger well.

However we ended up fighting them off with the proverbial soiled stick.

The owner is talking about increasing our residency from monthly to fortnightly. I count this as a success.

Congratulations! Nice to be wanted. Time to learn a bunch of new tunes.

 

This must have been a Thursday night for you as it's Saturday morning here. Better learn that bunch of new songs even more quickly. You don't want to get predictable to that smaller pool of Thursday pubgoers / your burgeoning fanclub.

[taunton-hobbit]

(sigh)

 

 

😎

[martthebass]

15 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Hurtsfall have just been told that tonight's gig at the O2 Academy in Sheffield has been cancelled. The explanation we have been given is supposedly due to RAAC Concrete at the venue and all gigs have been postponed while investigations are carried out. However there is nothing on the venue's website about this. I smell BS from the promotor (HRH). Anyone have any definite info about the situation?

I think I caught something on the local evening news on this….

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-66963409.amp

Edited September 29, 2023 by martthebass

[Dad3353]

3 hours ago, Bluewine said:

Ginger Beards?...

 

[dmccombe7]

6 hours ago, Bluewine said:

 

 

That's really creepy Dave.

 

Those folks would would immediately go on my " Never engage in business with these people " list.

 

Daryl

I think that's where its landed Daryl altho there was some discussion that they pay half the fee up front before we would go back but i wouldn't be comfortable playing that venue now. Bad feeling with it.

Dave

[dmccombe7]

BLOCKBUSTARZ Glam Rock covers gig tonight in a small bowling club in Polmont outside Falkirk. Sold Out tho and what a great wee night it turned out to be.

They provided 2 trays of freshly made sandwiches from a shop supplier with water, soft drinks and crisps.

Paid at half time too so that was nice and we've been re-booked for start of next year again. Great feedback and lots of dancing and people simply enjoying themselves. Varied age group as well which is always good seeing the different generations enjoy what we do.

Sandberg VM4 running flat into Shure Wireless and then Ampeg SVT7 Pro almost flat EQ with just the bass boosted up to about 2 o'clock. Mesa SW210/115 cabs and my EBS Env filter for one song.

Quite a quiet gig as we were well down on the amps and just using the smaller 12" QSC vocal PA.

I find it difficult getting into a gig when its too quiet. I prefer a bit of volume to take my speakers into "working mode" where they sound a lot better.

All in all a good night and well paid for such a small venue on a Fri night.

Dave

 

Not sure if this FB link will play.

http://www.facebook.com/100008786168497/videos/693312746064498?idorvanity=1143195093294609

 

Edited October 1, 2023 by dmccombe7

[neepheid]

New venue (for me anyway) last night - the Harbour Lights in Peterhead.  What a different experience compared to the usual "wait a mo while we move the pool table, then you can set up everything" - an actual stage, with a drum riser, house PA and a sound engineer.  Guy did a good job too - sound on stage was excellent, lots of monitors and good levels all round achieved with minimal fuss or input from us.

 

The gig itself wasn't super busy, but we had folk up dancing and it picked up in the second half.  It's been years since we played in Peterhead (not since pre COVID days) but some of our old regulars came to see us which was really cool.  With big PA support my amp had a leisurely time turned up about half way instead of the usual 3/4 ish.

 

Really cool gig, I hope we get asked back to play here.

[Cliff Edge]

15 hours ago, Obrienp said:

I haven’t actually broached the subject of money yet. I am assuming it is going to be good for a New Year’s Eve gig. It better be, because I think I am going to have to take my partner out for a very special dinner to make up for not being there. She didn’t seem bothered when I was first asked but she looked a bit unhappy when the reminder came in! 

I haven’t done a New Years Eve gig in years, they were never enjoyable and I haven’t missed them. I’d rather be somewhere else with my family. My last band made a decision to never do them as we’d all had bad ones. 

[Cliff Edge]

9 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

BLOCKBUSTARZ Glam Rock covers gig tonight in a small bowling club in Polmont outside Falkirk. Sold Out tho and what a great wee night it turned out to be.

They provided 2 trays of freshly made sandwiches from a shop supplier with water, soft drinks and crisps.

Paid at half time too so that was nice and we've been re-booked for start of next year again. Great feedback and lots of dancing and people simply enjoying themselves. Varied age group as well which is always good seeing the different generations enjoy what we do.

Sandberg VM4 running flat into Shure Wireless and then Ampeg SVT7 Pro almost flat EQ with just the bass boosted up to about 2 o'clock. Mesa SW210/115 cabs and my EBS Env filter for one song.

Quite a quiet gig as we were well down on the amps and just using the smaller 12" QSC vocal PA.

I find it difficult getting into a gig when its too quiet. I prefer a bit of volume to take my speakers into "working mode" where they sound a lot better.

All in all a good night and well paid for such a small venue on a Fri night.

Dave

Extra points for BLOCKBUSTARZ 🙂

[Paul S]

58 minutes ago, Cliff Edge said:

I haven’t done a New Years Eve gig in years, they were never enjoyable and I haven’t missed them. I’d rather be somewhere else with my family. My last band made a decision to never do them as we’d all had bad ones. 

 

I don't drink.  I hate drunks.  (I know, so why play in pubs?  )  Friendly or aggressive, makes not a lot of difference, can't stand any of them.  Almost by definition there are more drunks at large on NYE than any other night of the year so, speaking personally, I'd need a rather big pay check to play.

 

On a brighter note, my blues rock trio Toredown played our end of the month residency at the Shamrock in Ipswich last night  I'd say it was the best night we've had there, totally awesome atmosphere.  As guitarist Alan accurately summed up 'We rocked it to the rafters'   A12 shut on the return leg with a detour through small roads, got in at 1:45am but still smiling.

 

Next up in 3 weeks, Blues at Barleylands club on a Saturday afternoon.  Not been before, should be interesting. 

[BigRedX]

How good new year's gigs are depends very much on what sort of band you are playing. I can imaging that for a typical pub covers band with their typical audience turned up past 11, it has the possibility of being pretty horrendous.

 

I've done one new year's gig. The line up was a goth band, The Terrortones, and Vince Ripper & The Rodent Show who do weird psychobilly-ish sci-fi/horror music complete with back projections some of which are in 3D for which they hand out those old-school red and green glasses. As you can imagine this is about as far from churning out standard covers to out of control drunks as you can get. The gig was absolutely fantastic even if some of more serious goths in the audience were a little taken aback by Mr Venom's antics. Given a similar opportunity I wouldn't hesitate to do NYE again. 

[WalMan]

Good fun last minute dep with Imposter Syndrome last night.
 

Booked for it Wednesday evening. Worked through the proposed set Thursday evening. Flew by the seat of my pants Friday. Got through relatively unscathed with plenty of eye contact and knowing nods. Crowd were happy so any fluffs passed them by😁

 

A load of songs that’ll be standards for others, but I don’t listen to as a matter of course or have ever really played (Ruby, Dakota, I Predict a Riot, etc.,) but survived.

 

First gig with the new car and its voluminous boot which was nice. Took the small rig (two BF One10’s and Tonehammer 350 with a couple of spare amps) and they disappeared into the recesses with room to spare.

 

The band all use IEM’s so ran a line to mine through the Behringer PM1 and mixed with Mixing Station on my iPad 

Edited September 30, 2023 by WalMan

[dmccombe7]

2 minutes ago, WalMan said:

Good fun last minute dep with Imposter Syndrome last night.
 

Booked for it Wednesday evening. Worked through the proposed set Thursday evening. Flew by the seat of my pants Friday. Got through relatively unscathed with plenty of eye contact and knowing nods. Crowd were happy so any fluffs passed them by😁

 

A load of songs that’ll be standards for others, but I don’t listen to as a matter of course or have ever really played (Ruby, Dakota, I Predict a Riot, etc.,) but survived.

Well done, very impressed sir. Huge respect from me.

Dave

[knirirr]

We played the opening slot at the Charlbury Oktoberfest today - so, now I have a souvenir "glass" with the band's name on it.
Unfortunately, the bassist of The Inflatables (also mentioned on the glass) isn't on this forum; apparently they've been playing since 1980 and he was one of the founders.

 

 

[Boodang]

Aaaaahhh, what a painful Oktoberfest gig! Used our trusty xr18 and my trusty tablet, but as the gig was just around from where I live I didn't bring any backup. All setup, great sound, muted the main outputs before taking a break... then as we're announced the tablet decides it wants to do an update, I press 'not yet', it loses sync with the xr never to return. Now we have no sound! 

We had a small old desk with us, so a quick repatch, awful mix, half the monitors not working and that was the first set. My wife went and grabbed my laptop from home so all restored for sets 2 & 3, but still very stressful. 

So, lesson learnt, always have a backup but after tonight I can feel an x touch coming on so we're not dependent on software. 

Edited September 30, 2023 by Boodang

[jimmyb625]

2 hours ago, Boodang said:

Aaaaahhh, what a painful Oktoberfest gig! Used our trusty xr18 and my trusty tablet, but as the gig was just around from where I live I didn't bring any backup. All setup, great sound, muted the main outputs before taking a break... then as we're announced the tablet decides it wants to do an update, I press 'not yet', it loses sync with the xr never to return. Now we have no sound! 

We had a small old desk with us, so a quick repatch, awful mix, half the monitors not working and that was the first set. My wife went and grabbed my laptop from home so all restored for sets 2 & 3, but still very stressful. 

So, lesson learnt, always have a backup but after tonight I can feel an x touch coming on so we're not dependent on software. 

Ouch!

 

A little late now, but I carry two tablets when I do the tech stuff for the electronic duo I work with. It used to be an ipad air and a galaxy tab, but I've recently upgraded to a Galaxy Tab S8 ultra for a larger work surface, so I now take 2 Andriods. They both run mixing station, so the interface is about the same, although I've set a custom layer one the S8.

 

It might be cheaper than buying an X-touch (although I do like those).

[Rexel Matador]

Played last night at a pub in Liverpool that we haven't played before. It was nice to be on a raised stage for once. Not so nice to be told while soundchecking that "everything will have to come down because there's a quiz in the room next door". Sigh. Why did you book a rock band then?

 

To be fair we often get told we're very loud. Maybe our ears are so shot we don't notice. Additionally, there's no way to "turn down" our drummer, so we just set up accordingly.

 

Wasn't the best we've ever played, but it was a good turnout and a nice responsive crowd. And we've been invited back.

 

It was also the first outing for my new homemade bass, which you can check out over in the Build Diaries form if you're into that kind of thing! It sounds great (though that's mostly down to the good people at EMG, in my opinion) and doesn't crush my spine over the course of a gig, which is a massive relief.

 

I was getting weird bassy feedback coming from my side at certain points though. The others thought it was coming from my amp, which did seem to be the case, but it doesn't really make sense to me. It's never happened before and feedback wouldn't swell consistently while you were actually playing would it? I'm hoping it's not the new bass, but the exact same pickup and electronics are in the bass I've been using for gigs up to now. Plus it was fine in the rehearsal room

 

From the sound of it, it seemed much more like feedback you might get from a PA, but again, it did seem to be coming from the vicinity of my amp. Maybe it was the room. I really hope it's a one-off.

 

No-one outside of the band seemed bothered anyway!

 

[casapete]

Just back from Skegness, our first gig for a while. The Embassy Theatre is a nice town centre venue, 

seating just over 1,000 and was near full tonight. Soundcheck went fine, although it sounded almost

completely different when all the punters were in. Our sound guy managed to get things sorted 

pretty quickly though, and I had a lovely balance of room / monitor mix. Gig went well, great

audience up for a good night with a bit of good natured heckling, and no glaring mistakes from the

band despite the lay off. Crap journey home through heavy rain though. Next week we’re down to

Truro and then Torquay, so hope we get some better weather.

 

 

Edited October 1, 2023 by casapete
Add photo

[Merton]

Average.

 

The keys player in my function band has a fairly healthy 50K+ following on TikTok and so put on a “TikTok Creators” event. The first “creator” was shy and didn’t want to play in front of people so asked to go in as soon as doors opened (yes I know….) The second was great at pretending to be Michael Buble and trying to pass it off as his own. The third had a massive meltdown when she realised she’d left her phone in the UberX she’d taken from London to this leafy Surrey village, and refused to perform until she had it otherwise how could she possibly live stream it…? So we played our first set to keep momentum, which went great.

 

Halfway through that she waltzed into the room and proclaimed at the top of her voice to everyone that everything was now ok, she had her phone and we could all relax.

 

When she did eventually come on to perform she absolutely killed the energy we’d built up with her cod-karaoke versions of Amy Winehouse, Adele, Radiohead… and then a song she said she’d written herself to finish off, which was Radiohead all over again with different lyrics 😂

So a massive diva and more than a bit of a Richard to almost everyone involved in arranging the event, which was a shame.

 

We then went back on to try and build up the energy, which to be fair we achieved pretty well. Halfway through this set, diva realised she needed her bag of bits* which she’d left at the back of the stage and tried walking on to get it.
* a Sainsbury’s bag, with god knows what in it as she used our mic/ stand etc…

 

To top it all off, aside from the histrionics and on the music itself I played like an absolute donkey for the second set so didn’t really come away feeling particularly happy about the whole thing 😅

 

Still, thanks to another complicated vocalist situation we played a gig with someone we hadn’t seen for about 8/9 years and she was ace!

 

 

 

 

Postscript:

But… TikTok and “creators”. What an utterly bizarre thing that is. We literally had a room full of people on their phones all evening talking to their followers, commentating on all that they saw, getting in peoples faces and generally trying to “create content”. One woman was still going long after midnight as we were packing away the PA, then followed us out to the car park as we loaded the van.

It feels to me an entirely vacuous pursuit. Live in the moment and enjoy the music, stop streaming every damn second of your life in the hope that someone is watching. I would say no-one cares but they seem to have people following it, so what does it say about those guys. Remarkable and slightly depressing that the world has given us a technology that allows us to sit at home and watch the immensely dull exploits of people via a tiny screen rather than go out and EXPERIENCE things.

Edited October 1, 2023 by Merton
Smelling pistake

[Boodang]

7 hours ago, jimmyb625 said:

Ouch!

 

A little late now, but I carry two tablets when I do the tech stuff for the electronic duo I work with. It used to be an ipad air and a galaxy tab, but I've recently upgraded to a Galaxy Tab S8 ultra for a larger work surface, so I now take 2 Andriods. They both run mixing station, so the interface is about the same, although I've set a custom layer one the S8.

 

It might be cheaper than buying an X-touch (although I do like those).

Yeah, my fault for being lazy and complacent. Have ordered the x touch and a second tablet! I do like to be able to wander around and mix remotely but I’m needing the comfort blanket of the x touch now. Plus, back in the home studio it’ll get a lot of use (I keep telling myself that to justify the expense!). 

[Boodang]

7 hours ago, Rexel Matador said:

Played last night at a pub in Liverpool that we haven't played before. It was nice to be on a raised stage for once. Not so nice to be told while soundchecking that "everything will have to come down because there's a quiz in the room next door". Sigh. Why did you book a rock band then?

 

To be fair we often get told we're very loud. Maybe our ears are so shot we don't notice. Additionally, there's no way to "turn down" our drummer, so we just set up accordingly.

 

Wasn't the best we've ever played, but it was a good turnout and a nice responsive crowd. And we've been invited back.

 

It was also the first outing for my new homemade bass, which you can check out over in the Build Diaries form if you're into that kind of thing! It sounds great (though that's mostly down to the good people at EMG, in my opinion) and doesn't crush my spine over the course of a gig, which is a massive relief.

 

I was getting weird bassy feedback coming from my side at certain points though. The others thought it was coming from my amp, which did seem to be the case, but it doesn't really make sense to me. It's never happened before and feedback wouldn't swell consistently while you were actually playing would it? I'm hoping it's not the new bass, but the exact same pickup and electronics are in the bass I've been using for gigs up to now. Plus it was fine in the rehearsal room

 

From the sound of it, it seemed much more like feedback you might get from a PA, but again, it did seem to be coming from the vicinity of my amp. Maybe it was the room. I really hope it's a one-off.

 

No-one outside of the band seemed bothered anyway!

 

There is one way to turn down the drummer but it’s not very rock n roll! I play drums as well and last year started using an E kit because of A. late night practice and B. small venues. As much as it’s not the same it’s made a massive difference to giging. 

Edited October 1, 2023 by Boodang

[Merton]

4 minutes ago, Boodang said:

Yeah, my fault for being lazy and complacent. Have ordered the x touch and a second tablet! I do like to be able to wander around and mix remotely but I’m needing the comfort blanket of the x touch now. Plus, back in the home studio it’ll get a lot of use (I keep telling myself that to justify the expense!). 

We’ve ended up with a tablet which we use for the main mix, but everyone downloaded Mixing Station to their phone so they can control their IEM mix themselves. Also allows for multiple redundancy, or in the case of last night, muting crap singers from the comfort of the bar area 😂

[Boodang]

5 minutes ago, Merton said:

We’ve ended up with a tablet which we use for the main mix, but everyone downloaded Mixing Station to their phone so they can control their IEM mix themselves. Also allows for multiple redundancy, or in the case of last night, muting crap singers from the comfort of the bar area 😂

Actually the moment we were announced and I went to the tablet to unmute was one of those, thankfully, rare moments where your entire body feels like a gut punch as your brain realises what I giant pink torpedo up you’ve engineered!

[alant]

Last night saw us return to The Eager Poet in Milton Keynes. Smaller audience than last time but was quite lively at times. We had a dep drummer which changed the dynamic at times and a led to a couple of mistakes as a result but nothing too bad.