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How was your gig last night?


bassninja

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TONIGHT!

The Dysfunctionals 3-piece at O'Neills in Solihull.

Dep drummer (our usual skin-botherer was out on the lash), lovely old geezer called Nige - 70 years old and still doing the business. It was nice to not be the oldest one in the band for a change.
I was a bit trepidatious about having a dep drummer if I'm honest, but he was great. He's been playing since before I was born and I'm no spring chicken... He's probably forgotten more than I'll ever know.

 

We've done a lot of O'Neill'ses (O'Neill'ss? whatever the plural of O'Neill's is) with a few different lineups and they're always an absolute hoot (we *still* talk about the Paddy's Day one in Nottingham) so we were looking forward to it. 

I had a gig cancelled last night, so I was extra looking forward to it.


Load in was the usual, the place was pretty empty as everyone was outside in the sun so we thought it might be a quiet one.
First set at 9 went well, enough people appeared to make it feel like a pretty decent audience and a good few dancers by the end.

One woman was loving it but hiding round a corner, so I went for a wander to go and say hello. The wireless setup's working well! (Subzero bug and Lekato wireless XLR for IEMs - they've worked perfectly every time (so far (touch wood))).
I sang lead on a new one, which was nice. It was too low (my fault) which was not.

Half time, we went out for some air, got chatting to a young lady who turned out to be a singer (the fact that she had a wireless mic case and mic stand with her gave the game away) so I tapped her up to do some depping with us which she seemed really up for.

Second set is a bit more party time and the place was rammed. Packed dancefloor, everyone loving it. Great stuff!
Our singer friend from half time appeared and absolutely loved it. Three songs in, our singer reckoned his voice was going, so he suggested we invite her up to sing one.
We did Summer of '69 (It's O'Neill's on a Saturday night, of course we're playing Summer of '69) and she was brilliant, absolutely smashed it.

I went and joined her other half on the dancefloor for a bit of it.. did I mention I'm loving the wireless?

Our singer was starting to croak a bit, so I 'helped out' with the vocals for the rest of the set (remembering lyrics isn't my strong point) and he got the audience to sing the worst bits, so it was all good.
I got to sing the stupid high bit in Teenage Dirtbag (It's O'Neill's on a Saturday night, of course we're playing Teenage Dirtbag) which is always fun.

It was an absolute corker by the end, I had a couple of "I can't believe I get to do this! This is ace!" moments, which don't happen at every gig.

Played the StingRay (Old Faithful!) -> amp board (Thumpinator -> VTDI) -> MB802.
I didn't bother with pedals, as I was inbetween the DJ and our beloved audience - visions of a punter treading on them on the way to ask the DJ for the latest smash hit record by the coolest new beat combo on the scene (?) put me off.

All done, the DJ played a couple of absolute bangers before descending into thumpikrap, pack up and load out was a nightmare as there was an absolutely heaving dancefloor between us and the exits and all the cases were in the van.

All evenually done, home about half twelve for a blue cheese and chorizo sandwich, an Aldi Weston's Vintage Cider (6.8% ABV)  and all the tunes I wanted that the DJ didn't play (Groove is in the Heart, Loveshack, Sweet Dreams, Kickmuck etc).

A good night!

Edited by StingRayBoy42
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On 19/06/2024 at 13:12, neepheid said:

 If the police enter the venue for an inspection and we're away to start a new song, you can bet your life that we'll just jump straight into "Breaking the Law", for instance... ;)


And I thought I'd played some dodgy boozers! What sort of places do you play?!

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9 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

 

I've just learned the tragic news that J, the key organiser of the events of yesterday's fête, hung himself last night, and died. No idea as to why; those that finished the evening with him remarked nothing untoward; he was extremely active and engaged with the day's activities, which all went off smoothly. Maybe more forthcoming in the next day or two, from those closer to him, but, for now, a complete mystery, and, of course, one heck of a 'downer' for all who knew him. For my part, I can't even begin to imagine what could possibly have brought this on; I, with many others, spent most of the day with him, setting up and enjoying the fête. We are all shocked, and deeply saddened. Damn and blast..! :(

Depression is an awful, insidious illness, and even though outwardly someone might appear to be fine, inside there can be a fierce battle raging. Often there can be no external trigger and it's all about what's happening inside their head, and it can be a vicious circle of misery from which it can be impossible to recover.

 

So sorry to hear this news.

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8 hours ago, StingRayBoy42 said:


And I thought I'd played some dodgy boozers! What sort of places do you play?!

 

It's just community policing, random patrol, just some visibility - is it not standard practice elsewhere?  A couple of them come in, have a wander around for a few mins then leave.  Time enough for a bit of 'Priest tho :D

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I did a dep last night with a friend’s blues band. The gig was for a 60th birthday at a village pub

near the East Yorkshire coast. Long room, us at one end, buffet at the other!
Only around 40 guests so quite a challenge for the band, but we seemed to go down okay.

The birthday boy had seen the band a few times so he knew what he was getting, not sure

about all the others though. Anyway, fed, watered and paid so no problems for me.

I actually enjoyed playing something different, plenty of stuff to keep me on my toes 

including a couple of northern soul classics reworked. Used my Precision Lyte into

GK800RB and a 4x10, sounded fine. I’ve been asked to do a festival with the band in

July so looking forward to that too. 

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53 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

It's just community policing, random patrol, just some visibility - is it not standard practice elsewhere?  A couple of them come in, have a wander around for a few mins then leave.  Time enough for a bit of 'Priest tho :D

 

No, we don't have community policing south of the border... certainly not in the refined and lofty establishments I play!

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Our favourite gig of the year at the Farmyard bikers rally at Helmsley. Middle slot on the bill so the crowd were well warmed up and singin and dancin from the first number. Looking forward to the official pics as we had no guests this time to photo and vid.

Had an issue with the Smooth hound wireless set up - it couldn’t cope with the level of wifi interference and I had to swap to a lead rapidly after the second song, guess it’s time to look for a more modern set up.IMG_1553.thumb.jpeg.7e90804d152af5010f153a5a6b6fea5c.jpegIMG_0821.jpeg.49b806f621eaa4a1a7770d51635efacd.jpeg

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4 minutes ago, martthebass said:

Our favourite gig of the year at the Farmyard bikers rally at Helmsley. Middle slot on the bill so the crowd were well warmed up and singin and dancin from the first number. Looking forward to the official pics as we had no guests this time to photo and vid.

Had an issue with the Smooth hound wireless set up - it couldn’t cope with the level of wifi interference and I had to swap to a lead rapidly after the second song, guess it’s time to look for a more modern set up.IMG_1553.thumb.jpeg.7e90804d152af5010f153a5a6b6fea5c.jpegIMG_0821.jpeg.49b806f621eaa4a1a7770d51635efacd.jpeg

At least tell us who your band is!🙏
At a guess… DEL Amitri?

Edited by Mickeyboro
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Just now, Mickeyboro said:

At least tell us who your band is!🙏

 

I'm curious, as someone who is reticent to trumpet my own goings on (I'm in a band but shhh, don't tell anyone!), what do you do with this information?  Do you look them up?  If they have music available do you give them a listen?

 

Not having a go, I'm genuinely interested to find out how much good it does telling people one is in a band - oh, you and half the world, mate!

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6 minutes ago, martthebass said:

Had an issue with the Smooth hound wireless set up - it couldn’t cope with the level of wifi interference and I had to swap to a lead rapidly after the second song, guess it’s time to look for a more modern set up.


Have a look at stuff that uses 5.8GHz - I *think* it's a different frequency to wi-fi (anyone who knows about this stuff, please correct me if I'm wrong) so less chance of interference.

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I played with the Hulla band at their annual Hullabaloo festival yesterday. On the preceding few days we were glued to the weather forecasts as there was rain about. We set up the covered stage on Thursday evening and did all the wiring and line checking Friday morning. I sound checked with the support band I put together ('50% Dave', as two of the four of us are Daves) as a kind of 'is it all working' check (it was!) The Hulla band sound checked in the evening and we usually play a mini gig (30 minutes or so) as a thank you to the helpers and to let the visitors know we're around. (The festival is held on the village green about 20 yards from a popular beach and within a couple of miles there are several large holiday caravan sites - we usually get a few people wandering in to see what's going on. Just as we finished, the heavens opened and after the rush to tie tarps down and seal the stage, we settled in to a fish and chip supper.

 

Saturday's weather was great - not too hot and with a breeze blowing as we did the last minute checks before sound checking the other acts. By the time the first act went on there must have been upwards of 200 people there and by the time my first band went on (around 4pm), perhaps 400 were seated around the green. We'd sold around 800 tickets and as it's a charity event we don't expect all the people who bought tickets to turn up but we were also having a lot of 'on the day' ticket purchases so by the time the Hulla band went on at about 7pm, the place was packed to capacity. 

 

Two songs in to the set and it was clear that the singer's voice wasn't going to last - he'd been croaky all day and comparing the whole event hadn't helped. The set called for seven up tempo, rocky numbers (think 'Town Called Malice', 'I Fought The Law' etc) to start with before a local choir joined us for another 5. One of the female backing vocalists and I sang with him (I was sight reading the lyrics from the Sax players music) and we managed to get through to the choir section. After the choir left the stage, the choir leader joined us on stage (she sings with us a lot) and after a few more numbers the singer's voice started to improve. We managed to get through the rest of the set (about 3.5 hours in total) and carry off a couple of encores before his voice finally called it a day.

 

It was a great day - the support acts were really good mix (sea shanties, blues, punk rock (my band) and the choir. We had around 100 people upfront dancing from the start of the Hulla set until the end. I'm just back from the post gig site breakdown which we managed to do in the drizzle, so we were very lucky with the weather.

 

My kit for both bands was my Fender P bass through a Zoom B6 DI'd to the desk. For 50% Dave I also had an Epiphone Les Paul going through a patch on the B6 set to give me just reverb and a dab of chorus, with an EHX Hot Wax pedal for drive and lead sounds. With the Hulla band, I used my in ears via a Behringer P16m monitor mixed receiving the pre-fade signals from our X32 desk as there's quite a din on stage with brass and percussion. With 50% Dave, I was able to hear the monitor speakers.  

 

The Crowd

 

DSC00102.thumb.jpg.77f2329a6e661d471d72bf9f55f36e36.jpg

 

Our singer

DSC00136.jpg.68cb926f0a61a5e8896f0ccb76a77d57.jpg

 

50% Dave

DSCF0003.thumb.jpg.5ed2b72886cd013919f4b380187f09cf.jpg

 

 

 

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42 minutes ago, neepheid said:

 

I'm curious, as someone who is reticent to trumpet my own goings on (I'm in a band but shhh, don't tell anyone!), what do you do with this information?  Do you look them up?  If they have music available do you give them a listen?

 

Not having a go, I'm genuinely interested to find out how much good it does telling people one is in a band - oh, you and half the world, mate!

I just love details. I am a nerd!

 

And if, knowing the name, I saw the band were on locally I would probably go see them to give some BC support. 
 

I’d google to find out genre, if it wasn’t obvious. 
 

I have my band’s FB as my sig so people can check me out. 
 

I enjoy this thread and probably would even more if I couldn’t gig myself. 

EDIT Am saving Franticsmurf’s for later with a cuppa. That’s my kind of review!❤️

Edited by Mickeyboro
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A few weeks ago our drummer (#4) gave his notice and then was unable to play last night's gig. Luckily our son ,drummer #3, who used to play with us decided to rejoin the band and was able to do last night's gig. We had to tweak the set list to suit him, which is fine as he had depped for us few times. It was good to have him back as he is our favorite drummer out of the 4 we have had. We played well and sounded great. A couple of songs in and our singer tells he can't hear my BV's, so I check my mic and hadn't turned it on! Next song for me is much later. I didn't realise as I can't hear myself in the monitors anyway because of earplugs. We are looking forward to our next gig in a months time and our son will learn a couple of new songs for him.

Edited by mep
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Epic pedalboard failure for our guitarist last night.

His Golden plexi pedal started smelling really bad and stopped working halfway through the second set.

Then he found all his other pedals after that one also didn't work and he thought they had all blown as well, (2 delays and a phaser).

So he had to go straight into the amp, no fx, sounded pretty awful to my ears but we soldiered through.

I took his pedals home and apart from the plexi they all work fine so its probably a power brick issue or patch leads.

He was well relieved when I called him this morning (he's not very good with anything Tech related)

 

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18 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

 

I've just learned the tragic news that J, the key organiser of the events of yesterday's fête, hung himself last night, and died. No idea as to why; those that finished the evening with him remarked nothing untoward; he was extremely active and engaged with the day's activities, which all went off smoothly. Maybe more forthcoming in the next day or two, from those closer to him, but, for now, a complete mystery, and, of course, one heck of a 'downer' for all who knew him. For my part, I can't even begin to imagine what could possibly have brought this on; I, with many others, spent most of the day with him, setting up and enjoying the fête. We are all shocked, and deeply saddened. Damn and blast..! :(

 

So sorry Dad 😞

 

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Pop Punk Prty's 4th ever gig. A nice, small affair in Ushaw Moor. Don't know how backline bands would squeeze on the stage but hey. First gig we've done that I'm happy with without qualifiers. No "it was OK but..." or "well, for our second gig..." we just nailed it. 

 

PXL_20240622_190147939.MP.jpg

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24 minutes ago, Mickeyboro said:

Thats a G&L? Through a pedal?

My beloved G&L SB2 Tribute in suitably pop punk seafoam green into a Shure glxd and a hx stomp. It looks and sounds like this. 

 

 

Edited by Jack
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5 minutes ago, Jack said:

My beloved G&L SB2 Tribute in suitably pop punk seafoam green into a Shure glxd and a hx stomp. It looks and sounds like this. 

 

 

Nice sounds there Jack

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