How was your gig last night?

[Beer of the Bass]

I'm just back from a nice outdoor gig with Jen and the Gents at the Meadow Festival in Edinburgh. Despite showers, it went really well, a few folk danced and lots bought CDs to take home. Supplied backline was a surprisingly good sounding TC BC500 2x10" combo, and my only real gripe was an excessively loud and trebly guitar in the monitors. I'm not used to stages with some room to move around - I kept striding up and down just so I felt like I was using the space a bit...

[WalMan]

Well it was 1 o'clock lunchtime actually & to the WAGs & stage crew pretty much, but it was fun.

Tried out the latest addition to the gear in the bass corner of the gig with a guitar on a stand, as well as the bass, bass pedals & keyboard. Only thing missing was the mic stand. The guitar on the stand worked pretty well. All for the intro to 'Wish You Were Here' but sounded OK Peavey running just the piezos for the acoustic sounds. I have plans to run the stereo cable from it and split between the acoustic & send the main pups into the Line6 PODxT - so that'll be another pedalboard in my ever decreasing space

[The Dark Lord]

Last night was the least enjoyable gig I have ever been involved with.

Played for two hours in the three-piece to a sparsely filled pub in Hampshire and even those in the pub didn't seem to want a band there.

£200 down the drain for them. A waste of our time.

Horrible.

[Clarky]

Our gig wasn't much better. Great venue (Effra Social Club in Brixton) and decent crowd ... but the sound engineer wandered off just before we set up our gear (we were the only band playing) and never came back! We had to try to figure out the PA and sound levels. Our first set was a total horlicks (vocals too low, bass inaudible, guitar too loud). We managed to get the sound better for second set (and won the audience over) so it was a bit of phoenix from the flames scenario. But what a total w***ker of a sound engineer. The manager apologised to us profusely afterwards and used a stronger word to describe the soundguy. Such a cool venue and such a deflating experience

[Jimryan]

Mine last night was great. Was my first outdoor gig. We played a 40th birthday in someone's garden. Sun was shining, not a cloud in sight and the host treated us more like guests than performers. They even had a keg of real ale in the garage and a hog roast on the front drive.

...Packing up in the dark after the sun went down was a bitch though.

[GuitarTart]

Finished a week's run of CATS at Ferneham Hall in Fareham last night. The Youth cast of STP were incredible and the 14 piece band (orchestra ?) was fantastic. Even packing up didn't take the edge off the buzz.
The only down side to the week was that I was sat facing not one but two trumpets !!!

Myk

PS Starting rehearsals for West Side Story this evening. If there's no rest for the wicked, I must be eternally damned !!!

Edited June 2, 2013 by GuitarTart

[BottomE]

Nice wedding in a very pretty village out near Winchester. Set the sound limiter off on the first dance - the drummer was using brushes. I aint a fan of playing loud but this thing was very sensitive.

Straight into the van and got a FO extension and ran the bands power from a different circuit

[KevB]

So the gig I was a bit apprehensive of finally happened last night. I'd started another thread about lusty glaze beach in Newquay elsewhere in case anyone had played it. The issue was with access. It looked from what I could thread together from the website that the only access to the venue (wedding in a big decked marquee type structure overlooking the beach) was via 130-odd steep steps from the top of the cliff overlooking the beach. I can tell you now this is TRUE. My legs are still recovering. Even taking modest amount of gear down for a 4 piece band and with some guests chipping in with help I did that flight of steps 4 or 5 times to get the gear down and 3 or 4 times after packing up at the end of a gig. It's a killer and a band member filmed part of the journey on his phone so I told him to put it on youtbe as a warning to other people who might be asked to play there. It is an established venue, Reef and Feeder have played there before. How do their road crew get all that full pro rig down there? I'll tell you - a LOT of people and down those bloody steps!! The happy couple and several guests came to tell us how much they enjoyed the set, we went down especially well as an ex band member came back as a guest for the gig and he was a close mate of the groom which is how we ended up with the gig in the first place. Given the travel costs (5 hour drive each way, me and the singer took a van down with all the gear) I've actually ended up with little more money in my pocket at the end of it than I would from a local pub gig. I won't forget those damned steps in a hurry though. If I get any photos I'll edit this post to include them at a later date.

Edited June 3, 2013 by KevB

[Mudpup]

Played a blinding wedding in a giant teepee in Margate.
Really chilled atmosphere and great hospitality from the bride and groom.
Homemade curry, jelly shots, dancey guests and we played really well - The onstage sound was the best i can remember for a long while and i managed to really give my BF Big One some proper welly. It sounded great onstage and out front.
Couple of hundred lively guests, nice stage, good light show and we took our big 6k PA for a run out.
Got one next Saturday at The Crown in Egham which is usually a brilliant one too so all is good!

[Bilbo]

Did a wedding yesterday. Sax/Bass/Gtr/Vox. Good players but it didn't gel. Played at a Stately Home that was the bride's family home (Drayton House, Northants). Slightly iffy charts, strange mix of tunes (some very old, some cabaret, some newer - eclectic I can take but all over the place is something else )/ Still, good money, nice people and nobody died.

[chaypup]

Played at the Garage in Swansea supporting Federation of the Disco Pimp (who are amazing btw!)
Great on-stage sound in soundcheck, shame it was completely different when we actually played the gig
half an hour later! How does that work??
Listened back and it wasn't too bad considering we had stand in singers drummer and horn section, shame the drummer decided to
make things 'interesting' by changing song structures and endings on the fly.
[size=4]Oh well, plenty of compliments and got a festival date and a new year's gig out of it [/size]

[size=4]Edit: Oh, and used FOADP's GK combo - sounded very woolly throughout, until the last tune when something changed and it sounded beautiful and jazzy burbly![/size]

Edited June 3, 2013 by chaypup

[Telebass]

Played at a wedding in a country pub on Saturday. Great fun, a lot if friends there, and support from a 3-piece acoustic band of violin (5-string,), guitar, and on squeeze box and spoons, Mr Geoff Lakeman, father of Seth!

[tonybassplayer]

Saturday night at Appletreewick village hall. Excellent stage and potentially great venue but no one really there to set the venue out properly so by the time we went on most people were hanging by the bar at the back with the only table put out the one I did so we could sit at after sound check.

By the end of our first set it was dark in the hall with the only lighting our stage lighting until a guy eventually decided to switch on a few lights.

Good gig but the ambience ( which I believe is very important to any venue ) has potential to be much better.

[tonyf]

Saturday night with the soul r&b funk soul covers band at The Austin Sports and Social Club in Longbridge in Birmingham.

Great venue, huge stage, huge dance floor. A good old social club setting. We set up, sound checked and it sounded awesome. Nice to have a big room to open up the PA a little.

2nd gig with my new Bergantino cab and yet more justification of why it was such a sound investment. It sounded absolutely fantastic.

The gig itself? Not so good from my point of view. A trip to Ikea in the morning had resulted in a whole day of putting flat pack shizzle together for my daughter's room. By the time it came for loading the car and heading across Brum for the setup, I was absolutely knackered. Mentally and physically. The load in, sound check and then the hanging around didn't help.

A few songs into the first set, I made a mistake. P*ssed off with myself, I was still internally cursing when I made another. And then a third. Rather than just recompose, laugh it off and then carry on, I started into this spiral of self doubt which really clouded the rest of the set. VERY untypical of me.

As Bilbo said about his recent gig, nobody died. TBH, with the audience sitting down for the first set, I doubt they noticed.

I was a bit of a moody sod for the interval and then realized I was being a bit of a d*ck so pulled myself together. The band were amazing, they were all supportive and understood how disappointed I was at my own performance. That made me focus a little more and we came out to do the second and third set and had a great time.

After having done several corporate and wedding gigs in a row where everyone seems to be up and dancing from the get go, it's been a bit of a reality check that we need to understand that no matter how hard you work and rehearse, no matter how carefully you structure the set, some gigs are going to be harder work than others. Some audiences take a while to get going.

A weekend off and then the rest of June with gigs every weekend.

#happydays

[Dave Vader]

Sunny afternoon gig at Sunrise festival, fookin' ace.

[BigRedX]

A long weekend in the NE with Dick Venom & The Terrortones.

First up Friday night in Newcastle at The Head Of Steam. We'd organised this ourselves rather than going through a local promotor as we've done in the past, so we billed it as a "Dick Venom Presents..." evening and put on two local bands whose recordings we liked. It was another nightmare crawl along the motorway (although not as bad a last week's drive) which meant that instead of having plenty of time to get settled in with the people who were putting us up for the weekend, we had to go straight to the venue set up and sound check. Our drummer who was travelling separately didn't even get there until the first band were doing their set, so our sound check consisted of an instrumental verse and chorus with Mr Venom drumming (he's a bit good on the drums) and then another verse and chorus with him singing and no drums!

Despite this rather haphazard approach the actual set went brilliantly. It's gigs like this that make the endless hours sat in slow-moving traffic completely worthwhile. Only one small glitch when our stand-in guitarist (his second of three gigs he's doing with us) got two of the songs confused and played the intro to a different one, but I doubt any one in the audience noticed that something was even slightly amiss.

It's been over 6 months since we were last in Newcastle so we had a great turn out and sold a respectable number of CDs, T-shirts and other merch. The venue were impressed enough with what they saw to ask Mr Venom if he wanted to run a regular night along the lines of the one that we're already doing in Nottingham. We'll have to look into the practicality of it, but it means that we could be playing Newcastle on a regular basis...

So on to Saturday and over to South Shields for the Sand Dancer Bike Rally at the Souter Lighthouse. Somehow we'd ended up playing second to last in the evening (just before an Iron Maiden Tribute band) and so had a lot to live up to. The live music was in a good-sized marquee with a decent stage and a huge PA system. Unfortunately for the bands playing in the afternoon the sunny weather meant that they were playing to only a handful of people. As the day went on and it turned a bit colder the tent started to fill up. By the time it was our turn to play there was a decent sized audience in attendance.

However the PA engineers were not at all ready for a band with our live presence. They were not at all happy with Mr Venom leaving the stage and trying to interact with audience, which is a big part of our performance. Also after how well the previous night went, it was going to be hard to follow. Our guitarist had numerous weird technical problems to seemed to come and go for no apparent reason. Also having been told we needed to play for an hour and having spent the last couple of weeks resurrecting some old songs and learning some covers we had to cut the set short to make time for the headliners which meant we could have got away with our normal selection of current songs...

All-in-all though it was good day. We sold more CDs and T-shirst. The organisers loved us (even if the PA company didn't). We spent Sunday chilling out and sobering up so we could drive back to Nottingham. More like that please!

Edited June 3, 2013 by BigRedX

[neepheid]

Saturday's gig was the inaugural gig for The Inevitable Teaspoons. Well, most of them anyway. Singer comes on board next week to relieve a relieved keyboard player from lead vocal duties. Sax player called in sick in the morning with an inner ear problem/dizziness - when he was standing still he felt like he was on a ship so in no position to drive to the middle of nowhere then blow into a saxophone. So the four of us took to the stage.

And what a stage. We were playing at a house/farmwarming in rural Aberdeenshire. We were playing in an old byre (cow shed for non-locals) which had a raised concrete level and a channel which would have been a trough. Certainly the most solid stage I've ever stood on which is more than I could say for the wall behind us (we were advised to move all our gear forward ).



(Photo courtesy of Jo Norris)

Anyway, it went pretty well. We had a set of our own stuff and then a set of covers. We had a song up our sleeve for an encore, but even after that people still wanted more. A quick conflab amongst the band decided we all kinda knew "One Step Beyond", so we played that, then someone asked for "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay". A quick work out of the chords and someone holding up an iPhone for the singer for the words and we did it - first time I've ever done that. It was probably a bit crap but people seemed to appreciate that we gave it a go.

Anyway, have a vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfrH_DQxDR0

Edited June 3, 2013 by neepheid

[tonybassplayer]

Just a minor comment but wouldn't it be better if those lights were on the band not the audience ??

[clauster]

Just back from a really enjoyable gig

The New Cross Inn in south-east London. Xilddx played there with Kit on Friday and I'd asked him to verify the supplied backline. Hartke HA3500 and TE 4X10 all in working order. I decided to leave my rig at home and just take my bass in a gigbag with my PT Nano attached to it.

1st act on was a chap with an accoustic guitar. The PA was soundong really nice. We were on second - quick line / amp check and we were ready to go. Just before we started I noticed a work client and a couple of her friends were at the bar. Gave her a smile and a nod...... 1,2,3,4 GO!

40 mins shot by. We were tight, bounced back seamlessly from 1 or 2 errors, our drummer (who is really a guitarist) played in the pocket and held the tempo as well as the groove. I played my old Ibanez (which sounded and felt great, although my singer lamented that the TE didn't sound as deep or authoritative as
my BF Compact).

My work client was really impressed with the band too which was nice. Although my wife did suffer a touch of the green eyed monster

Great night

[neepheid]

[quote name='tonybassplayer' timestamp='1370271511' post='2098366']
Just a minor comment but wouldn't it be better if those lights were on the band not the audience ??
[/quote]

Are you asking me or telling me? I dunno how these things work - too used to being spoon-fed lights and PA in established music venues.

[Graham]

Was a cracker, played a beer festival in a pub with my main dep covers act, they had a dep drummer too who I've not played with in ages, so great to play with him again.

Took my new Ashdown Hyperdrive pedal with me, very impressed with that, very good pedal at a good price.

My parents and uncle came down as the pub's round the corner from my uncle's place and he took some good photos:

[Dr.Dave]

Place doesn't matter but our guitarists Mum turned up. 79 Years old and dancing around to rebel yell and quo and god knows what. Fit as a butchers dog , sharp as a razor and a pleasure to entertain her. Shows what keeping a young and open mind can do.

I told him - hang on to that memory. Priceless.

[Highfox]

We had a Pub gig last night. Not too many in, but those that were in seemed to really enjoy it, lots up dancing and asking where we were playing next.
Only 4 gigs I've done with this band, but this was the best so far. I finally learned all the songs and can relax and let rip.
I only took a 1x12 and the TH500, sounded sweet slightly over driven

[sticker]

Played outdoors at a local schools music festival ,loads of different acts from kids choirs , teenagers 1st gigs , bands put together for 1 day and us (functions Soul band).
It was my first time out with the BG250 and it sounded brilliant on stage , plenty of headroom with a loud dep drummer !

We weren't headlining so pressure was off a bit so we tried a couple of new tunes for us (Green Onions and Superstition) , was pleased that they went down well and neither were trainwrecks ...

Was home and unloaded by 9pm which made this mornings 4:30am alarm not quite so painful...

[steve-bbb]

[quote name='Highfox' timestamp='1370758700' post='2105117']
We had a Pub gig last night. Not too many in, but those that were in seemed to really enjoy it.....
[/quote]

this!!

was there something exceptionally good on the idiot lantern last night ? perish the thought that all our regulars stayed at home to watch the final of BGT or some other drivel