How was your gig last night?

[Paul S]

Ditto. Played our 4th gig together at what is one of the best little rock venues locally (Riga Music Bar, Westcliff). Turned in an energetic and powerful performance of some classic rock belters, all things considered, to some 10 or so door paying customers - who had seen us before and came back to see us again. We were invited back, which is great news.

It is the age old paradox - takes gigs to get a following, but unless you have a following you can't get gigs. Not sure of the solution.

[chaypup]

2 gigs this weekend.
Friday night was in a townie sports bar - 2 minutes before we went on the landlord says to me - "I liked the overall sound last time but
I think you were enjoying yourselves too much, less solos tonight please" !! Of course we put extra solos in each song
The crowd only wanted Kaiser chiefs-type stuff, the floor is slate with full length windows all around and a 30ft ceiling, the monitors
on our hire PA failed - pretty shocking sound all round!

Saturday played 2 doors down from the Friday venue and what a difference! More pay, free drinks, excellent sound guy and an up-for-it
party crowd of young 'uns who cheered all the crazy solos and mash ups we like to do. Ace!

[Mudpup]

Played at The Crown in Egham last night.

It was a monster night - absolutely rammed with the local loons looking to party!

It started getting hairy halfway thru the 1st set and the second set was a blur of moshing, pogoing, bodies flying everywhere, pole dancing girls, beer showers on said girls, toppling PA stacks, blokes falling face first into singer and tipping a pint into his pedal board (nothin blew up, phew!), two mates stood in front of band to keep us playing at great personal risk and it was probably one of the most memorable gigs i have ever played.

Still a bit shell shocked in a good way too

[rOB]

Yep pretty good last night at the Soundhouse in Leicester. We played the feature/headline set (30 minutes) as part of their open mic night. Nice cabaret style set up but we got some people up for a jig which is nice to see. Decent sound, decent performance.

Plenty of nice comments after including the first complement to my singing voice.

[steve-bbb]

well following on from last weeks gig which only about a dozen or more peeps showed up, what if i were to tell the punters that our next gig the venue have told us that they have five separate hen parties booked in that night ???

[BigRedX]

Unfortunately somewhat disappointing.

We hadn't been able to get a rehearsal since our last gig two weeks ago (which was with a stand-in guitarist) and it showed. Too may rough edges (of the wrong sort) and general sloppiness in the performance. I had managed to injure my foot earlier in the day and consequently was fairly immobile compared with my usual stage presence.

However I'm sure the next one will be much better...

Here's a still from last night's video stream of the gig:

[IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n249/BigRedX/Dick%20Venom%20Live/1008323_431148953658600_230929538_o_zps5ebca732.png[/IMG]

[bassninja]

Did my first 'real book' jazz gig for about 15 years with a lady singer, gtr, drums & sax in the week. Brief rehearsal of tops & tails the day before then straight in. Really enjoyed it and lots of good feedback. Brown adrenaline.

Today, large outdoor stage at a local college with JamGrass trio. Enoyed the LMII/Ampeg 4x10 house rig.

Unfortunately, the college (which has a large and well equipped music/production department) had allowed *no* changoever time and the onstage sound was truly appalling; dogged by feedback throughout. Asked them to turn the entire monitor system down and got a response as if we'd asked in Swahili.

All the gear but no idea...

[AndyBob09]

Eventful.

We played a silver wedding anniversary and and 23:45 our singer passed out. We're just glad she did it in the last 15 minutes. We just heard her stop singing and looked round and she was in a heap on the floor.

Luckily, the do we were playing at was filled with paramedics and nurses so that always helped. Lovely couple and very understanding.

[xilddx]

£4.80 for a bottle of f***ing Sol?! And that was the least of our worries last night.

The venue had a good stage and a nice room, and soundcheck was good, apart from the singers not being able to hear themselves properly from the two flying monitors. Then I found out that because they did not have enough mics for the the upstairs and downstairs venues, they charged us £85 to hire mics and stands, the owner told this to the two bandleaders and the promoter the day before the gig, I feel sure that was a deliberate tactic. Cancelling on principle was discussed but too many people would be let down at such short notice, and we had two young rappers playing a few songs with us, it was their first time on a stage and they were the best part of the night really.

There were so few people in the venue that we delayed our set by an hour and went on at midnight. We were expecting a large party of people who turned up an hour late. We do the first song. The sound on stage was dreadful. We were the only band on so no f***ing excuses Mr sound engineer. After two songs about half the audience of about 50 left and there was a steady exodus through the set, there were about ten people left by the time our set finished. We found out from some friends after that the sound was so loud that no-one could hear anything and it was painful. A few people including two of our friends who come to most of our gigs had asked the guy on the desk to turn it down, he refused. We played like sh*t.

85 f***ing quid, what a c***. I will never play at a venue run by this cockroach again.

[neepheid]

Only two things didn't suck about my "gig" at the weekend - getting fed and the band's playing itself (which was sounding great in my opinion with minimal equipment - no PA, no monitoring, just our own amps behind us and an acoustic amp for the vocals). I don't want to go into details but we got mucked about by the organisers to the extent where the normally placid bass player felt compelled to rally the whole band together and spearhead a communication of dissatisfaction to the head honcho. Michty!

Anyway, grumbles aside, I'm pleased with how we played. Also, if you want to look like you just warped in from the sixties, wear a three piece suit and play an Epiphone Jack Casady

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv7SYIotGdQ"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv7SYIotGdQ[/url]

[Bilbo]

Did a gig with John Etheridge last night. Not come down yet.

[Low End Bee]

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1371322211' post='2112624']
£4.80 for a bottle of f***ing Sol?! And that was the least of our worries last night.

The venue had a good stage and a nice room, and soundcheck was good, apart from the singers not being able to hear themselves properly from the two flying monitors. Then I found out that because they did not have enough mics for the the upstairs and downstairs venues, they charged us £85 to hire mics and stands, the owner told this to the two bandleaders and the promoter the day before the gig, I feel sure that was a deliberate tactic. Cancelling on principle was discussed but too many people would be let down at such short notice, and we had two young rappers playing a few songs with us, it was their first time on a stage and they were the best part of the night really.

There were so few people in the venue that we delayed our set by an hour and went on at midnight. We were expecting a large party of people who turned up an hour late. We do the first song. The sound on stage was dreadful. We were the only band on so no f***ing excuses Mr sound engineer. After two songs about half the audience of about 50 left and there was a steady exodus through the set, there were about ten people left by the time our set finished. We found out from some friends after that the sound was so loud that no-one could hear anything and it was painful. A few people including two of our friends who come to most of our gigs had asked the guy on the desk to turn it down, he refused. We played like sh*t.

85 f***ing quid, what a c***. I will never play at a venue run by this cockroach again.
[/quote]

Ouch!
Just read this. I hate it when you get dicked around by a venue like this. It's a hard call on cancelling beforehand.

[xilddx]

[quote name='Low End Bee' timestamp='1371560786' post='2115510']
Ouch!
Just read this. I hate it when you get dicked around by a venue like this. It's a hard call on cancelling beforehand.
[/quote]

Yes, it's doubly difficult because all these muthas know eachother too, so if you cancel based on even this gross inequity, you can be sure the **** will tell all his mates on the circuit (he used to own Cargo) that you are a buch of f***ers who cancel last minute and you'll find gigs hard to get because of your new reputation. I'm still angry about it, but hey, what can you do. Bands get f***ed around all the time.

Anyway, we have a lovely gig booked at the Elgin in Ladbroke Grove in September, that should be a nice one. the Zulus will overcome

[PTB]

A couple of photos from a recent gig at Round Midnight in Islington, always a great crowd there, one of my favourite venues.

[Jacqueslemac]

Last gig with my current band (I chose to leave for a variety of reasons, including song choice over which I have no say whatsoever). As could have been predicted it was probably the best gig we've ever played in terms of putting on a show and getting the crowd really going. A very hot and sweaty night with plenty of dancers for virtually every single song (including, it has to be said, some of those I hate playing).

A sign of the times - a lady wanted to know where our next gig was. I ended up putting it into her iPhone as a calendar entry, complete with an alarm to remind her.

The singer is taking up bass duties, so it'll be interesting to see how that changes his style. He's normally pretty active on stage.

[Highfox]

We were booked to play in a small pub over the Midsummer weekend (not good as most folks usually try to get out of town!) No surprise the venue was fairly empty and we were booked to play 4 sets!
On the plus side it was a good practice session, a few people got up to dance and seemed to like us. Lesson learned we have to start to be a bit more selective over our choice of venues!
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/8374568@N07/9105412813/][/url]

[leschirons]

Great gig last night. The French fete de la musique at Chateauroux. Played with a great guitarist from the south in a hastily thrown together band.

2,000 in the audience and we were lucky enough to get the 10.30 spot when it wasn't raining.

[Dad3353]

A touch less prestige, but 'La Fête de la Musique', too. The pub 'Ray Vaughan' at Mayenne, Lower Normandy, doing the support slot for a local band of youngsters. A decent crowd (more for the main act, of course...) well received and applauded. A bit more than an hour of pop/rock numbers that we like, but few have heard of (including REM, Deus, Radiohead, Bashung, Noir Desir...). Got to meet some friends I'd not seen in ages (over 10 years for one, an ex-partner in crime when we were a wedding/function duo...). Another advantage of being old (well, one has to find some somewhere...) is rolling up the cables, packing away the mics, preparing my cymbals, then 'allowing' the younger members to tear down and load the tour bus. I got home at around 01h00, tired but content. Vive l'année prochaine..?
Next 'outing'..? 13 July, Lassay les Chateaux. Bring a friend...

[sprocketflup]

hot, sweaty, packed, bouncy shouty singy screamy fun! overall, bloody excellent, 400 people squeezed into the Royal Vauxhall Tavern makes for a great atmosphere. Hope we can do it again soon

Edited June 23, 2013 by sprocketflup

[BigRedX]

Pub gig with my covers band. We don't do many pub gigs mainly because we don't do that many gigs and most of them are parties for friends of the band or fund-raisers for the various singing groups that a couple of our band members are involved with. This one however included all the usual pub gig clichés except the obnoxious audience member.

Tiny little multi-room/space pub. We set up taking as little space as possible and still managed to fill half the room we were in. Toilets were behind the "stage" area so I had people squeezing past me all evening as we played. First set met by mostly polite applause, but the second set had people up and dancing from the opening number. Managed to avoid the rain during both the load in and out and was back at home before 1.00 in the morning.

[Graham]

Pretty good, second dep gig with this particular covers act, could have done with some more audience to be honest, but I guess it's the wrong time of the month for a covers band who have been fairly quiet of late so lacking a following.

They had a new drummer and it was her first gig, she was great to play with - I can tell when she's played a couple more shows there will be a really good groove there.

I played pretty well - couple of mistakes, but nothing glaring and have firmly established myself as their first call dep.

I've had my Genz/Barefaced rig for about 6 months now but I'm still loving the load-in/out - two trips to the car and I'm done! particularly now I've added a pedalboard, makes it all so much easier :-)

[WalMan]

This weeks deep. Somewhat more rehearsed than last as I had rather more than four hours notice and a couple of run throughs. Funky disco stuff, so NOT my usual but fun all the same - I just love playing.

Took then DSI MoPho and keys as well so did keyboard bass to a couple, which was different. No major foul ups and a fun night with the Wal. Even managed my cackhanded version of 'sort of' slap, pick attack up on the Wal sounded lovely through the rig & got compliments generally on the sound.

I just love getting out & making music. Don't really mind much what the style is. I can be such a whooer sometimes :-)

Edited June 23, 2013 by WalMan

[Telebass]

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1371482778' post='2114394']
Did a gig with John Etheridge last night. Not come down yet.
[/quote]
Whew!
On the more prosaic side, two gigs this weekend.
First was a 40th Birthday party, semi-private in the guitarist's local. Great night, many friends in, always nice to have 100% support!
Last night we were in Torpoint, at the Wheelers. A large, long room. Although it all went well, the audience tended to be well back along the room, not sure why.
The DJ had the house disco system waaaaay louder than we were capable of being! Earplugs essential at ALL times!

[Dave Vader]

Rainy problems in Crediton Town Square. Power went down after 2 songs, rest of band have acoustic instruments so moved further into the crowd and played quieter versions of songs. I stood and had a little dance with my EUB and continued having a drink.
Some power came back, so we had FOH again, did a song with no monitor, or power to my amp or pedal board, so largely guesswork as to whether my intonation was any good (apparently it was fine, so that was nice) full power returned for the last 16 bars of the final number, so I could hear that. Which was very nice.
Stressful.... yep

[steve-bbb]

well saturdays five hen party bookings turned into just the one - we were joined by the bride to be giving her vocal rendition of valerie which was actually very good (apparently they were all professional dancers so not your average shy and retiring bunch) - i think the other four parties must have all been blushing brides-to-be from the temperance society or something and they decided to keep to themselves and not partake of the live music entertainment laid on for them

was intially sceptical about being first on at kings hill yesterday afternoon at 1pm but turns out we had the best of the sun and warmth as the rest of the afternoon was jackets on and golf umbrellas up - very good FOH sound both out the front and on the stage

thanks to JTUK coming along to support