How was your gig last night?

[drTStingray]

6 hours ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

I do like to see a bass player who knows where his bar towel is. I never gig without one to hand. They have a multitude of uses 

Agreed!! But be careful not to block any amp fans or ventilation grilles (the mechanical/electrical type 😬) I fried/blew up my Ashdown ABM during sound check a few years back with an injudiciously placed coat on a very cold night (snow outside). Since I've been using an LM3, which has a pretty minute footprint, the areas of exposed carpeted speaker cabinet top have become an irresistible lure for lady singer's handbags, bags of harmonicas, drummer's accoutrements, if fact just about anything - and which can block the ventilation grilles - on one occasion I only realised when I could smell a vague but very recognisable smell of electrical components over heating (which reminded me instantaneously of the night I fried the Ashdown....). Looked round and noticed the leather Armani clutch bag which I instantly moved and solved the problem (lady singer's, not drummer's 😂)

So watch where you put/chuck your towel!! 👍 Nice rig btw

Edited October 20, 2018 by drTStingray

[Woodinblack]

Gig in a new pub last night, well, the pub I first met my current band a few years ago, when it was closing down. But first time gigging there for me. Nice pub, looked a bit tidy for a gigging pub when I turned up but it was actually pretty good in the end. Loads of room and as I was buy the window, I put the ashdown CTM on the window ledge at eye level so I could make adjustments and enjoy the view of the little needle going on the VU meter. Highest I managed to make it go was briefly to 60W, doesn't seem to sound much for the volume that it made!

At break we asked the drummers dad how he liked the sound (they come to a lot of our gigs, I think he is mid 80s), he said that it sounded great but I needed to turn the treble down on the drum kit as it seemed like it was boosted. Unfortunately that is one thing I can't do!

Edited October 20, 2018 by Woodinblack

[JapanAxe]

4 hours ago, drTStingray said:

Agreed!! But be careful not to block any amp fans or ventilation grilles (the mechanical/electrical type 😬) I fried/blew up my Ashdown ABM during sound check a few years back with an injudiciously placed coat on a very cold night (snow outside). Since I've been using an LM3, which has a pretty minute footprint, the areas of exposed carpeted speaker cabinet top have become an irresistible lure for lady singer's handbags, bags of harmonicas, drummer's accoutrements, if fact just about anything - and which can block the ventilation grilles - on one occasion I only realised when I could smell a vague but very recognisable smell of electrical components over heating (which reminded me instantaneously of the night I fried the Ashdown....). Looked round and noticed the leather Armani clutch bag which I instantly moved and solved the problem (lady singer's, not drummer's 😂)

So watch where you put/chuck your towel!! 👍 Nice rig btw

I am very conscious of this, but the Demeter has no top vents. I usually hang my bar towel on my guitar stand.

I do occasionally have a problem with drummers putting their mobile phone on my amp or speaker, with inevitable ray-gun noises when it communicates in any way.

[jazzmanb]

Fab

Small cosy bar

First gig with my USA Geddy Lee jazz, sounded immense .3 encores !

[leschirons]

The perfect wedding gig at the perfect venue.

Stunning location. Great food, great audience and the cherry on the cake was that we were on before the food and DJ

We ate after the gig and including the 1 hour drive, was home at 10.30. Result.

[Woodinblack]

Bit of a result, one that we really weren't looking forward to in a not particularly popular pub at the bottom of town. Expecting it to be dead and not particularly fun. Turned out to be exactly the opposite - very busy and everyone was up and dancing. At the end they asked us to play on but we are trying to trim the sets down to a reasonable time and everyone was baying for another encore, but we had done a couple, and leave them wanting more. Good night had by all, and not one, but two blokes afterwards came up and said they liked my bass playing. So I guess I am not as scary looking as blue. And one woman asked why we hadn't played pink floyd for a while, which is good as that is one I sing.

[naxos10]

Played an hour at a Bowls presentation.

The DJ started at 7.00ish we were on at 8.00pm and played 'til 9.00pm. Great response from the audience who were dancing and singing and we warmed them up for the DJ (no one got up in his first hour) who praised us up and instigated an encore.

Bowls club memebrs bought the band drinks and ensured we were fed - they were a terrific group of people to play for.

Our first real gig with this line up - excellent result.

[steve-bbb]

2 minutes ago, naxos10 said:

Played an hour at a Bowls presentation.

The DJ started at 7.00ish we were on at 8.00pm and played 'til 9.00pm. Great response from the audience who were dancing and singing and we warmed them up for the DJ (no one got up in his first hour) who praised us up and instigated an encore.

Bowls club memebrs bought the band drinks and ensured we were fed - they were a terrific group of people to play for.

Our first real gig with this line up - excellent result.

please tell us he got them all dancing to some Cardiacs tunes 😊

 

[Graham]

Not great last night, it was in the function room of a hotel we've done before and it's an awful sounding room, really hard to get a decent tone in there.

Then, whilst setting up, the singer's mixer dies, which is not ideal, particularly as I go ampless with a DI. He has a backup 4 input/ 2 mic pre job to get us out of trouble, so we get going but the monitors are so quiet I can't hear myself through them, just through bleed from the FOH, didn't make for much fun. 

Still, the punters liked it, particularly the birthday boy, for whom this was a surprise, so coukd have been a lot worse.

The singer's messaged me this morning to say he's just bought a Behringer XR12, which looking closely at the photo, only has 4 mic inputs.......I think he'a going to end up returning that

[naxos10]

Steve-bbb, fortunately not.

You would be surprised at the typical age of bowls players, we played somes Stones, rock and roll, Stereophonics and Muse. He followed with some newer pop and then settled on classic Mowtown.

[Bluewine]

On 19/10/2018 at 20:16, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

I do like to see a bass player who knows where his bar towel is. I never gig without one to hand. They have a multitude of uses 

 

[Graham]

Bluewine? Now there's a hoopy frood who really knows where his towl is

[Woodinblack]

15 minutes ago, Bluewine said:

 

 

Glasses so dark she has to tell him where the stage is!

[cheddatom]

The Maze in Nottingham again on Saturday. I had to use the shared kit again despite bringing mine. It's such a pain when I've gone to great lengths to get it sounding just right for me. Bass players will never know the frustration of being forced to use a totally different sound! It went OK but I was pretty hung over from a stag party in Manchester on Friday night. We went down well anyway

The most amusing moment was setting up my cymbals outside in the smoking area, several very inebriated people put their drinks on my cymbals, mistaking them for a stable surface. Much beer and cider was spilled.

[Stylon Pilson]

Saturday night was a Royal British Legion social club. Very healthy sized crowd, but a large proportion were seated and somewhat mannequin-like, so it just goes to prove that size isn't everything. We did have a few dancers though, so not all bad, though a lot of them were very selective about what they would dance to - at the end of each song they'd immediately go back to their seats, so we had a lot of comings and goings. It may be that this is suggesting that we need to work on our set list structure, or reduce gaps between songs - it may just be that this is the nature of the crowd here.

I recruited a photographer along as well - a guy who had done some photos for one of my previous bands - because I felt that all the photos on our website being clearly cameraphone-quality was not an ideal state of affairs.

I need to rethink my approach to transporting equipment. I recently bought a large holdall that would be big enough for amp, backup amp, pedalboard, and all my leads and accessories. I suppose I was thinking that with that in one hand, cab in the other, and my bass on my back, that I'd be all set for a one-trip load-in. Unfortunately, the bag is now so heavy that it ends up requiring a trip all for itself! I think that I'm going to find something else for the amp and backup amp, and stop chasing the one-trip fairy.

S.P.

 

[cheddatom]

10 minutes ago, Stylon Pilson said:

Saturday night was a Royal British Legion social club. Very healthy sized crowd, but a large proportion were seated and somewhat mannequin-like, so it just goes to prove that size isn't everything. We did have a few dancers though, so not all bad, though a lot of them were very selective about what they would dance to - at the end of each song they'd immediately go back to their seats, so we had a lot of comings and goings. It may be that this is suggesting that we need to work on our set list structure, or reduce gaps between songs - it may just be that this is the nature of the crowd here.

I recruited a photographer along as well - a guy who had done some photos for one of my previous bands - because I felt that all the photos on our website being clearly cameraphone-quality was not an ideal state of affairs.

I need to rethink my approach to transporting equipment. I recently bought a large holdall that would be big enough for amp, backup amp, pedalboard, and all my leads and accessories. I suppose I was thinking that with that in one hand, cab in the other, and my bass on my back, that I'd be all set for a one-trip load-in. Unfortunately, the bag is now so heavy that it ends up requiring a trip all for itself! I think that I'm going to find something else for the amp and backup amp, and stop chasing the one-trip fairy.

S.P.

 

I got one of those wheelie holdall things with an extendable handle, so even though it's really heavy, I can still move it with one hand

[Dad3353]

2 hours ago, cheddatom said:

...people put their drinks on my cymbals, mistaking them for a stable surface. Much beer and cider was spilled.

That would please me not at all..! I'm very fussy about the state of my cymbals; they're stored in Cymbags until the very moment we're about to play, and are the very first thing I cover over at the end. No-one, not even myself, touches my cymbals with their bare fingers, so as for using 'em as a drinks tray...

Edited October 22, 2018 by Dad3353

[cheddatom]

Hah, well I did let them know that I was whizzed off about it, but just the fact that they were so drunk they forgot that cymbals actually move on their stands really tickled me

[Raymondo]

A drummer friend of mine has a Premier kit that he bought in the early Seventies that still hasn't been touched by bare hands to this day. He always wears white gloves when assembling and deconstructing his kit.

He owns several other kits and a selection of snares that probably get the same treatment now that he owns them( He has a sixties ,Rogers - I think- kit that he uses in The Kinx that must have had hands on it before he owned it! ) but I can only vouch for the Premier kit as that's the kit he used when I played in bands with him.

Edited October 22, 2018 by Raymondo

[Muzz]

Does he look like a Drumkit Butler while he's doing it? 🙂

[Muzz]

Three-gig grueller this end, not helped by the middle gig being a little further away than where we expecting. BL has previous as long as an orangutan's arm on this front*, this time it was a complete inability to interpret postcodes:

"It's in Leeds, it's only 40 miles away" (we're coming from North Manchester)

"What's the postcode?"

"It's LE15"

"That's a Leicester postcode. Leeds is LS."

"Oh."

"That's pushing 150 miles."

"Oh."

You can imagine the rest of the conversation...

Anyway, as luck would have it, it was a small verrrry posh wedding reception with no influx of evening guests, so they'd all be on their hind legs since mid-morning. Consequentially they all drooped badly by ten, and we packed up in an empty room not long afterwards and were on the road for eleven...

 

* See "The New Forest...it's near Stoke, isn't it?" from a previous rant/post somewhere...

Edited October 22, 2018 by Muzz

[Bluewine]

Unfortunately one of our Holloween gigs has been cancelled.. 

It was a bar we started playing this summer. I think we might have played 2 gigs outside on the patio and one inside. 

I never really connected with the place, but it was money and our band leader worked hard to build a relationship with the owner.

I don't think they're really known for live bands. It"s  more of a neighborhood beer & burger place in my opinion. We never drew much if a crowd, very low energy room 

My point the main stay venues that were good for bands are dwindling down at a rapid pace.

Here is another sad story, we're booked for a Thanksgiving weekend gig at another bar that's never been great for us. You play in a separate room from the bar, the kiss of death. But it's a gig I'll take the money.

Don't feel bad for us, we had a fantastic Sumner gigging season.

Blue

Blue

[Stylon Pilson]

39 minutes ago, Bluewine said:

Blue

Blue

...electric blue, that's the colour of my room...

S.P.

[Frank Blank]

Having had such a bad experience last Thursday I was worrying about playing again but during today’s rehearsal my compadre suggested we looked to see what was happening locally this evening. It just so happened that an open mic night was being held at The Railway so we threw the guitars in the car and went down on spec. Well we had a total gas, a very eclectic group of performers doing varied covers, Fame, Where Do You Go To My Lovely, Word Up a pianist and a drummer just jamming this Latin jazz groove, so cool. We went on midway through proceedings and did a couple of our songs and played them much better than last Thursday. The organiser dude said at the beginning of the night “I’ll try and rustle you up something to put the bass through...” I’ve been struggling to get the sound I want out of the AER lately but tonight, when I got on the stage I plugged into this...

...the sound was (after a very minor tweak) just lovely. I dunno, amps. Monday night at The Railway, what a gas.

Edited October 22, 2018 by Frank Blank
Fashion bleep bleep

[DaytonaRik]

Cracking gig at The Old Wine Vaults in Eastwood, Nottingham.   It's a new venture being run by the former staff/owners of  the popular/well know music venue The Greyhound in the Beeston area of the city which was forced to close it's doors due to a 200% increase it rates by the council.

Great little venue, smaller stage than it's predecessor but the venue has a lot going for it and I wish them every success.

A few new tracks crept into the set, notably Republica's "Ready To Go" which went down an absolute storm - I have to admit that I'm preferring the variety and flexibility of a true cover band rather than a tribute act.

A few pics for you all 

 

Edited October 23, 2018 by DaytonaRik