How was your gig last night?

[Chienmortbb]

Not quite on @JPJ's epic scale but:

 

Social Club on Dorset's Coast, Mudeford just east of Bournemouth. Our second gig there after a two year break, we went down well the first gig but the old Ents Sec wanted a "refresh". New committee comes in and we areback and boy did we rock the joint. Rig was my usual, Marcus Miller M2 Bass, Bugera Veyron 1001M Amp, LFSys Monza Cab, Zoom B2-Four. Fp vocals I use a Sontronics Solo through a TC Helicon Mic Mechanic 2*.

 

You can see the heavy curtains I mentioned above in the background.

 

*MIc Mechanic has reverb, echo, a bit of built in voice EQ processing, bit of this a bit of that and up to 0.5 semitone pitch correction if needed. Of course my voice does not really need it.....

 

The PA is the singers. I disown it completely.

 

 

 

 

[AndyTravis]

It was blummin great - Played Middleton Arena supporting The Chameleons.

 

half seated (full) and half standing (filled up as we played) so probably 200-250 people watching (think 550 tickets sold).

 

Tried some new tunes.

 

Hired bass rig was a fender rumble 500 combo - very decent little amp - would’ve preferred my own rig, but it was a shared bill and a second kit was on stage floor in front of the riser for the chameleons drummer.

 

Took the Casady and the ripper - but stuck with the ripper to cover all ground. Just “home” as far as my basses are concerned.

 

some good feedback too…

 

 

 

 

Edited September 1 by AndyTravis

[AndyTravis]

Also played at St Mary’s Chambers on Friday in Rossendale.

 

Decent enough - rougher than I’d have liked as we’ve been away on holiday for 2 weeks and the guys haven’t rehearsed (fair enough 🤷🏻‍♂️)

 

photos by our very own @Dankology

[ezbass]

After a couple of gigs with a dep drummer that were just OK, we were back to full strength for a gig at a local football supporters club, a mere 20 minute drive for me; woo hoo! Ah, didn't sell enough tickets - cancelled. No matter, a pub just a bit further down the road asked if we were available as they'd had a cancellation - excellent! Oh, not so much, by the time we'd said we could do it (and we replied very quickly) they'd already filled the slot  . However, all was not lost, a band had double booked themselves for a 60th birthday party at The British Legion in Carnoustie (it appears the guy has a reputation for this) and we were suggested as a replacement. Top gig, nice stage, great sound, lovely punters, who were dancing from the get go and no one commented on the volume (we're not loud, at all), but plenty of compliments. More like that one please. Only downside was that the load in was down a long alley, without vehicular access and my Octave pedal switch decided to be flaky (seems fine now). My JMJ Mustang was the weapon of choice throughout and sounded great, the P didn't even come out of its gig bag. Next Saturday - Stirling Corn Exchange and what looks like another inconvenient load in.

[Len_derby]

Friday night my covers band, Top Deck, hosted a charity night at The Three Horseshoes in Ripley, Derbyshire. It was for Derbyshire Autism Services a not-for-profit organisation supporting families with autistic members. It’s mostly run and staffed by volunteers who are generally parents of autistic children.

We supplied all the PA, back line and lights. To provide a full evening of entertainment we got another local cover band, Paradox, to do a set at 8.15. Acoustic duo Rue Marillo did one at 9.15 and we did 10.15 onwards. 
We donated the band fee and with raffle and other cash given we’re touching £750 raised on the night. All good fun, even the bouncers were dancing by the end. 

Apparently, the landlord of another pub in the market place was heard grumbling that he could have provided a bigger playing area and crowd and why didn’t we play there? Well, if he’d responded to any of our messages when we were searching for a venue we might have done. 😂

Edited September 1 by Len_derby

[Jack]

After two great gigs last weekend I'm back on my losing streak as of Saturday. A local agent who's a semi big deal wanted to try us out and booked us into a local club. We questioned the choice of booking twice, as we really didn't think a bouncy pop punk band would go down well (two of us have played the club in previous bands and it's very much not a pop punk venue) but the agent insisted we'd be a riot. 

 

Anyway, on chatting to the secretary it seems that we're the punchline to a bad joke. There's some bad blood between the agent and the club and now he's purposefully sending them bands they'll hate. Last week it was a band from Wales who had to charge £1200 by the time a hire van was filled with diesel and hotel rooms were booked. (This is in Gateshead) The committee were angry and vowing never to work with him again as we were setting up. Not the best welcome. 

 

At half time I went to the toilet. A man came in after me and spoke to a guy who was already in there before me. 

"Alright John, didn't realise you were in tonight"

"Yeah we're upstairs, apparently the band are shit"

"Yeah you're not missing much mate, they're awful".

 

The sad thing was, we weren't awful. I've been in and been to see enough awful bands, we were good! Let's just say we weren't the right fit. Oh well, the money was about double a decent pub gig...

 

 

Ebmm Stingray, Helix, IEM. Thinking about becoming a wedding DJ. 

[TRBboy]

1 hour ago, Jack said:

After two great gigs last weekend I'm back on my losing streak as of Saturday. A local agent who's a semi big deal wanted to try us out and booked us into a local club. We questioned the choice of booking twice, as we really didn't think a bouncy pop punk band would go down well (two of us have played the club in previous bands and it's very much not a pop punk venue) but the agent insisted we'd be a riot. 

 

Anyway, on chatting to the secretary it seems that we're the punchline to a bad joke. There's some bad blood between the agent and the club and now he's purposefully sending them bands they'll hate. Last week it was a band from Wales who had to charge £1200 by the time a hire van was filled with diesel and hotel rooms were booked. (This is in Gateshead) The committee were angry and vowing never to work with him again as we were setting up. Not the best welcome. 

 

At half time I went to the toilet. A man came in after me and spoke to a guy who was already in there before me. 

"Alright John, didn't realise you were in tonight"

"Yeah we're upstairs, apparently the band are shit"

"Yeah you're not missing much mate, they're awful".

 

The sad thing was, we weren't awful. I've been in and been to see enough awful bands, we were good! Let's just say we weren't the right fit. Oh well, the money was about double a decent pub gig...

 

 

Ebmm Stingray, Helix, IEM. Thinking about becoming a wedding DJ. 

Oh mate, I hate it when things like that happen! Yeah, it's a paid practice, but it's not exactly enjoyable while you're doing it. 

 

We had one similar once, for a local football team. Huge function room, big stage, however the team had been playing away that day....  The gaffer insisted it would fill up in a bit... But it didn't... At the interval, we offered to take half the cash and go, but again he insisted 'everyone' was coming down in a bit. They didn't. We played the whole night to two bar staff and a bouncer. It was absolutely soul crushing 😅

 

Our drummer nearly packed it in for good after that, thankfully he didn't though!

[neepheid]

1 minute ago, TRBboy said:

Oh mate, I hate it when things like that happen! Yeah, it's a paid practice, but it's not exactly enjoyable while you're doing it. 

 

We had one similar once, for a local football team. Huge function room, big stage, however the team had been playing away that day....  The gaffer insisted it would fill up in a bit... But it didn't... At the interval, we offered to take half the cash and go, but again he insisted 'everyone' was coming down in a bit. They didn't. We played the whole night to two bar staff and a bouncer. It was absolutely soul crushing 😅

 

Our drummer nearly packed it in for good after that, thankfully he didn't though!

 

When that happened to us (incidentally it was also a football social club) there was also zero audience save for the bar staff.  The difference was that at half time, they told us we could stop and paid us in full, which was decent of them, both in the financial sense and from the not flogging a dead horse sense.

[martthebass]

A nice gig at the seaside yesterday, Withernsea to be exact. Very friendly pub/club with very enthusiastic audience. Struggled to get away….it was a late night, especially with the infamous overnight motorway closures. Third gig with the new drummer and he’s definitely settled in well. Sorry about the video quality - the stage was very compact and bijou so I’m hidden behind the tops. Can hear my backing vox though - heard but not seen.
 

https://fb.watch/ukgfKVyQDx/

[dmccombe7]

5 hours ago, Jack said:

After two great gigs last weekend I'm back on my losing streak as of Saturday. A local agent who's a semi big deal wanted to try us out and booked us into a local club. We questioned the choice of booking twice, as we really didn't think a bouncy pop punk band would go down well (two of us have played the club in previous bands and it's very much not a pop punk venue) but the agent insisted we'd be a riot. 

 

Anyway, on chatting to the secretary it seems that we're the punchline to a bad joke. There's some bad blood between the agent and the club and now he's purposefully sending them bands they'll hate. Last week it was a band from Wales who had to charge £1200 by the time a hire van was filled with diesel and hotel rooms were booked. (This is in Gateshead) The committee were angry and vowing never to work with him again as we were setting up. Not the best welcome. 

 

At half time I went to the toilet. A man came in after me and spoke to a guy who was already in there before me. 

"Alright John, didn't realise you were in tonight"

"Yeah we're upstairs, apparently the band are shit"

"Yeah you're not missing much mate, they're awful".

 

The sad thing was, we weren't awful. I've been in and been to see enough awful bands, we were good! Let's just say we weren't the right fit. Oh well, the money was about double a decent pub gig...

 

 

Ebmm Stingray, Helix, IEM. Thinking about becoming a wedding DJ. 

Yep you need to match the band to the venue. 

We did a Hogmanay gig and a similar thing was heard by singer in the loo about hoping this lot aren't one of those loud rock bands with screaming guitars all night. Luckily most people that bought tickets checked to see who the band were and came dressed in Glam gear as the venue didn't say what kind of band we were on their adverts altho looking at us in Glam gear is a bit of a dead giveaway.

Dave

[MichaelDean]

I'm at a wedding right now, quite drunk at the moment, and I just want to say a big FU to wedding DJs. Yes, you have place but please not at any event I attend. I would like a good band please. 

[neepheid]

17 minutes ago, MichaelDean said:

I'm at a wedding right now, quite drunk at the moment, and I just want to say a big FU to wedding DJs. Yes, you have place but please not at any event I attend. I would like a good band please. 

 

Hold my beer, we'll be right down

 

Oh, wait, you said a "good" band.  nvm

 

Edited September 1 by neepheid

[taunton-hobbit]

55 minutes ago, MichaelDean said:

I just want to say a big FU to wedding DJs

It paid my rent when times got thin .............

 

😎

[Cat Burrito]

Last night I was up in Nottingham at Billy Bootleggers for an all dayer festival with my rocky 3 piece. I felt a bit uncomfortable at first as I was never much of a heavy metal guy. I got chatting to some young police officer outside because she thought the cool 50s American car outside might be mine. I said it wasn’t and neglected to offer a look at my Peugeot 107 which was just around the corner. 
 

I decided after the shambolic sound of the last show I would channel my inner Johnny Thunders / Lords of the New Church and just go for it! Best gig I think the band has done - loud, sweaty and I felt we meant it. 

 

I have one more show with them this year and will be free to focus on my goth duo for this year 🎉🖤
 

[Bluewine]

11 hours ago, JPJ said:

How was my gig? Bloody marvellous thank you. Last night our little southern rock tribute played main stage at Stormin the Castle bike rally in Witton-le-Wear County Durham. This annual bike rally is probably one of the largest, and features two live music tents, both equipped with professional sound and light. We were second up on the main stage and technically supporting Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons (Phil Campbell of Motörhead fame). The PA was a massive RCF Line Array and both the FOH and monitor desks were Digico (for any fellow PA gear sluts). I decided that as we had a pro engineer mixing monitors that I would use my IEM’s and I am so pleased I did. I could wander around the rather large stage without suffering any loss of sound quality and also I’m not suffering the post-gig tinnitus this morning despite it being rather loud. Highlight of the gig, well there were many. The tent was full of enthusiastic bikers from the off and stayed full to the end with lots of dancers and singing along. We played rather well even if I say so myself, but the ultimate highlight was when the FOH engineer came up to me after the gig and said he loved working with us and that we were the highlight of the weekend for him😎

There were a number of pro photographers snapping away in the pit so I’ll update this post later with some better action shots but for now here’s a quick shot from the pit as we arrived on site.

 

 

Very cool gig.

 

Daryl

[Bluewine]

2 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Yep you need to match the band to the venue. 

We did a Hogmanay gig and a similar thing was heard by singer in the loo about hoping this lot aren't one of those loud rock bands with screaming guitars all night. Luckily most people that bought tickets checked to see who the band were and came dressed in Glam gear as the venue didn't say what kind of band we were on their adverts altho looking at us in Glam gear is a bit of a dead giveaway.

Dave

 

Great comment Dave.

 

At the local level here in the Milwaukee area ticketed events are primarily for signed known touring bands. This is fair and festival country and most municipalities have weekly live music series. All this stuff is usually free to the public. I hate to brag about our local live music scene. There's so much work we've had to turn gigs down because we couldn't fit it into our schedule. 

 

This is a tough one, but a good discussion.  Especially for new young bands.

 

At the end of the day you want to avoid playing gigs that don't match your band. However,  there are exceptions.  One being the money was too good to refuse or you're a new young band and you'll play anywhere .Another would be if your networking with an agent that can get you high profile gigs you can't get on your own.

 

And sometimes we get surprised.  I was somewhat skeptical on our gig Friday night at The Old Village Beer Depot. It turned out to be a great gig with a respectful size crowd. Allot of

" boomers" that still like loud tube driven rock and blues guitar. We're good at that.

 

I get that loud guitar bands are not welcome everywhere.  I always say "good loud" is quite different than unbearable " bad loud ". 

 

Daryl

[Bluewine]

7 hours ago, martthebass said:

A nice gig at the seaside yesterday, Withernsea to be exact. Very friendly pub/club with very enthusiastic audience. Struggled to get away….it was a late night, especially with the infamous overnight motorway closures. Third gig with the new drummer and he’s definitely settled in well. Sorry about the video quality - the stage was very compact and bijou so I’m hidden behind the tops. Can hear my backing vox though - heard but not seen.
 

https://fb.watch/ukgfKVyQDx/

 

 

Nice! I listened to the clip with ear buds. Excellent vocals!

 

Daryl

[Bluewine]

On 31/08/2024 at 08:45, dmccombe7 said:

Nice one. I like it. 

That's how we do it with the Glam band. We bring a standard PA but if we need lighting and a full PA then its a van hire as well so we add on a bit more to the fee to cover it all.

The way we look at it is if we can get in our cars its a standard fee. Anything more is extra.

Dave

 

 

I took a pic of what we using for main and subs. We use the RCF stuff for smaller gigs.

 

Daryl

[steantval]

Someone took a picture of my gear at a gig we played on Friday night and put it on Facebook.

 

 

[scalpy]

Almost forgot we had a gig Saturday! Stupidly local, less than half a mile from the house for a marquee wedding. Bit of an epic load in and we had the B guitarist- A guitarist is also a sound engineer and was working a local festival so muggins here had to do the knobs and faders. 
 

We were in 6 piece configuration so horns on track. Just goes to show how much the audience are hearing what they want to hear- we have a 15 minute country medley and for some reason Mainstage dropped the basic and horn track completely, leaving gaping holes in the arrangement. Did the audience care? Nope, on the chairs singing along at the top of their voices to the bare minimum of a tune, no clue stuff was missing.

 

Rest of the gig no problems, knackered them all out so by the end of set no one wanted us to DJ (part of the contract) so chill out tunes went on, packed up and was home in record time, all of 5 minutes driving.

[Rayman]

Good one in Salford on Saturday, a couple of really excellent bands on the bill before us too, it was a fun night.

 

There was one hilarious incident, I fell off the stage during soundcheck and totally wrecked my knee 🤦🏻‍♂️. So it was just a case of standing there during the gig, without any of the usual waving of basses in the air. Probably a good thing.

 

[Cat Burrito]

Having had a time out for Nick's (other half) wife's (again, other half) 50th, my little Gothic duo have finally returned. I spent the time off getting reacquainted with my upright bass. We did two hours of 80s alternative / gothic songs, peppered with a few originals from our forthcoming EP and debut album. I was bass guitar free so played mandocello, mandolin, guitar on two, upright bass on five and sang. And I bet this doesn't get typed too often but Sisters of Mercy "This Corrosion" on upright bass? Yeah, we went there!

 

The attendance was a little lighter than our regular shows but hands down, I thought it was the best we had ever played in this format. 

 

[casapete]

We returned to our favourite gig at The Sun Inn Beverley with our acoustic duo ‘Milestone’.

Just for a change I thought I’d try using an electric bass instead of an electro acoustic, and

was very pleased with the results. 
Took along my Precision-a-like ( no name replica with Japanese Fender pickup) into my

Rumble 100 combo with a touch of level into the PA too via the DI on the amp. Sounded

massive, with a few regulars commenting on it. 
As usual we took requests for the whole 3 sets, and did some great tunes - ‘Don’t fear

the reaper’ ‘Whole lotta Rosie’ and ‘Stayin alive’ ( yes really!) amongst many others.

The pub was rammed, and we did a couple of encores too. Next gig there is October

13th, so can’t wait! 
( Pic below shows we have finally made it into the pub’s ‘window of fame’. ) 😆

 

 

[Muzz]

Decent outing Satdy night in a local-to-the-BL-but-not-me pub we've played before. Dep drummer B (A is seeking gigs elsewhere, C is the best of the lot but he's put his price up, D is...well, D) I like playing with (he's depped before (for a good run) a while ago in the trio I used to be in), tho he's an, erm, forthright drummer, so he's a little louder than the others. Rock solid, tho, and has a seasoned musician's confidence, so he's great to stand next to. No percussion, but we had a keys player who's a friend of the BL, but very Starlight Lounge Michael McDonald for a pub band - in fact, his main living is solo piano bar stuff. When he was good, he was very good (he's clearly an accomplished musician in his own genre), but he couldn't not play on some songs where he really shouldn't, if you see what I mean, and he didn't like the drummer's onstage volume. There was even a Dep Flounce at the end of the evening.

 

He moaned to the BL, who picked up the moan about onstage volume, so I spent yesterday with the tray of Ferrero Rocher out doing my best diplomat impression trying to get them to compromise. Don't think it's going to work. The BL says he doesn't need ear protection with other drummers (and we play in small spaces), he has IEMs but doesn't use them, he has an RCF 12 PA top as his monitor instead. I've told him, anyway...

 

A shame, because we sounded better with Dep B than we have in a while (through my IEMs, anyway), we've got Dep D for Satdy, at a muso-infested place (the BL's local), we're having a rehearsal with Dep D before then to get him fully up to speed.

[neepheid]

2 minutes ago, Muzz said:

Decent outing Satdy night in a local-to-the-BL-but-not-me pub we've played before. Dep drummer B (A is seeking gigs elsewhere, C is the best of the lot but he's put his price up, D is...well, D) I like playing with (he's depped before (for a good run) a while ago in the trio I used to be in), tho he's an, erm, forthright drummer, so he's a little louder than the others. Rock solid, tho, and has a seasoned musician's confidence, so he's great to stand next to. No percussion, but we had a keys player who's a friend of the BL, but very Starlight Lounge Michael McDonald for a pub band - in fact, his main living is solo piano bar stuff. When he was good, he was very good (he's clearly an accomplished musician in his own genre), but he couldn't not play on some songs where he really shouldn't, if you see what I mean, and he didn't like the drummer's onstage volume. There was even a Dep Flounce at the end of the evening.

 

He moaned to the BL, who picked up the moan about onstage volume, so I spent yesterday with the tray of Ferrero Rocher out doing my best diplomat impression trying to get them to compromise. Don't think it's going to work. The BL says he doesn't need ear protection with other drummers (and we play in small spaces), he has IEMs but doesn't use them, he has an RCF 12 PA top as his monitor instead. I've told him, anyway...

 

A shame, because we sounded better with Dep B than we have in a while (through my IEMs, anyway), we've got Dep D for Satdy, at a muso-infested place (the BL's local), we're having a rehearsal with Dep D before then to get him fully up to speed.

 

This is 100%, grade A bullpoop.