How was your gig last night?

[ahpook]

Played The Beehive, Bow, London for the second time this year. There was a slight 'command performance' vibe as the singer's folks very visiting from Mexico and were in attendance. Bit of a strange vibe between the drummer and guitarist before the gig, but they've just started to share a house so maybe there's been some domestic strife going on behind the scenes

 

Good gig, we all played well and more there than we expected, which was nice as the place was empty when we arrived. Slight gripe that our drummer needs to speed up his setting up as both in soundcheck and just before we started as he was fiddling for ages...slightly embarrassingly slow when we took the stage tbh. Hey ho.

 

I got a couple of nice bass props from punters which was very nice as it's not often that happens. Yay !

 

Had a lovely time chatting to the singer's parents (via Mrs. Singer as shared language was an issue) after the gig before taking a slightly piddly Mrs. Pook home who brought a work buddy along and got quite into her cups over the evening

 

 

No pics to hand, sadly.

Edited yesterday at 10:27 by ahpook

[dmccombe7]

12 hours ago, Bluewine said:

 

Really, there's nothing worse than showing up at gig and your primary contact is nowhere to be found and the staff knows nothing about live music and bands .

 

I always wonder if when a band is booking a new bar gig if anyone ever asks " is your clientle interested in  live rock music?"

 

Daryl

That's why i hate doing birthday parties as not everyone there will like Glam Rock altho most women will get up and dance to any decent band and we've been quite lucky that most have appreciated what we do.

Many of our gigs with the Glam band are set up thru our singer who was doing these venues as a solo Glam artist with backing tracks and its just moved on to a full band. He still uses the same character and appearance for both so he is instanly recognised as that character.

Dave

[peteb]

2 hours ago, cetera said:

the landlord on Friday was a bassist too (and owner of a few Goodfellow basses)!

 

Baz?? 

 

[peteb]

double-post 

Edited yesterday at 11:10 by peteb

[cetera]

9 minutes ago, peteb said:

 

Baz?? 

 

Yep!

[Boodang]

1 hour ago, cheddatom said:

Crauford Arms in Milton Keynes supporting The Men They Couldn't Hang on Friday night. I can't find any photos! It's a great venue we've played before. No kit share this time as TMTCH were recording for a live DVD (does anyone buy DVDs any more?) and didn't want to move anything. No problem for me as my bass drum is only 10" deep! Great set, super tight, and we were staying over so we all had a few beers and watched TMTCH on their last gig of the year. Hopefully we'll get some support slots with them again!

 

Dogfest at Boston Gliderdrome in Saturday. We were scheduled for 6:15 but a band pulled out and they moved us back to 7:30. Terrible house drum kit. Terrible monitors. Terrible sound. Great crowd who sang along to every word. Must have been 800 at least but again I can't find any photos! This is a great old venue and hopefully we'll get to play there with a decent sound some time

 

Only 4 left this year now. I'll try to remember to take some pics at those

10" deep BD?! 

[Boodang]

1 hour ago, cheddatom said:

Crauford Arms in Milton Keynes supporting The Men They Couldn't Hang on Friday night. I can't find any photos! It's a great venue we've played before. No kit share this time as TMTCH were recording for a live DVD (does anyone buy DVDs any more?) and didn't want to move anything. No problem for me as my bass drum is only 10" deep! Great set, super tight, and we were staying over so we all had a few beers and watched TMTCH on their last gig of the year. Hopefully we'll get some support slots with them again!

 

Dogfest at Boston Gliderdrome in Saturday. We were scheduled for 6:15 but a band pulled out and they moved us back to 7:30. Terrible house drum kit. Terrible monitors. Terrible sound. Great crowd who sang along to every word. Must have been 800 at least but again I can't find any photos! This is a great old venue and hopefully we'll get to play there with a decent sound some time

 

Only 4 left this year now. I'll try to remember to take some pics at those

10" deep BD?! 

[Boodang]

1 hour ago, cheddatom said:

No problem for me as my bass drum is only 10" deep!

10" deep BD?! So shocked I've obviously posted it twice for some reason. Pancake drums?

Edited yesterday at 11:43 by Boodang

[peteb]

26 minutes ago, cetera said:

Yep!

 

It's a small sub-set - bass playing pub landlords in the south of England who play GB basses...! 🙂 

 

Edited yesterday at 11:46 by peteb

[Muzz]

OK, bit of a catchup one...last two weekends were double-headers, starting on a Friday with the Orrible Monthly Residency pub, where as I arrived at about nine (we don't start till tennish - it's a late bar place) the place was festooned with the merry blue lights of the 5-0: two cars and two vans, all there to remove a resident (the landlord rents rooms above the pub: if you want to pay £21 a night including breakfast for a very exciting and possibly unpleasant evening, I'll pass you the details) who wouldn't go. Usual routine in there, tho: total indifference from the dozen or so regulars, and a late finish. Bah, but I'm used to it.

 

The Satdy was a much livelier place, the only downside of which is it's a good 80 minute drive ooop into Lancashire proper, again another late bar (we were asked to start at 11, and sure enough at 10:45 it was like a switch had been flipped that said Add Crowd To Maximum), but much dancing and singing from the punters made up for the previous evening, the lateness and the drive home. Trio format meant a bit more money, too.

 

Then to last Thursday, a corporate gig at the posh Midland Hotel in Manchester with the old trio...usual corporate/wedding hoohah, though: there for 5pm, set up and done for half six (in-house PA and (very good) engineer), then hang around for the speeches/videos/charity auction, etc, etc, which inevitably overran till 10:45pm. At that point (exactly as last year) the organiser said 'Just go on and do an hour, it'll be fine', so it wasn't too late. We'd all dressed up for the gig (and by dressed up I mean black shirt & trousers, not proper dressing up like Dave's Glamtastic outfits), but this year's theme was Rock Night, so we needn't have bothered. It was ironic, though, that the portly balding CFOs dressed as Slash and Axl actually looked pretty accurate these days, and the more two more elderly (and thinner) blokes who came as Keef and Mick were pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing at 20 feet...  Lots of bubbly-fuelled enthusiasm from the crowd, though (and at £200 a ticket they were clearly getting their money's worth), which is always nice. A super-light load-in and out (we all just carried our stuff in one go), too.

 

Friday was back down to the hoi polloi with a bump, tho; a regular gig in Burnley at a place that has bands on (on one end of the dance floor) before it turns into a club night (bands do 11-12:30 or so), then you pack up in between the ever-encroaching dancers and leg it. It's a banging gig, but for mostly the wrong reasons; the place has been on the slide for a good while (the amount of Weasel Dust circulating was ridiculous; the urinals were full of small suspicious plastic bags, you could smell it in there), and we had some mither from some lads who thought it was hilarious to turn one of the PA tops round on the stand repeatedly until I went to stand next to it; I played two songs with hammer-ons while I held the speaker with the other hand. I had my cheapo P with me, and was ready to ping someone in the grill with the business end, but thankfully it eventually sank into their tiny befuddled minds that moving away from the band might be a good idea. They need more and better security in there these days; as an example, about midnight a bloke fell down the stairs (bogs upstairs), and smashed his face badly, and a very drunk girl came up to us first to tell us mid-song aand demand action...like we could do anything about it - the security were all outside chatting. The paramedics turned up and were tending to him while people stepped over his unconscious form to get to the bogs. Lovely place.

 

Hoping for a nice quiet early-start (well, nine would be nice) pub one this weekend...we're in poshish Timperley, what could possibly go wrong?

 

Cheapo P, Stomp, inears...

Edited yesterday at 12:25 by Muzz

[cheddatom]

52 minutes ago, Boodang said:

10" deep BD?! So shocked I've obviously posted it twice for some reason. Pancake drums?

 

It's an old marching drum, 26x10". I put legs on it. I did it for the look of the thing to be honest but it sounds great and it's depth is super useful for these support slots

[dmccombe7]

WOW busy time for you  @Muzz. Quite varied styles of gigs too.

Dave

[Lozz196]

3 hours ago, cheddatom said:

Crauford Arms in Milton Keynes supporting The Men They Couldn't Hang on Friday night. I can't find any photos! It's a great venue we've played before. No kit share this time as TMTCH were recording for a live DVD (does anyone buy DVDs any more?) and didn't want to move anything. No problem for me as my bass drum is only 10" deep! Great set, super tight, and we were staying over so we all had a few beers and watched TMTCH on their last gig of the year. Hopefully we'll get some support slots with them again!

 

Dogfest at Boston Gliderdrome in Saturday. We were scheduled for 6:15 but a band pulled out and they moved us back to 7:30. Terrible house drum kit. Terrible monitors. Terrible sound. Great crowd who sang along to every word. Must have been 800 at least but again I can't find any photos! This is a great old venue and hopefully we'll get to play there with a decent sound some time

 

Only 4 left this year now. I'll try to remember to take some pics at those

Craufurd is an excellent venue, Jason and his team have really done it up well, I remember it before he took over, was a bit spit & sawdust to say the least. 

[cheddatom]

25 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

Craufurd is an excellent venue, Jason and his team have really done it up well, I remember it before he took over, was a bit spit & sawdust to say the least. 

 

Yeh we played there earlier this year with The Professionals and it was great then too.

 

Friday night was quite funny. They had a band on in the front room/bar, which was rammed full of young people. The band were young too, but they were playing Beatles and Stones covers. In the venue room it was full of old people all dancing along to original folk punk!

[Boodang]

1 hour ago, cheddatom said:

 

It's an old marching drum, 26x10". I put legs on it. I did it for the look of the thing to be honest but it sounds great and it's depth is super useful for these support slots

Was watching a Ligonniere episode on YouTube where he converted a Gretsch 28" marching drum to a BD. Rack toms a bit of an issue though!

[cheddatom]

9 minutes ago, Boodang said:

Was watching a Ligonniere episode on YouTube where he converted a Gretsch 28" marching drum to a BD. Rack toms a bit of an issue though!

 

I've got my rack tom on a snare stand. If I wanted two I could hang them off the crash stand to my left. The 26x10" BD is very cool though. I have a load of foam inside it so it's all just low end punch.

 

 

Sorry for the drum chat! I can play bass, honest!

[Boodang]

2 minutes ago, cheddatom said:

Sorry for the drum chat! I can play bass, honest!

Same here. At least it's not 'printer' chat!

[dmccombe7]

Nowt wrong wie printer chat, its equally as off topic as drum chat. 

Dave

[Boodang]

7 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Nowt wrong wie printer chat, its equally as off topic as drum chat. 

Dave

Except one is a musical instrument and the other is not... although which is which?!

[Twigman]

Not last night but last week.

 

We played at a festival in Spain on the same bill and stage as The Mission and The Charlatans.

We had an early slot (19.00-20.30) and the sun set during our set.

The festival was still filling up while we played. A few hundred punters at the start of our set to a couple of thousand by the end.

We had a great time.

The youtube has made me realise just how imperative it is that I attempt to lose some girth pronto.

 

Here is our final song....

 

 

 

 

[Twigman]

To add - Craig Adams had a beautiful Schecter Corsair bass - I thought my GAS had gone but I tell you now that if Andertons had had one in stock when I got home, they would have made a sale. - I'm glad it is special order only.

Edited yesterday at 15:51 by Twigman

[Stub Mandrel]

53 minutes ago, Twigman said:

Not last night but last week.

 

We played at a festival in Spain on the same bill and stage as The Mission and The Charlatans.

We had an early slot (19.00-20.30) and the sun set during our set.

The festival was still filling up while we played. A few hundred punters at the start of our set to a couple of thousand by the end.

We had a great time.

The youtube has made me realise just how imperative it is that I attempt to lose some girth pronto.

 

Here is our final song....

 

 

 

 

No sound here

[ricksterphil]

20 hours ago, Bluewine said:

 

I could go on playing forever. Unfortunately I can't go on traveling and loading in and out and setting up and tearing down 

 

Daryl

 

Nailed it there Daryl.... it's the load in/out that kills me and my dodgy back

[Gasman]

Saturday night we played at the RBL (Royal British Legion) Club in Gillingham for the town’s annual Carnival night. As usual for these carnival-type gigs we had to be there by 6pm at which time all the roads were closed, for the procession to muster safely and the crowds to get cidered-up and ready to cheer along the narrow streets! I left home at 16:45 and just squeaked in before the border was shut. Still, looking on the plus side, I then had plenty of time to recover from the field hockey match I’d just finished umpiring at 15:40 and the 45 mile drive – our start time wasn’t until 20:30!

 

Dep guitarist (#2 this time) had had a similar journey from the Dorset coast, but the dead time after setting-up and sound checking passed fairly quickly as we traded covers-band war stories and had a few bevies until 20:25, when the parade outside ended and the punters flocked in to refuel and get warm. We did a couple of good sets, our dep added a third harmony to those numbers that needed it and cranked out a great 2-4-6-8 Motorway as lead singer. We chanted “No More Songs!” back at the crowd after three encores, I was packed up faster than a fast thing, gone by 23:30 and home at 00:45.

 

Our cat was waiting as usual for a food refill after leaving me the obligatory present in his litter-box – it’s all part of my enviable Rock’n’Roll lifestyle!

 

 

 

 

[ahpook]

1 hour ago, Twigman said:

To add - Craig Adams had a beautiful Schecter Corsair bass - I thought my GAS had gone but I tell you now that if Andertons had had one in stock when I got home, they would have made a sale. - I'm glad it is special order only.

 

They look amazing, don't they ?