Jacqui and I flew back from Lanzarote on the Thursday, but a combination of late plane and taxi wait
meant that our drive home from the car park at the Copthorne Hotel was delayed
and we didn't get in until about 2am Friday.
We had a lot of admin to deal with at home so I was still tired and out
of practice on the Saturday gig day; but
at least it was exceedingly local.
We had previously agreed to take all the gear and sus out how much we could set up when we got there. I decided to chicken out of using the Line 6 mixer and, thinking there would be little room, I brought a small Bose T1 mixer along just in case. Good job I did, 'cos after I wandered into where I thought the band would be playing I was re-directed to a small alcove on the North side of the pub where the boys were setting up already. Although we could squeeze one Bose L1 next to the bass stack there would be little room to get at the mixer if we put it its usual place on the B1 bass bins. So I made a quick decision to set up just the one Bose L1 on the right of the bass stack and use the small T1 mixer located on a shelf on the other side near where I would be playing. This would involve a few compromises. The drum and bass vocal mics would share channel 2 by plugging them into a splitter/combiner transformer box. No string synth. Also the delay return would share levels and EQ with the guitar through channel 4/5, and there would need to be some changes to harmoniser and delay input and output levels to maintain an undistorted gain structure. I will need to revisit this when we start using the Line 6 mixer, I suspect mic level connections will be better than the current line level connections. The pub was quite busy as we set up and we shifted the cases and covers back to the cars to keep things tidy. I plugged our muzak player into the guitar input and it sounded OK EQ wise, so just set level on the player. Only trouble was: I was using a very old stereo mini jack to mono jack lead and it was a bit crackly. The house PA was playing modern stuff and I decided to leave that until we started our show in a couple of beers time!
We had a few followers from Chris the bass's family and the pub was hosting a Xmas meal event over on the South side, so it was reasonably busy as we started up. A few numbers in I had my vocal set right but Chris the drum was quite low in the vocal mix. Controlling feedback on the T1 mixer was a bit of a problem and I struggled to get it right through most of the set. During the break I tinkered with the Chris's vocal EQ bringing down the top end and the PA was better but not perfect as we opened set 2 with "Apache" - walking out front a little I could hear the instrumental balance was fine and the guitar sounded very good. We had one new number to play early on in this set: "Happy Together" featuring Chris the drum on lead vocal to which I would add my harmonised vocal. At practice it had gone so well we were confident to bring it into the set tonight. I announced it as a new one for us and opened up with the guitar riff. That was OK, but it took Chris some time to get in on the vocal and from then we all struggled to remember the arrangement - and the vocal sound could have been better. There was little audience response at the end so they must have been aware it was a bit ragged. I quickly soldiered on with "Daydream Believer" which got the bar girls and some of the audience singing and dancing along. Next up was "Delilah" which brought the house down as usual and from then on the set went pretty well with this crowd. We chose to finish with the 70's sequence "Hot Love (a bit fast?), Yellow River, Amarillo" which we performed well and got a good response for. As we were already over time we omitted the usual finisher "Wonder of You". I wasn't unhappy about this 'cos holidaying away in warm climes, my voice was beginning to crack already. Talking about cracking, the crackly lead on the Muzak player got very bad in this interval and I had to faff around with it a lot to keep things going (when I got home I cut the lead up and threw most of it out; only reusing the moulded stereo mini jack which I am sure was OK - we will see!).
Set 3 went down well: the drink had started to take hold and we were on our dancier set list. By the time we got to "Saturday Night at the Movies" we had the audience and bar staff well involved in sing-a-long-a-dancing. One problem though: my voice was getting rough and "American Trilogy" was such a struggle I called for "F B I" to follow to rest it. Unfortunately, I then messed up the middle of that and had to 'flub' us back to the verse! As we went on, things seemed to go a bit awry with the two Chris's as I linked several rocky numbers together towards the end (e.g. "Hi Ho, Really Got Me, Alright Now, Caroline") - losing sheets, forgetting arrangements and getting off in the wrong key, but not so bad the audience noticed. I'm sure this is down to lack of familiarity with my approach to reading audiences and picking songs to suit rather than following a strict list; but I'm sure all will be well as we get a bit more playing time under our belts! We signed off with "Johnny B Goode", I thanked the audience and the bar girls in particular for their enthusiasm and said how much we were in awe of the bar staff's ability to sing, dance and pull pints at the same time. 'It's called multi-tasking - women can do it" one of them quipped back. We encored with an even wilder version than usual of "Born to be Wild" which I could not get the Chris's to finish. So from a promising beginning it staggered into an undisciplined freak out ending, authentically typical, and very reminiscent, of some of the wilder bands from my far past that I had played in. It was a hoot though!
As we packed up there were a few folks passing by making favourable comments which was good to hear and Chris came back from a visit to see the management with an excellent report and 2 more gigs! Pack up went smoother than set up and we were soon ready for the off. I gave Lewis a lift back to Chris's house and was still home 5 minutes after leaving the pub. Overall a good night but still plenty of potential for us to improve.
We had previously agreed to take all the gear and sus out how much we could set up when we got there. I decided to chicken out of using the Line 6 mixer and, thinking there would be little room, I brought a small Bose T1 mixer along just in case. Good job I did, 'cos after I wandered into where I thought the band would be playing I was re-directed to a small alcove on the North side of the pub where the boys were setting up already. Although we could squeeze one Bose L1 next to the bass stack there would be little room to get at the mixer if we put it its usual place on the B1 bass bins. So I made a quick decision to set up just the one Bose L1 on the right of the bass stack and use the small T1 mixer located on a shelf on the other side near where I would be playing. This would involve a few compromises. The drum and bass vocal mics would share channel 2 by plugging them into a splitter/combiner transformer box. No string synth. Also the delay return would share levels and EQ with the guitar through channel 4/5, and there would need to be some changes to harmoniser and delay input and output levels to maintain an undistorted gain structure. I will need to revisit this when we start using the Line 6 mixer, I suspect mic level connections will be better than the current line level connections. The pub was quite busy as we set up and we shifted the cases and covers back to the cars to keep things tidy. I plugged our muzak player into the guitar input and it sounded OK EQ wise, so just set level on the player. Only trouble was: I was using a very old stereo mini jack to mono jack lead and it was a bit crackly. The house PA was playing modern stuff and I decided to leave that until we started our show in a couple of beers time!
We had a few followers from Chris the bass's family and the pub was hosting a Xmas meal event over on the South side, so it was reasonably busy as we started up. A few numbers in I had my vocal set right but Chris the drum was quite low in the vocal mix. Controlling feedback on the T1 mixer was a bit of a problem and I struggled to get it right through most of the set. During the break I tinkered with the Chris's vocal EQ bringing down the top end and the PA was better but not perfect as we opened set 2 with "Apache" - walking out front a little I could hear the instrumental balance was fine and the guitar sounded very good. We had one new number to play early on in this set: "Happy Together" featuring Chris the drum on lead vocal to which I would add my harmonised vocal. At practice it had gone so well we were confident to bring it into the set tonight. I announced it as a new one for us and opened up with the guitar riff. That was OK, but it took Chris some time to get in on the vocal and from then we all struggled to remember the arrangement - and the vocal sound could have been better. There was little audience response at the end so they must have been aware it was a bit ragged. I quickly soldiered on with "Daydream Believer" which got the bar girls and some of the audience singing and dancing along. Next up was "Delilah" which brought the house down as usual and from then on the set went pretty well with this crowd. We chose to finish with the 70's sequence "Hot Love (a bit fast?), Yellow River, Amarillo" which we performed well and got a good response for. As we were already over time we omitted the usual finisher "Wonder of You". I wasn't unhappy about this 'cos holidaying away in warm climes, my voice was beginning to crack already. Talking about cracking, the crackly lead on the Muzak player got very bad in this interval and I had to faff around with it a lot to keep things going (when I got home I cut the lead up and threw most of it out; only reusing the moulded stereo mini jack which I am sure was OK - we will see!).
Set 3 went down well: the drink had started to take hold and we were on our dancier set list. By the time we got to "Saturday Night at the Movies" we had the audience and bar staff well involved in sing-a-long-a-dancing. One problem though: my voice was getting rough and "American Trilogy" was such a struggle I called for "F B I" to follow to rest it. Unfortunately, I then messed up the middle of that and had to 'flub' us back to the verse! As we went on, things seemed to go a bit awry with the two Chris's as I linked several rocky numbers together towards the end (e.g. "Hi Ho, Really Got Me, Alright Now, Caroline") - losing sheets, forgetting arrangements and getting off in the wrong key, but not so bad the audience noticed. I'm sure this is down to lack of familiarity with my approach to reading audiences and picking songs to suit rather than following a strict list; but I'm sure all will be well as we get a bit more playing time under our belts! We signed off with "Johnny B Goode", I thanked the audience and the bar girls in particular for their enthusiasm and said how much we were in awe of the bar staff's ability to sing, dance and pull pints at the same time. 'It's called multi-tasking - women can do it" one of them quipped back. We encored with an even wilder version than usual of "Born to be Wild" which I could not get the Chris's to finish. So from a promising beginning it staggered into an undisciplined freak out ending, authentically typical, and very reminiscent, of some of the wilder bands from my far past that I had played in. It was a hoot though!
As we packed up there were a few folks passing by making favourable comments which was good to hear and Chris came back from a visit to see the management with an excellent report and 2 more gigs! Pack up went smoother than set up and we were soon ready for the off. I gave Lewis a lift back to Chris's house and was still home 5 minutes after leaving the pub. Overall a good night but still plenty of potential for us to improve.
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