This blog will be quite brief because we are fast becoming the resident band here with a gig about every three months and some of the moments are quite similar. On this occasion it was a Friday and Chris the bass and I had planned to arrive ahead of Chris the drum to lay the cables and amps before he arrived - he was meant to be delayed at work! Needless to say, as we arrived at 6:30 pm he was there already set up and eating a burger - so we had to work around the kit anyway. Perversely I do find the twisting, bending and reaching of set up is soothing for my continued bout of sciatica. I decided to miss out on the string synth which would make things easier.
In the week I had given a heavy old mic stand to Chris the bass to modify by halving all the bits to create a bass drum mic stand. He had duly got it sawn up and re-assembled and it looked very good. I had a general purpose T-bone (Thomann) mic I could screw on and lo and behold we had the bass drum miked up! I ran it into the Line 6 mixer on channel 3 and put a sub-bass algorithm on it set to 'thump' and it sounded suitably deep so we were well pleased with it. When I get chance I will tweak the mixer settings a bit more but for now it helps fill out our sound just as it is. I'll get a better pic sometime.
Soon all the rest was set and working but my performance space was even more minute than usual. To avoid a wooden pub beam I would have to face sideways and lift the guitar anytime someone walked past the band. The osteopath I was now consulting had observed that my stage stance had some bearing on the sciatica and the tips he had given me definitely couldn't be applied here!
I had a good chat with a Michael Jackson tribute artiste on matters technical - he was doing the pubs and was keen to hear our Bose. We were geared up to back one of Chris drum's mates on a few numbers (in strange keys such as C# for "Wonderful Tonight") but he hadn't turned up. So come the performance we played standard sets.
These went quite well and I was pleased with the overall band sound, continuity and playing. One blooper I heard was Chris the bass hitting the wrong key for "Needles and Pins" - I had to shout 'it's F' and miss a vocal line to get it back on track. I'm less bothered about finishing a set with a ballad nowadays and we stopped after "All Shook Up". Set 2 went similarly well and we had bits of singalong and dancing at times. Some of the folks were getting a bit drunk by the time we went on for set 3 and, once underway, had to turn my back to the audience from time to time to repel boisterous dancers. I decided to skip "American Trilogy" and we kept on rocking through to "J B Goode" where I let rip with the guitar giving it max volume which drove the amp simulation so that, even on the clean setting, I was rewarded by a slightly dirtier, singing sustain which I was very pleased with. A lot of shouts for 'more' resulted in our embarking on another voyage into the unknown with strangely changing tempos. Because the guitar was sounding so dominant I tried to use it to push the band into doing it right as we got to the second time around with it - with mixed success. Anyway the revellers revelled along to it and we closed to a good response.
Pack up was a bit tricky with people in the way and a massive drunken dispute developing between 2 fellas who had drunk their way through the night. In the end the governess got them out the pub and locked the doors. So we couldn't complete load out for a while. Jacqui had returned home with Chris the bass's missus and fortunately missed all this out. Got in a few minutes later and she had made me cocoa and toast a good finish to a good night for the band.
In the week I had given a heavy old mic stand to Chris the bass to modify by halving all the bits to create a bass drum mic stand. He had duly got it sawn up and re-assembled and it looked very good. I had a general purpose T-bone (Thomann) mic I could screw on and lo and behold we had the bass drum miked up! I ran it into the Line 6 mixer on channel 3 and put a sub-bass algorithm on it set to 'thump' and it sounded suitably deep so we were well pleased with it. When I get chance I will tweak the mixer settings a bit more but for now it helps fill out our sound just as it is. I'll get a better pic sometime.
Soon all the rest was set and working but my performance space was even more minute than usual. To avoid a wooden pub beam I would have to face sideways and lift the guitar anytime someone walked past the band. The osteopath I was now consulting had observed that my stage stance had some bearing on the sciatica and the tips he had given me definitely couldn't be applied here!
I had a good chat with a Michael Jackson tribute artiste on matters technical - he was doing the pubs and was keen to hear our Bose. We were geared up to back one of Chris drum's mates on a few numbers (in strange keys such as C# for "Wonderful Tonight") but he hadn't turned up. So come the performance we played standard sets.
These went quite well and I was pleased with the overall band sound, continuity and playing. One blooper I heard was Chris the bass hitting the wrong key for "Needles and Pins" - I had to shout 'it's F' and miss a vocal line to get it back on track. I'm less bothered about finishing a set with a ballad nowadays and we stopped after "All Shook Up". Set 2 went similarly well and we had bits of singalong and dancing at times. Some of the folks were getting a bit drunk by the time we went on for set 3 and, once underway, had to turn my back to the audience from time to time to repel boisterous dancers. I decided to skip "American Trilogy" and we kept on rocking through to "J B Goode" where I let rip with the guitar giving it max volume which drove the amp simulation so that, even on the clean setting, I was rewarded by a slightly dirtier, singing sustain which I was very pleased with. A lot of shouts for 'more' resulted in our embarking on another voyage into the unknown with strangely changing tempos. Because the guitar was sounding so dominant I tried to use it to push the band into doing it right as we got to the second time around with it - with mixed success. Anyway the revellers revelled along to it and we closed to a good response.
Pack up was a bit tricky with people in the way and a massive drunken dispute developing between 2 fellas who had drunk their way through the night. In the end the governess got them out the pub and locked the doors. So we couldn't complete load out for a while. Jacqui had returned home with Chris the bass's missus and fortunately missed all this out. Got in a few minutes later and she had made me cocoa and toast a good finish to a good night for the band.
No comments:
Post a Comment