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mad dash to set up, and no chance of a sound check. So right now I am utterly starving having had a biscuit and a coffee at 11am. A mercy dash to the keyboardist house for. Slice of pizza and something to drink. So what's the plan? 'Well, the sound guy reckons he can get something half decent by a song or 2 in....' OK, so that's too bad. 'But we may have an issue, the dep singer has flu....'
So we get back to the venue and we are cutting it fine. We were due on at 8.45 but no sign of said singer. The punters were clearly getting restless and in walks said singer, as white as a ghost who is up for seeing how it goes....
2 songs in and I am getting really high pitched feedback when the compressor is on....it's fine when not, but I use the compressor for a lot of funky stuff. A mad fiddle with pick up selectors reveals no solution so press on without said pedal.
midway through the first set, the singers voice had been holding out.... Well not after that one. Her voice clearly starting to go.....by the end of the first set it was utterly shot.
So what now? As luck would have it, there is a guy who has had some experience- we grab him no he opens the second set with Play that funky music, shake a tail feather and Uptown funk. We have managed to get as much honey into the singer as we can no she resumes duties until the keyboard player comes out to finish the second set.
talk about a stressful night. Apparently we were ace! Good to see that pissed up punters had a good time...... And we are doing it all again tomorrow night. What fun!
I relied on the footswitch for everything from switching channels, solo boost and switching the fx loop on off. After a brief “oh shit” moment, I proceeded to set the amp manually to ch2, which was my crunch sound, and had to control my tone using a combination of boost pedal and guitar volume. Considering I’d NEVER tried this before, even at home, it was a bit of a baptism of fire.
Luckily it didn’t sound too terrible, but I was on edge through the whole gig and I’m sure that affected my playing. Was just glad to get through it though!
I remember another where my wireless transmitter fell off my strap as I stupidly used a Velcro tie to fasten it and it slipped out during the first song, the compartment flew open and the batteries fell out across the stage. A few embarrassing minutes later I managed to pop them back in and shove the transmitter in my back pocket for the rest of the show. From then onwards I use gaffer tape and haven't had an issue.
Apart from playing some right dives and encountering some weird characters in other bands it’s not been too bad. I’ve also got the lucky distinction of never breaking a string during a gig.
Had a gig once where the drummer was so pissed up that he just played one drum beat for the whole set.. i mean non-stop.. one beat, didn't stop between songs... i mean.. it was a good beat, but adapting songs on the fly to work with this wasn't the easiest task.
Another time, i managed to fall off the PA, landed on some audience, spent the rest of the gig on my back. Luckily was only a couple of songs left
I think in that same gig i managed to bash someone round the head with guitar and caused a nasty bump. Currently married to that person, still not forgiven. Incident happened before we started dating.
The singer of another band i was in used to lift me on his shoulders during certain solos, unfortunately when picking me up he managed to hit my pedalboard and mute my signal, so when starting the solo nothing happened.. so i look like a dick up on some dudes shoulders trying to figure out why my guitary no worky. It's a long solo and the singer doesn't realise for quite a while that nothing is being played..
Fun times
Last gig I played was to an empty room - how's that?
Or maybe the time we were booked to do a Blues Brothers themed party, learned all the songs, got the costumes but the organiser had either forgotten or omitted to tell the invited guests, none of which seemed very keen on the Blues Brothers.
Did an open air gig in the pouring rain once, we were assigned a sort of gazebo to keep us dry but a pool formed on the roof we just noticed it in time and got all the gear away before the roof caved in and we all got soaked, I'm not making this up.
There was no way of communicating with him and it somehow seemed worse to stop.
In hindsight this was the high point of the gig which was abandoned half a dozen songs later.
The couple were divorced in a year.
After I had the task of trying to figure out how to get home. Had to call the RAC to come out to look at the motor, it was midnight at this point by the time we had packed up. Luckily they were out within 25 minutes and diagnosed the clutch/gear stick was bust and I had to be towed home. Even the mechanic asked "how the fuck did you get from West London to Brighton with a fucked up gear stick/clutch?!" I just said "had a gig to get to mate..." and he laughed it off.
Eventually got home around 3am after being towed. I think car-wise and journey-wise its the worst, but the actual playing at the venue was fine!
The first of those was a gig with a Punk/New Wave covers band at a bowling alley in Harlow. Literally an empty room (other than three people on the lane furthest away from the bar area where we were playing. Bizarrely we got another couple of dates there where the same thing happened (apparently the manager and staff really liked us, and had an entertainment budget they couldn’t think of anything better to do with) before somebody (I’m still not sure whether it was them or us) decided it just wasn’t worth the effort.
As for the second one, that was the current rock covers band, Solar 9. We don’t normally do weddings or similar functions, the only exceptions being when it’s a “friend of the band” who knows exactly what we do and what they’ll be getting but on this occasion we got an approach from an agency who’d previously booked us a few decent gigs and events offering (by our standards) a shed-load of money and adamant that we were exactly what his client was looking for to liven up their evening reception. We rolled up at the agreed venue and the agreed time to find that nobody seemed to be expecting us and that a DJ had already commandeered most of the stage, nevertheless after a bit of head scratching we got set up and kicked off set 1 of our contractual obligation to an empty hall while everybody buggered off for drinks and nibbles, only to re-appear when the (excruciatingly loud) DJ kicked off again. Set 2 went pretty much the same way, and seeing how the wind was blowing we did the shortest possible set in a desultory manner, packed up (to the accompaniment of complete silence, ear-bleeding DJ aside), and left without (as far as I know) speaking to anybody.
To this day I don’t know whether we were reluctantly foisted on an unwilling family by one person saying “Oooh yeah! You should totally have a loud rock covers band, it’ll be great...” and then not turning up, or it we were the punch-line of an (expensive) joke on somebody’s part, but it was excruciating, and even about three times our normal pub-gig fee didn’t make up for it...
go to be parked and at the desk in the terminal in Heathrow at 6 for a flight at 8
roughly a 2 hour flight to Italy.. +1 hour for Italy time, we land at around 11
by the time we picked up our stuff, met the tour manager and left the airport it's around 12 midday
an almost 5 hour drive gets us to the venue at almost 5 in the afternoon [soundcheck was scheduled for 4:30
we unload, get setup and finish soundcheck a little after 6.. [support band soundcheck, doors open at 7:30]
we arrive at the hotel around 7 to check in, get clean, change, eat etc.. and try to chill out a little
we're back at the venue at 9, going on stage at 10 to play a 90 min set
we played pretty good but were certainly not at our very best..
after the gig we meet'n'greet the audience..
at 2 in the morning we breakdown the gear and load the bus.. back at the hotel at about 3:30..
the next day we must be up, fed and out of the hotel by 9 because we have a 6 hour drive to the next gig
soundcheck is at 4-ish.. but the tour manager want to get going early in case we hit traffic
first thing in the morning the promoter says to me.. "what's up, you look like a fkn zombie and you have a show tonight"
duuuhhhh ! ! ! !
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.JayGee said: Actually, now I come to think of it, it was worse than that. I missed the first set completely (two guitar band fortunately) after writing off my wife’s car on the way there when somebody pulled out of side-turn about two feet in front of the bonnet, then (having in my view demonstrated superhuman commitment to get there at all) the generator ran dry half-way through the second set of the second set...
The fact this didn’t even occur to me until now should illustrate just how excruciating the two candidates I posted earlier were!
it's actually very fatiguing