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cheddatom

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cheddatom last won the day on May 29 2019

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About cheddatom

  • Birthday 06/11/1984

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    Stoke-on-Trent

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  1. We did the Gifford Arms in Wolverhampton on Saturday night. I've been having some serious stress recently and was really looking forward to a few beers, a curry, and playing f|_|ck out of the drums. Google maps directed us to the wrong side of the pedestrianised high street. 20 minutes of manoeuvring and bickering about signage and fines later, we got to the back door of the pub. The load in was punishing and I was drenched and out of breath by the end of it. Our roadie stood on a bench to hang up some merch, and the sound engineer immediately told him to get down. Apparently it was a health and safety concern. A little alert went off in my head and so I opted for my quieter, dampened snare drum, just in time for him to start telling us that we'd need to keep the stage volume down. There are only 2 monitors, one at each edge of the front of the stage. Our guitarist doesn't use an amp, and all 4 of us sing, so it was quite a challenge to get a sound. The engineer insisted our bassist turn down to almost zero, but then fed a load of bass through the stage monitors, making them work far too hard, and making it weird on stage with no low end. We play a lot of gigs, so we're used to compromise and the occasional sub-par PA, but this engineer was talking to us in a very patronising manner, as though it was our first gig. I'm sure he sensed the frustration as after our sound check he tried to win us round "That was amazing guys, is that song on spotify? I love it" etc. 🙄 The support bands turned up, and we start discussing kit share and stage space between ourselves, which is all pretty normal, but then the engineer started speaking to the whole room, over the PA. When he realised we were still talking to each other, he turned up, and literally said "lend me your ears for just a minute" in a tone that I can only describe as "caricature of bingo caller". He wanted to tell everyone the stage times, and the very strict load-out times. Obviously you'd usually get this info from the promoter/rep before hand, and maybe on the night too, but I've never had it announced at top volume over the PA by a sound engineer. It was all very bizarre Anyway, we trudged off through the rain to find a curry. We failed. I got some chips. I don't think I've ever been that grumpy getting on stage before, but as usual, the crowd cheered me right up. Ace gig, and by all accounts the sound was excellent, so I guess the engineer knew what he was doing (although our bassist turned up quite a lot, and I switched to my louder, un-damped snare drum). Nightmare load out through a wasted crowd but paid and home before 1AM
  2. You did char the orange peel right?
  3. I think you have to wait until after 5 or 6pm to park there? We've never had a ticket anyway
  4. When we play in London we all go in one van, pay the congestion charge and any parking fees. We never seem to have a problem loading in, or finding somewhere nearby to park. It always seems fine to me!
  5. Burslem is pretty much dead. I doubt this will do anything to help but but if it's going to attract Rayman all the way from Macclesfield you never know!
  6. Yeh we definitely won some new fans. It would have made sense if we'd picked up another gig in London, which was on the cards, but didn't happen in the end
  7. We drove from Stoke to Margate on Saturday. 5 hours with a couple of stops. Olby's Soul Cafe is a brilliant venue! Great PA and the engineer was brilliant too. Unfortunately the choice of some unknown band from Stoke to headline a night in Margate didn't work out so well. The old story of a local support band bringing most of the crowd, then taking them with them after the set. All that way, writing off two full days, to play to less than 50 people... still, at least we got paid and had a laugh
  8. Duffy's bar in Leicester on Saturday night. It was rammed and super sweaty. I'd annoyed the sound engineer yet again! This time I moved the drum monitor before he'd arrived. It turned out this monitor was knackered, and rather than fix it, he'd found just the right angle to balance it on a bar stool and keep it working. It'd been working for months apparently! After the show I politely recommended that if he didn't want to fix it, he should put a "do not move" sign on it. Anyway, I played without a monitor and it sounded fine on stage. Great gig!
  9. Yeh it was definitely a successful gig! This soundguy normally works at the other local venue, which was his excuse for all the problems, although both venues have the same desk... Anyway, issues with the bar and door staff mean that our fans would never go to this venue again (even longer story!), so it's not going to be an issue for us in the future
  10. We played at The Sugarmill in Hanley (Stoke) on Saturday night. It's our first headline gig here and the local venue so it felt like there was a bit more pressure than usual, that plus the lack of gigs since November, and it would be my first time on BVs, all gave me some nerves When I arrived, I greeted the soundguy. We're on first name terms and I thought we were pretty friendly, but the first thing he said is "what ridiculous gear have you brought this time then?". I explained it's just my usual stuff but he seemed really annoyed for some reason. I set up the kit and the whole band were ready to go in 10 minutes as usual. Then the soundguy spent 30 minutes plugging everything in. While he was mic'ing the kit I showed him my nice new cymbal. He's a drummer so I thought he'd be interested. He said "oh, so that'll be dominating the whole room then!". I said "not really mate, it's the way you play them" to which he replied "Yeh, which is F&*KING LOUD!!!". I asked if he'd ever done the sound for us before, and he confirmed he hadn't, so he'd have absolutely no idea how loud I'm going to play my cymbals. I just let it go. So, all mic'd up, he tried to get sound. He had the main outs from his mixer routed to the centre vocal wedges. I explained that it all sounded weird and that my drums shouldn't be feeding back but he just cracked on, sweeping EQ on the drum mics for a solid 15 minutes. Bass was checked just fine, but guitars (just DI'd) sounded weird and kept feeding back. I asked him to turn the stage monitors off just to check there wasn't an issue, and this is when he finally figured out the mains were routed to the two centre wedges. Half an hour to who knows on the phone and he reckoned it was sorted, so we went back on to sound check. All fine except the lead singer can't hear himself. There's sound out of the centre wedges, but it's quiet and muffled. The soundguy told me I needed to play the drums quieter. I explained that it's never an issue and we play similar sized venues all the time. He finally came up to hear the vocal in the wedges and agreed it sounded wrong, and so after another long phone call figured out that he should have used a different cable for these wedges. FINALLY everything worked and we did our check in less than 10 minutes, but from setting up to completing sound check was pretty much 2 hours. After this check the soundguy approaches me to tell me that my bass drum is a nightmare. "oh, what's the problem?" I ask and he complains it has "no top end". I screwed up my face and said "we're not playing metal mate". Then I went home to change and try to forget the sound check The actual gig was awesome, loads of people in, loads of people singing along, an encore... just an awesome gig all round. A couple of my mates were there, and they said it sounded OK but that my vocal mic was muted! All that practise and all those nerves for nothing!
  11. A wonderful session of lead vocals yesterday. This singer hates headphones and asked if there was a way to record without. Some engineers would refuse, others would try to set up a super accurate out of phase monitor system, I just handed him the SM7b, put my earplugs in, and turned the monitors up loud. He was nervous that it wouldn't work as he's never seen it done like this, but I know the guy, and he's LOUD, so when I played it back with the vocal solo'd, you can hardly hear the track at all, just his screaming voice! Ditching the headphones really loosened him up and we got some very "live" performances
  12. Something about the smell of them makes me nauseous but I'd rather not impose my weirdness on clients... will do the "no hot food" thing though
  13. It's a bit of a weird setup, very little chance of any spillage
  14. The problem is that I'm addicted to tea, and constantly have a brew on the little coffee table in the control room
  15. The band played lots of Dua Lipa, Lizzo, Bruno Mars etc at the last wedding I went to, it was great!
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