tony_m

The Gig That Nearly Never Was... Or... (cue silent movie style music) The Perils of Facebook Videos. A bit of background to the tale. As a band, we (Rascallion) have always agreed that any of us could go and play with anybody else as long as they were open and honest about what they were doing, and it didn't interfere with or compromise us as the main band (our drummer, for example, has been hosting a weekly jam session in his studio with some other local musos, but has also been keeping up to speed with our core material). Having been on hiatus since October 2023 while our esteemed frontman recuperated from an operation to fuse one of his ankles, we finally resumed rehearsals in March when he declared himself fit and ready to go. We were all a bit rusty, but things soon slotted into place and we spent the first couple of rehearsals working up three new songs, which went surprisingly well (though I do have to wonder what @casapete and his bandmates would make of our rendition of "Showdown" sans strings!). We then turned our attention to the rest of the setlist, most of which we've been playing for the past couple of years, and this is when things started to go pear-shaped, with Mr Frontman failing to remember how to start the tunes he'd normally start, along with most of the chords, lyrics, and arrangements to the rest of the set. Initially, we jokingly put this down to his age (70+), but then at our next rehearsal, it was even worse, with umpteen songs grinding to a lyricless halt (if they even got started in the first place), so in preparation for our third rehearsal, I printed up a new setlist for him which included the first line of each verse as cues. Then, on the evening before said rehearsal, and with just over two weeks to go until our first gig of the year, our drummer came across some videos on Facebook of a new-to-us band playing at a local pub back in February, and who should be there, upfront and centre? Yep, our frontman. Despite his protests, the rest of us (particular Mr Drums, who's a great drummer and a lovely chap, but has a very short fuse when he thinks someone's taking the proverbial) struggled to accept that Mr Frontman was apparently fit enough to gig (and presumably rehearse) with another band in February, but not to rehearse with us, and must also have been concentrating all his efforts on learning their stuff rather than keeping up to speed with ours. To be honest, we've had our suspicions that he's been "playing away" before now, but this is the first time he's actually been caught in the act. Anyway, after initially refusing to ever set foot on stage with him again (and insisting that he removed his gear from our rehearsal room), Mr Drums finally cooled down and we all agreed that rather than pull the gig, we'd let Mr Frontman back into the fold for it, and after three more rather edgy but improving (in both mood and performance) rehearsals, the gig went ahead last night. After all that drama, not much to report really. A smaller than usual turnout (possibly down to an outbreak of random end-of-the-month-itis), and less dancing than we've had before, but still a great reaction from everybody, with a bit of singing along and plenty of complimentary remarks afterwards. Performance-wise, it's probably safe to say we were still a little ring-rusty, but we managed to negotiate the occasional curve-ball thrown by various members (an extra verse added here, a breakdown section omitted there), and our revised, slightly rockier setlist seemed to work well. For some reason, I really struggled to get my onstage sound sorted on this, the first live outing for the Squier 40th Anniversary P, and eventually resorted to just pressing the "Deep" button on the Ashdown - luckily this produced a suitably deep (sic) tone which I could both hear and feel, so I felt a lot happier in the second set than the first. On the plus side, it apparently sounded OK out front, and in what seems to be a new atmosphere of entente cordiale, it looks like we won't be having to find either a new frontman or a new drummer before our next scheduled gigs in July after all! Quick FB reel from the first set - really must ask our man with a phone to shoot some footage of our second set sometime as that's a bit more lively! https://www.facebook.com/reel/438884908720268

When I joined my current band, I ended up standing stage right by default because all the space stage left in our rehearsal room was already taken by Mr Rhythm Guitar, and the table with the mixer stood on it. We've always stuck to this arrangement whenever we've played live rather than mess about with what has become familiar from rehearsal, and to be honest it worls well for me - I can see the kick drum pedal, and can also hear the drummer's monitor nice and clearly as he has that set up to his left (electronic kit).

It's certainly a big beast! 😲

Not mine obviously (see above!), but for anybody who's not seen it, here's Guy Pratt's board he posted on FB yesterday...

Latest addition to my Ashpeg / Ampdown board is an Ampeg Liquifier chorus, courtesy of @Berserker. Rather a restrained board compared to a lot on here, but does what I want / need.

Just bought an Ampeg chorus pedal off Nigel, super straightforward transaction, great comms, very rapid tracked dispatch and superbly secure packaging. Deal with confidence. 👍

How odd, especially when it's summat they basically offer from stock with a minor tweak. This is how the Lekato + cable looks anyway...

Have to confess I've always just bought stock items from them rather than going down the custom route, so have avoided any such irritation. Good luck, hope you manage to get the message through eventually!

I'm liking the NUX Flow I picked up on the BC Marketplace a while back. Has three different tuning modes (Chromatic, Guitar, Bass), three different display modes (Strobo, Arrow 1 and Arrow 2), and three different bypass modes (True Bypass, Buffered Bypass, Buffered Bypass Monitor), a large bright display which is great for my ageing eyesight, and is pink. Can't vouch as for its accuracy or whether it's the "best", but it works for me - I've had a Boss TU-2 and Ashdown Bassometer previously, and the NUX is definitely my favourite to use. https://www.nuxaudio.com/flowtune.html

I've been using a Lekato WS-50 (5.8GHz) set for a while now. As I wasn't happy with the way the transmitter would twizzle in the output socket, I've now got a Levy's wireless holder on my strap - the Lekato transmitter sits folded in this, plugged in to the female end of a 75cm male jack to female socket extension cable from Designacable. Works well enough, though I do sometimes wish I'd asked if I could have a right-angle jack on the instrument end of the cable as this would have been even neater. https://www.designacable.com/un-balanced-guitar-extension-lead-van-damme-xke-cable.html

Yeah, saw the FB post, cheers. Have to confess I wouldn't consider myself a Goth in any way, shape or form, but I do like the music so it's a pleasure to support an endeavour like this. More power to you! 👍

Excellent, just waiting for the CD to drop through the door now... 😎

Personally, I use a mixture of velcro and bike chain links, but found these an intriguing idea (albeit a likely-to-get-very-expensive-very-quickly idea!)... https://www.stomptrap.com/

Sounds like you need to add some horns... 🙃 Numbers 10:1-6 King James Version And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps.

The only gigs we (Rascallion) have got booked so far this year are at one of our regular village hall venues on April 27th, an outdoor charity festival on July 13th (middle of the nine-band bill), and another outdoor charity festival on August 18th (we're actually headlining this one, but as there's only one other band on, it's not exactly a major coup!). 1. Why you don't have any gigs? Our frontman and rhythm guitarist are both recuperating after recent operations, so we can't commit to anything just yet. 2. Do you rely on an agent ? No. 3. Who finds coordinates and confirms gigs? Usually either the frontman or drummer as they've got the most contacts, so tend to get the enquiries. 4. Are you or any band members in this for the money? Nope, just for the fun of it. 5. How much do you want to gig? When we started, we agreed on once a month at the most (and no pubs!), but tbh it's turned out to be less frequent than that. On the plus side, even if we haven't got any gigs actually booked, we do seem to have become the first-call substitute band for a couple of venues (i.e. the village hall we're playing at in April, and the pub we're playing in August) if someone lets them down and they need a replacement (though obviously this isn't an option at the moment).

Any BLX owners fancy a suitable sweatshirt? 😉 Not me / no affiliation etc. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266640743862?hash=item3e1506ddb6:g:W7kAAOSwh0hltpN5

When we got Civily Partnered in April last year, I was a tad concerned how I'd get on with the ring on my fretting hand (never having worn one before) and was half-expecting having to take it off, but it's not been an issue. (Technical specs: 7.25" radius '51 Precision Reissue / 9.5" radius Squier Precision / 6mm wide x 2mm deep titanium ring from H Samuel). 🙃

Saw this lot playing in Blackpool donkey's years ago, don't know if they're still going or not. Rocked-up versions of chart / pop stuff e.g. Leaving On A Jet Plane, Video Killed The Radio Star, Waterloo, Crazy Horses as demo'd here...

Just acquired a set of tuners from John - lovely, straightforward transaction, great comms, and very quick dispatch and receipt. Deal with confidence.

Just to complete the picture following on from last night's post, the main problem we (Mr Drums in particular) had in coming to terms with the V-drums was how they sounded in the monitors. We were using a set of four SubZero 12" powered monitors which seemed to struggle with low frequencies at the best of times (especially if we had to turn them up to compete with a noisy crowd), and so simply didn't / couldn't replicate what was going out through the PA. Mr Drums was forever concerned that the drums weren't sounding right, despite us and other folks assuring him that they sounded great out front through the PA, and was spending all his time fretting and fiddling with things (including trying IEMs) and tweaking his technique to try and make it sound "right" to him, to the detriment of his actual playing, until in desperation he sprung for the Alesis drum amp/monitor. Coincidentally, at the same time Mr Lead Guitar also sprung for an HH Tessen monitor, which is basically the equivalent of the older HH's we use as mains. This replaced the SubZero he and our frontman were sharing, and I found I could hear enough from it that I could also ditch my SubZero. Between the Alesis and the HH, we reckon the onstage sound is now as close to the FOH as we can get it, just at a lower volume, while my amp provides my personal monitoring plus the onstage bass thump that both Mr Lead Guitar and Mr Drums like to hear and feel. Mr Rhythm Guitar still uses the one remaining SubZero, but this doesn't seem to cause any issues as long as he doesn't inadvertently turn up the lows on it - any onstage boominess is now invariably his fault, not mine, so he gets The Look instead! 😁 Overall, it's taken a while (and no little expenditure) to get to the point where we're all happy, but we got there in the end. Mr Drums has even flogged off his remaining acoustic kit, so there's no going back now...

Similar story here. It's taken our drummer ages and lots of swearing, fiddling with settings, and swapping leads etc. but he's finally happy (well, as happy as he ever gets anyway... ) with his V-drums. He's got a "basic" kit stored which suits most of what we do, plus a couple of others which he switches to for the odd song here and there (slightly different snare sound on one, slightly different kick drum on the other), and has even managed to get the cymbals sounding like proper cymbals. The final key component for our guy (and me tbh) was the addition of an Alesis Strike 12 drum amp which we set up on the far side of the kit from me - suddenly he and I can both hear the drums clearly but at a sensible volume, and the whole thing just sounds and feels right.

Which to be fair, is better than "Play something you know!" as we used to shout at a mates' band... 😁

My first decent amp was a BLX-80, bought new in 1996. Wish I still had it, as it would have been just perfect for leaving in our drummer's reharsal studio, but when we moved to the other side of the country in 2016, I donated it to the guitarist of my old band rather than lug it all the way over here with us (and risk shifting the Earth's axis by a degree or two). 🙄