tony_m

Interesting placement for the portaloos! 🫢

Our drummer went to see a new-to-us local cover band the other week, and thought they were very good indeed. Something he did note was they did several medleys which kept people dancing, but the key to each medley was that they switched songs whenever there was a tricky bit coming up, which is either very clever or a bit sneaky depending on your point of view!

Indeed, it's a great little festival, and that's only the front half of the site. This is the whole site from a year or two back...

Yeah, when I was in NO with some mates we saw a band - can't remember their name, but the venue was the "Funky Pirate" - and the tip jar came round *very* regularly, accompanied by a fair amount of encouragement / haranguing from the stage!

Saturday saw our (Rascallion's) third appearance at our local charity outdoor festival, Anderby Rocks. Shan't bore you with the details of why the first two bands who were due to appear had to be replaced by a solo acoustic singer and an acoustic duo, but the upshot was that after the acoustic duo who were scheduled to appear before us had finished, we ended up being the first full band on, which actually worked in our favour in terms of setting up, though it still didn't mean we got anything more than a basic line check - luckily the regular sound crew working the festival know their stuff, and after one minor burst of feedback early on, quickly gave us a superb onstage sound and, as confirmed by my Better Half who's fussy about volume in particular, the sound out front was equally good, balanced, and just-loud-enough. Just to add to the fun, we'd not managed a full rehearsal this week after our frontman went down with the lurgy on Monday. It had been touch-and-go until Friday morning whether he'd be fit enough to handle the vocals and harmonica, but luckily he'd recovered enough to do so, and apart from a couple of minor on-the-hoof rearrangements which we managed to catch and cover hopefully without anyone noticing, everything went well. Not much in the way of dancing to report, though a few folks did stand up from their camping chairs and jig around a bit towards the end of the set, which to be fair is all we ever tend to get anyway. At least the weather, which had started off alternating between drizzle and light rain, finally got its act together and it stayed dry throughout our set, not so much of a concern to us due to the solid tentage covering the stage, but great for the hardy souls in the audience, bless 'em. In the rush to set up, play, then get off, I didn't manage to grab any rig photos, but I used my trusty MIJ '51 Precision Reissue --> Thumpinator --> NUX tuner --> Ampeg OptoComp --> Ampeg Scrambler --> Ampeg Liquifier --> Ashdown 12-band EQ (pre-shape only engaged) --> Trace Elliot AH200 + BLX-110 cab --> DI'd into PA. Couple of photos from the event FB page...

As an alternative to rubber washers, I can recommend the D'Addario Dual-Lock jobbies I've been using for a while now. Can't vouch for how secure they might be if one is a Hyperactive Flea rather than an Entwistle Statue like me, but they work well and are easy to click on and off. They've also got a channel which holds your cable securely - this grips the cable pretty tightly, so I leave mine attached to my cable at the appropriate point, then it's just a case of plug the jack into the socket, clip the lock onto the strap button, and I'm good to go. https://www.daddario.com/products/accessories/strap-accessories/strap-locks/dual-lock/

Just bought Paul's JH Voodoo Chile Coiled Lead. Lead in perfect condition exactly as described, sent and received very quickly, great comms, altogether a lovely straightforward transaction. Deal with confidence!

"Do your research please." 🤦‍♂️ 🤣

Mr Lead Guitar turned up at rehearsal yesterday accompanied by his 13 year-old grandson and his grandson's Squier Mini P, which he's had for a few months but has never heard through a "proper" amp (assuming my Ashdown Five Fifteen minirig counts as a "proper" amp!). Anyway, I gave it a quick check over, and the setup seemed to be pretty good even though it's apparently not been tweaked since the day he got it, with no rattles anywhere, nice smooth fret ends, and quiet pots. It sounded suprisingly meaty when we ran it through the Ashdown (even on the stock strings), which will hopefully inspire him to get stuck into learning to play. Also gave him a quick go on my '51 P reissue by way of comparison - think the weight came as a bit of a shock! 😃

Just bought one of Mike's 9m XLR cables. Excellent price + great comms = lovely straightforward transaction. Deal with confidence! 👍

We're working up a few new numbers ready for our next gig in 3 weeks. I'm happy enough with them, just hope we manage to punch them in to our rhythm guitarist in time! California Man (vaguely based on the original by The Move, with guitar and harmonica substituting for keys and sax!) Showdown (ELO, minus the strings) Tumblin' Dice (Stones)

Sorry to hear of your loss @WalMan, my condolences.

Similar, I saw a Deep Purple tribute a few years back where, after the first set, "Gillan" and "Glover" changed their costumes and wigs, and returned for the second set as "Coverdale" and "Hughes". They then threw in some Rainbow stuff as well, wish I could remember what they were called 'cos they were blooming good. Continuing on the Deep Purple theme, I would suggest that these ladies are a cut above your average tribute band, although obviously there's one major factor which prevents them meeting the criteria of being 100% like the original band! I'd certainly place them in the "real gig" category, and suspect there's not many "tribute" acts would be playing the band's new single, released on 30th April, live on 4th May.

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