Stylon Pilson

The one gig booking that wasn't flat-out cancelled was to be for tonight. The venue were considering going ahead with it outdoors. But they decided not to take the risk. With a second lockdown on the horizon, any tiny hope I had for any gigs before the end of the year has evaporated. S.P.

Fair point, but if the drummer can't enjoy the rehearsal because he's worried about covid then that will put a dampener on the mood a bit, surely? Looking at OP's exchange, the drummer has been very reasonable, offering plenty of alternatives and options, and making clear what he is and isn't prepared to do. OP's responses seem to have been mainly just shooting everything down. I'm really glad that I'm not in a band with him. S.P.

4EVER80s' lockdown video cover version of Don't You Forget About Me by Simple Minds: S.P.

Our lockdown cover version of "The Power Of Love" by Huey Lewis and The News. S.P.

My band mates are up for rehearsing again, but I've had to tell them that I can't, as I've got plans to see my mum at the end of August and I'm trying to avoid any unnecessary exposure before then. I'm assuming that pubs won't want to put on any indoor bands for the foreseeable future, and so if we start rehearsing again in September then we'll still be back up to speed well before our next gig. S.P.

I've been reading this book ("Weekend Rockstars") on and off over the last couple of weeks, and finished reading it just now. I really enjoyed it, thank you! S.P.

I've already achieved that, but I'm guessing you were referring to music being your source of income at the same time. S.P.

Radio Ga Ga by Queen. Simple, but effective. First run through will be at rehearsal on Tuesday. S.P.

Likewise, the room was fairly empty for our first set as most of the punters were in the other room watching the boxing. Second set was much better though. We had a trio of Christmas songs prepared but we ran out of time so only ended up being able to play one of them. It seems to be fairly common that we have to cut a few songs from our set list on the night these days - what generally happens is the drummer (who books the gigs) sends round an email saying something like "Okay, they've told us to play from 9-12, so shall we aim to get there at 7:30?" to which the guitarist then replies "I can't get there until 8". Inevitably we don't start our first set until 9:30, and so by the end of the night we are forced to skip a few songs. I'm not entirely happy about it - I pride myself on my personal reputation for being punctual. I think it's probably out time I raised my concerns. The gig was a pretty good one, on the whole. I didn't get my EQ quite right for the circumstances (hollow wooden stage) but I got by. One thing I've noticed recently is that I seem to sometimes start a song in the wrong key. It seems to happen where we have two songs with a similar feel, and one's in E and the other's in Eb, and I get them the wrong way round. I think I've also been starting to get a bit complacent, now that I've been gigging lots of these songs for over a year, and I maybe don't practice at home as much as I should. S.P.

We played in a small pub last night. The size of the crowd fluctuated a little throughout the evening but by the end of the night it was decently full. The audience were enthusiastic throughout, with lots of dancing and cheering in evidence. At the end of the night the landlady did speak to us and express that she hadn't been expecting us to be a four-piece (there were only 3 of us last time, as we were still looking for a new keyboard player) and that if we return, she'd prefer it to just be 3 of us. There's going to be a hefty internal debate about this - while the keyboard player doesn't mind us doing gigs without him, the guitarist feels quite strongly that the presence of the keyboard is inherent to his enjoyment of the gig, and while he'd do a 3-piece gig in a pinch, he doesn't want to actively seek out bookings for just the 3 of us. So we may or may not be returning to this venue. I think we're going to go back to the landlady and see if she can be flexible - after all, we honestly didn't take up significantly more floorspace with the extra musician. S.P.

I use a rechargeable too - a Warwick Rockboard LT XL. What's nice is that it also has a USB out, so I can power a little fan from it at the same time! S.P.

Nice photo! Looks absolutely fine when not zoomed in. S.P.

I don't have a huge amount of studio experience, but from what I do have, yes it's fairly normal nowadays to do a looooot of this kind of "nudging". The end result tends to be, in my personal opinion, technically superb from a production point of view, but utterly dull to listen to. Which has the result of making the studio look good, and the performers look bad. S.P.

I use a Sennheiser HD202 (should it be "a pair of"? Hmmm, tricky...) for everything from "silent" rehearsal to gaming. Never had an issue with them. I feel like one of the benefits of rehearsing through headphones is that it shows up any deficiencies in your technique in great detail. Practicing in "hard mode" means that gigs are, by comparison, "easy mode". S.P.

On Friday night we were back at a venue that we've played a couple of times before. It's a fairly nice-looking Greene King pub in a town with reputation for wealth, but the clientele can actually be a bit on the rough side. There was apparently a bit of a ruckus during our first set (around the corner, I couldn't see it), some people had to be evicted, and the room was a bit on the empty side thereafter. We dropped the ball a bit on timings. Our drummer (who booked the gig) misread the email and we were working around a 9:00-11:30, whereas the venue wanted us to do 8:30-11:00. So we were effectively half an hour late starting, and ran over by half an hour at the end. He's sent them an email to apologise. We were trying out a few new songs. Most worked very well, though one of them is relatively obscure and got no reaction whatsoever. We're going to give it a couple more chances, but if it's still falling flat after the third outing, then we'll probably have to kick it to the kerb. Oh, and also, I got a cheer for the bass solo in You Can Call Me Al for the first time ever! (whispers confidentially) I'm not even very good at it. S.P.