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Dr Diddley's sophomore gig - going abroad!


EddiePlaysBass
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Sunday marked the occasion of Dr Diddley's second full-length gig. This time we were to play in the Netherlands, in a bar called Café Wilhelmina, located in the Wilhelmina Square ... Despite the name, it was quite an awesome venue, with a thriving live reputation and some relatively big (local) name bookings. And Dr Diddley :-)

As with our debut gig, we brought along the guys and gal from Deman Rogue to open for us. This is one tight band, for sure, with a great set list to boot. Excellent musicians all around, and I love their bassist's style and approach. Like before, I told them that we should really be opening for them. But we book the gigs, so we get the second slot :-)

During their set, some drunk idiot came and sat with us. He spilled a beer, mumbled incoherently and then started making suggestive moves towards my girlfriend. I put my hand on his chest, nodded "no" in a solemn manner and indicated that he move elsewhere. Afterwards, our guitarist complimented me on handling it "like a pro". He then alluded to my Jedi mind-powers so not sure if he was kidding :-D

Once Deman Rogue finished and tore down their equipment, we set up and sound-checked. Like with the first band, attendance was pretty low but hey, this is a Sunday and neither band is exactly a household name, especially in Holland. And I've always been of the opinion that you should give it all you got, even if it ends up being a paid rehearsal. We launched into our opening track (The Blasters' Long White Cadillac, also covered by Dwight Yoakam I believe) and something felt off to me. It seemed like the tempo was dragging a bit, or the beat was wrong. No clue what it was, because listening back to the recordings now I hear nothing wrong whatsoever. I took a few minutes then to check the crowd response and saw people shaking, grooving and smiling so I figured it was me.

Unlike last time, we played our entire song list through without breaking it into sets. The singer had asked me to prep the order this time, and everyone agreed it worked better than last time, although in retrospect I would have made some more tweaks left and right. During our set, I started to notice that the bass was incredibly loud on stage. And I mean nauseatingly loud - not sure what gave because I hadn't really cranked up the Orange any more than usual. At least this meant the drummer would be able to hear me, I guess. I did turn down a wee bit but I didn't want to upset the sound guy.

We played better than last time. More cohesion between the musicians, the jam aspects in certain songs were slightly better and the overall performance was simply much, much better than our debut gig. We do not rehearse often nor do we play out all that much, so this was a big step forwards for us. 

We got a great response from the people who were there (including three of my colleagues, one of whom took the train from Amsterdam - 1.5 hours!) and afterwards some drunk dude came and shook my hand, saying I was awesome. Our guitarist also told me that "people like my fretless bass - it's a tone monster".

After our set we hung around a while, and then both bands went for a kebab, as basically everyone had had lunch and then nothing until 9PM. First time I played on a near-empty stomach. Between the kebab and the exuberant parking fee, I think I made exactly zero EUR from this particular gig, but we got some great pics, and the audio recordings came out fine, too! Waiting for some Go Pro video footage to make its way towards us.

I will update this thread with some links once the audio/video comes in, but until then, here are some shameless FB plugs - feel free to give us some love!

Dr Diddley
Deman Rogue

DrDiddleyEindhoven.jpg

Edited by EddiePlaysBass
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