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How was your gig last night?


bassninja

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Interesting gig last night at a pub we do a couple of times a year. There's a decent stage so you can watch the punters and whilst the first half was steady by the second set it was a packed dance floor. About half way through I spotted a male dwarf in drag dancing away - that was a definite first! There was also a female mooning which I thought was a first but our singer who I have worked with for ten years reminded me otherwise. What's the most unusual thing you've seen whilst on stage? 

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2 hours ago, sonsman said:

Interesting gig last night at a pub we do a couple of times a year. There's a decent stage so you can watch the punters and whilst the first half was steady by the second set it was a packed dance floor. About half way through I spotted a male dwarf in drag dancing away - that was a definite first! There was also a female mooning which I thought was a first but our singer who I have worked with for ten years reminded me otherwise. What's the most unusual thing you've seen whilst on stage? 

At a pub in Crowborough, we had a punter bring in part of a tree and dance with that. He was the only person on the dancefloor.

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Last summer we played a few Sunday afternoons in the garden of a fun south Manchester pub which is also a community centre where all sorts of interesting things happen. One afternoon we had two young people practicing circus skills with hoops and streamers in front of the stage. Lovely. 

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Saturday night was at a pub that has live music on every week, but it seems like the crowd there aren't really into it. It's an L-shaped pub and for most of the night our side of the "L" was empty. It's the first time I've been there so I don't know whether this is par for the course, or if we were excessively loud and forcing everyone round the corner to where they could hear each other speak. I'm not sure it's the latter, because if it was then we'd regularly find people clamouring to get as far away from us as possible, and that's not the case.

Bit of a disappointment, all in all. But hey, at least we got paid. We still haven't seen any money for our previous gig, which was over two weeks ago. Fucķing Invapay...

S.P.

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Katie Fiztgerald's in Stourbridge on Saturday. It was our first time there but hopefully we'll be back. The sound of the room, with no PA, was just awesome. Everything was loud and clear. Unfortunately we do have vocals and DI'd guitars so we did need the PA, and there was no-one doing sound during our set. As a result I couldn't really hear the guitarist, which is fine for most of the set, but there's one bit where he leads and I then join in on drums, building it up over two bars before the bass joins us. I guess I came in on the off beat, in relation to the guitarist, but then the bassist stuck with the guitarist leaving us in an almighty mess once he kicked in. God knows how we sorted it out. Obviously it looked to everyone like it was the drummer's mistake, and the frontman gave me a proper "glare". It put a big downer on the night for me. I'm sure the audience didn't care but I did!

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On Saturday we played a breakfast gig (8:30 to 11:30) for an investment company and its clients and staff.Our jazz quartet has done this gig for about six years now and although it is essentially playing "wallpaper music" we do get some occasional applause and a lot of comments from individuals.Over the three hours about 300 people came and went while we played some lighter jazz and some Christmas songs and we view the gig as a good rehearsal and play some songs that we don't play too often on our regular gigs. It's always fun to hear our singer/keyboardist do "Santa Baby" and we do some "jazzy" arrangements of Christmas songs and we all enjoy "Everyone's Waiting For The Man With The Bag" and "Baby,It's Cold Outside" which the singer and I do and is a lot harder to sing while playing a good bass line that it sounds but we nailed it.I used my DB and had fantastic sound straight into our Bose PA using just the Schatten Mini Pre for volume control and the EQ on the Bose. 

I know it sounds like a dreadful gig to some of you but it is held in a beautiful venue, we are fed well from a huge breakfast buffet, easy load in/out, nice friendly crowd including some young kids who dance up a storm and we are well paid and can pretty much play what we want.We are booked for next year already.

Downside...I leave home at 6:30 for a snowy one hour drive for 7:30 load in. 

Edited by Staggering on
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We've been looking forward to this one for a while: We were so grateful to be asked back to play the John Peel Centre. 

Shortly after arrival the exited manager tells us its sold out! We knew we were in for a good one! Sound was awesome, crowd were awesome, no technical hitches. Why aren't they all like this? 

Screen%2011%20BW_zps8sknoln1.jpg

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54 minutes ago, Staggering on said:

...I know it sounds like a dreadful gig to some of you...

Apart from the inhuman 'getting out of bed' aspect, it sounds just wonderful, and nicely depicted. Well done; keep on keeping on like that. Thanks for sharing. :i-m_so_happy:

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16 hours ago, Stylon Pilson said:

Saturday night was at a pub that has live music on every week, but it seems like the crowd there aren't really into it. It's an L-shaped pub and for most of the night our side of the "L" was empty. It's the first time I've been there so I don't know whether this is par for the course, or if we were excessively loud and forcing everyone round the corner to where they could hear each other speak. I'm not sure it's the latter, because if it was then we'd regularly find people clamouring to get as far away from us as possible, and that's not the case.

Bit of a disappointment, all in all. But hey, at least we got paid. We still haven't seen any money for our previous gig, which was over two weeks ago. Fucķing Invapay...

S.P.

Happens to all of us. It's one of the things about the local bar/ club business that bugs me.

These places that really don't have their act together for live music. Do the owners understand the logistics of providing live music, do they understand their clientle?

 

Blue

 

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13 hours ago, urbanx said:

We've been looking forward to this one for a while: We were so grateful to be asked back to play the John Peel Centre. 

Shortly after arrival the exited manager tells us its sold out! We knew we were in for a good one! Sound was awesome, crowd were awesome, no technical hitches. Why aren't they all like this? 

Screen%2011%20BW_zps8sknoln1.jpg

Awesome pic and what a great looking. room.

I love hearing about gigs like this.

We have a few cool gigs like this, but usually the next weekend it's back to the real world.

Blue

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Our gig on Saturday, in a fairly small room, started out with a few folk in. Most of them left before half-time. More people came in, and the odd foot starting tapping. Some left. Still only the odd clap after each tune.

The last 15 minutes of the set was everyone suddenly having a great time, dancing and singing along. Then they wanted more. We stopped after four "encores". The landlord raved about how good we were, and gave us a couple of crates of beer on top of the cash.

Average pub gig, then. :)

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13 hours ago, Staggering on said:

On the subject of t-shirts, mine's not bass clef but definitely bass (and me 😁) on my long sleeved tee.

 

That cartoon is fantastic.  Did you commission it or did someone just draw it?

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16 minutes ago, Paul S said:

That cartoon is fantastic.  Did you commission it or did someone just draw it?

I found it online and thought since it looked like me and I play DB I just had to have it. It is the stikman( sic) bass player t-shirt design from zazzle.com.

Here's the actual design...

 stikman_t_shirt-rf15837df51c8412d92b366e72b89d6df_k2ggc_261.jpg.914423c6f6a415750124e874f8421c0e.jpg

Edited by Staggering on
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Every now and then you get a real standout gig. Last night we played the MK11 club - we got the gig after a successful support gig to the Sugar Hill Gang earlier in the year.

This time we were the headline act and did a two hour set - the house was packed, great house PA and light show. 

Depping on drums for us was our old mate, Stuart Russell (Drizabone) - who kept the joint jumping to some excellent four to the floor.

The clip below shows a flavour of how we went down - it was like this all night.

The venue were well pleased and we're due back at a later date.

 

 

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Just back from playing the band om / jam at Bar110 in Tyldesley run by @12stringbassist. Made to feel very welcome, small but enthusiastic audience. 4 song, 20 minute set - with the unexpected bonus of a sax player sitting in. Guitar, drummer and singer had to leave early, but the keys player and I got to jam for a while with the house band later. We're all buzzing and looking forward to going back. 

A useful lesson though in how different the sound is on stage and in the room. From where I was standing, the whole sound was blurry and out of balance. I'm just listening now to the recording and it's crisp and well balanced except that the bass is too quiet. I'll turn it up next time! 

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On Friday I spent the whole day recording a mate of mine on drums in my studio. He's only 19 and he's the best drummer I know. Limitless creativity, all the chops, but totally musical. Anyway, after 8 hours of watching him I was totally inspired to go and get behind my kit at The Old Town House in Warrington. We'd never played in Warrington before so didn't really know what to expect, but this venue is ace! Really lively crowd too. It wasn't packed but there were enough in for a good time. My mate had given me some of his sticks to try, really big things like 2B or something (doesn't mean a lot to most of you I know) and they were brilliant. I hadn't played that well in ages. I don't know if it was watching this amazing drummer all day long, or the sticks, or the venue or what but we were super tight

Saturday was a small indoor festival and to be honest I wasn't really looking forward to it. I always like to play, but I know this venue and crowd a little too well. It was way better than I expected. The sound man looked like the same guy, but he acted totally different. He was chatty, friendly, and did a brilliant job! Not sure what was going on there but the sound was ace! The crowd with extremely inebriated, sang and danced, and we generally played well despite some very amusing distractions. I wasn't driving so had chance for a couple of beers, and I was home by 9pm! Brilliant weekend :)

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