How was your gig last night?

[HeadlessBassist]

1 minute ago, Geek99 said:

I didn’t realise that you took my Peugeot. 

 

Even a mega comfy and capacious Skoda Superb estate gets torturous after ten hours traveling before the gig, LOL!

[Mickeyboro]

12 hours ago, neepheid said:

Gear was the Greco triple pickup LP then the DeArmond Jet Star (Wonky Boi) into the yellow and black cubes of doom.

 

Looking at these as one pic, I thought someone had spiked my cornflakes!😮

[Geek99]

14 minutes ago, Geek99 said:

I didn’t realise that you took my Peugeot. TWOCker

Partner said yesterday - this needs a good hoovering. I

said “it’s gets used for every single trip to the tip, it’s a very small car, and I have no free time when there is also daylight - what did you think was going to happen?”

[12stringbassist]

We played in Leigh, Lancs last night, to a nice crowd, with a friend sitting in as our dep drummer who did really well.

I'm getting back into the swing of gigging again after an enforced absence due to our old guitarist suddenly opting out. Our drummer has also had some spinal surgery and is going to be out of the game for a while. It does feel a little like the band is limping along, using dep drummers, but it is better than not playing at all. The playing is really enjoyable, but it doesn't feel like the same band. Not entirely a bad thing. Our guitarist has learned a good number of songs and he has done a fine job. We can't really advance the setlist that much until our regular drummer is fit to play again. It will happen, though. He's bought an upgraded electric kit to make it easier for him to transport. It's just a case of persevering at the moment. We are winning at gigs, which is the point.

My rig is raised off the floor here as the place is a bass trap. One particular note can hang around all night like a bad smell.

 

[Woodinblack]

Busy day yesterday. We had the first gig from 2-3 at an outdoor 'festival' like thing in dorset, that we had done 3 years in a row. They had this thing where there were electric bands on the truck in the garden and acoustic bands in the teepee thing next to it between, so 1 hour for each - but it was exactly 1 hour for each, so you got on the stage, set up, plugged in, they did a line check and then you waited for your time to go and there was no gap, so obviously sound wasn't good on stage, and not so great outside as there was no time to setup. But it went down ok - it was raining a little when we were setting up, but by the time we played it was very sunny and well attended. All in all there was a nice atmosphere there and it was a good afternoon. I would have stayed longer but in the evening we had to be back nearer home for a wedding.

The wedding we got to at 6 but they were doing speeches so we had to wait outside and not make noise. We waited for a while, they had finished the speeches but the staff wanted to move all the tables, we waited another half an hour, so finally it was closer to 7 by the time we set up to be ready by 8, for some reason it took a while to get ready as everyone was in each others way. Did the first hour, there was noone in the building, they were all outside in the sun, which sort of makes sense, way of weddings. Then it was time for food so everyone came back in and I put music on on the ipad, we went back on at half 9 to play to 11:15, the guitarist was very grumpy to go past 11. But the second half was dancing all the way through and we went down a storm so that was good. We couldn't play the last encore as it was 11:16 so the guitarist wouldn't play, and he had to be home in 5 minutes after that, so he went, but the singer stayed to help me with the PA

 

Very profitable day all in all and got all the gigs for the weekend over and done with in a day

[Stub Mandrel]

My first gig with the Fortunate Sons and with a neat twist of fate at my 'home venue' of Penarth Ex's.

 

It was also bass player Andy's first gig on keyboards... he did brilliantly and being a bassist he kept out of my octaves

 

Long story short, we had a very good attendance, I made a few flubs - came in late for one song, first bar in wrong key for another and  huge random bang in My Sharona... but no-one seemed to notice, so and and audience very happy. No photos yet.

 

Fender Precision & Jazz, quecha approach shoes, GRBASS cab and orange terror.

[Woodinblack]

I willl also say that I have now noticed that in 8 years of gigging I have had 3 sets of comments about my basses

1) Does your bass have 5 strings? How does that work then - had that twice

2) Is that a bongo bass (it was the wrongo, ironically not mentioned since i had a real bongo) - once

3) Oh thats a fancy bass - it was my checkerboard fireman bass - once

4) Oh your playing a rickenbacker, they sound so good - now at 7 times, including 2 at the day gig. 

 

I have had the rick since december. In fact, there have now been only 4 or 5 gigs with the ric when noone commented about it

[dmccombe7]

3 hours ago, HeadlessBassist said:

 

Even a mega comfy and capacious Skoda Superb estate gets torturous after ten hours traveling before the gig, LOL!

Any car is uncomfy after 10hrs drive before a gig. 

Dave

[casapete]

1 hour ago, Woodinblack said:

Then it was time for food so everyone came back in and I put music on on the ipad, we went back on at half 9 to play to 11:15, the guitarist was very grumpy to go past 11. But the second half was dancing all the way through and we went down a storm so that was good. We couldn't play the last encore as it was 11:16 so the guitarist wouldn't play, and he had to be home in 5 minutes after that, so he went, but the singer stayed to help me with the PA

Blimey, it sounds like your guitarist is in the wrong band! If he doesn’t appreciate that most weddings rarely

run to schedule then I’d suggest he finds another band rather than holding you all to ransom over a final song.

 

[dmccombe7]

5 minutes ago, casapete said:

Blimey, it sounds like your guitarist is in the wrong band! If he doesn’t appreciate that most weddings rarely

run to schedule then I’d suggest he finds another band rather than holding you all to ransom over a final song.

 

My exact thoughts too but didn't want to mention it and cause more problems for him. 

Most of our gigs run on a little but that's usually because we just put too many songs in the set list but we all enjoy it.

I forgot to mention the Bingo and raffles do tend to run over and our 2nd set invariably starts late. Depending on how nice the club is to us we will either just do the full set or we cut it short and finish dead on time we initially stated.

Dave

Edited 9 hours ago by dmccombe7

[casapete]

Our duo played at a birthday party last night, augmented with a drummer we often work with.

Venue was a large Memorial Hall, with a high stage and about 80 guests attending. There was 

a Martin house PA which annoyingly we weren’t allowed to use, so carried all our stuff in and

then up onto the stage. Room didn’t sound as bad as it looked it would, so no probs there.

Used my Rumble 500 combo and P-Lyte, my go to set up these days. 
 

The booker wanted 3x30 mins sets of dance stuff so we obliged and had a full dance floor

for most of the time. 3 sets is weird for pacing the evening, along with fitting in the buffet and

announcements etc - rock n roll or what? 😆 Still, we managed it and just got packed down by

the 11.30pm curfew. A strange gig, but very well paid and happy punters so all good. 
 

 

[Leonard Smalls]

We played at the Victory in Hereford last night in support of Brazilian hardcore punkers, AntiVirus...

It's funny because we're quite inyerface, but compared to the other 3 bands, we were melodic pop punk! They were all about onslaught with no let-up which a few metallers in the crowd enjoyed and pushed each other about to which was excellent, but we did our psychedlic stonerdoom song (that's meant to be an onslaught too but our drummer keeps playing it really slowly!) but this time we emphasised the different textures and built and collapsed various drones in weird (and perhaps wonderful) ways - after that we seemed to get a far bigger crowd and maybe 100 people had  come in who remained, and even danced about.

We'd re-arranged our set so that I started or gave tempo to most of the others so we were quite varied, ranging from oldskool punk to dance-rock to stoner which I quite like - it means we're quite different to a lot of the other bands we play with  though whether that's a good thing is another matter entirely!

Still, we had the biggest crowd, none of whom lit flaming torches or brandished pitchforks to hasten us on our way. In fact some even said that it was nowhere near as bad as they were expecting despite the now more-numerous bass solos.

I had on a rare-as-hen's-teeth Wigsville Spliffs vest with tight camo trews and 5-10 Guide approach boots. Gear was Sandberg Basic - Helix - BBE pre/DBX compressor - Crown bridged power amp - Markbass 4x10. Post gig dram was a fine Arran barrel reserve.

 

 

[Jack]

4 hours ago, Kev said:

Had a great time at the Rock & Blues Custom Show in Derbyshire yesterday!

 

Funny story, you know that delightful chap who likes to scam old people and Facebook marketplace folk?  His Queen act dropped out last minute and we filled the slot!

 

 

 

What are the low profile xlr connectors? 

[dmccombe7]

1 hour ago, casapete said:

Our duo played at a birthday party last night, augmented with a drummer we often work with.

Venue was a large Memorial Hall, with a high stage and about 80 guests attending. There was 

a Martin house PA which annoyingly we weren’t allowed to use, so carried all our stuff in and

then up onto the stage. Room didn’t sound as bad as it looked it would, so no probs there.

Used my Rumble 500 combo and P-Lyte, my go to set up these days. 
 

The booker wanted 3x30 mins sets of dance stuff so we obliged and had a full dance floor

for most of the time. 3 sets is weird for pacing the evening, along with fitting in the buffet and

announcements etc - rock n roll or what? 😆 Still, we managed it and just got packed down by

the 11.30pm curfew. A strange gig, but very well paid and happy punters so all good. 
 

 

New you couldn't stay away from the big stages Pete 😂

Dave

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, casapete said:

Blimey, it sounds like your guitarist is in the wrong band! If he doesn’t appreciate that most weddings rarely

run to schedule then I’d suggest he finds another band rather than holding you all to ransom over a final song

 

Indeed I don't get it - weddings pay way more than playing the same songs in a pub gig, simply because of a bit of extra fuss and hassle, and frankly, this wasn't much hassle. 

[Kev]

1 hour ago, Jack said:

What are the low profile xlr connectors? 

I grabbed them off eBay, perfect for patch XLR stuff, perhaps not robust enough if you're plugging and unplugging a lot? But can recommend for my use for sure!

 

https://ebay.us/m/d6S9yD

[BigRedX]

Hurtsfall played the Nottingham Pride event yesterday on the Gladrags stage at Rough Trade.

 

Second time we've played at Rough Trade in less than a month and once again it was joy to be performing in an air-conditioned venue when it was uncomfortably hot outside. Once again excellent sound on stage and FoH. Due to time constraints we did the shortest set ever - under 25 minutes comprising just 5 songs. However we managed to pack the gig space at the end of the bar with plenty of people dancing and cheering as well as picking up a load on new fans, if our Facebook profile is anything to go by. Early finish and back home before 6.00 in the evening!

 

Here we are giving it some at the end of our last song: "12 Long Years":

 

Next gig is Twisted Firestarter which is the Infest Festival warm-up party at Rebellion in Manchester on 14th August.

Edited 5 hours ago by BigRedX

[Stub Mandrel]

Photo from last night. Should say we got lots of dancers later.

 

[Greg Edwards69]

Difficult one for me on friday evening at the Cricketers in Westcliff. I'm not sure I was mentally prepared for it.  For a start the wife and I were away for a couple of nights before for her birthday and a friends wedding (on the same day), and we got back the morning of the gig. We also had a dep females singer with us, covering a couple of gigs for our usual singer.

 

Me and Liam (the other singer) got there in plenty of time, drummer was late, which is logistically challenging to set up a PA around if the drums are not there yet. One of the guitarists was held up on traffic so bad we wasn't sure if he was even going to make it, which would have meant drastically changing the set. Then the dep singer arrived and called us to open the gates - the pub manager had said no more cars in the pub's private car park at this point and to use the public car park over the road. I went outside to tell her only to be met with a very distressed singer saying she's split up with her partner and has everything she owns in the car and can't leave it in the public car park. Thankfully, the landlord understood and let her in. At this stage, I wasn't even sure if she was up for singing, but she insisted on seeing it through.

 

So we finished setting up. Dep singer doesn't like IEM's so we set up a wedge that kept feeding back no matter what I did. really struggled with getting a good in-ear mix. It shouldn't really change by this point, but both singers were using different mics to what we're used to, do gain stages were all over the place. In the end, she said not to worry about the edge and she'll make do with the FOH speakers.  Finally finished soundchecking 15mins after we're supposed to start playing - then the drummer says he can't hear his overheads.  Getting rather stressed by this stage.  Having a digital mixer should make setting up and sound checking a breeze, but we're lacking so much consistency lately with either gear or band members.

 

Finally start playing, Two song in and I notice my E string is massively out of tune. Drummer also says (and he was right) that the bass sounded really 'subby'. Admittedly, I was trying out a new preset I've been using in rehearsals that seemed but, but it sounded really bassy in the room, despite having low cuts on the IR block, mixer bass channel and main mixer outs. I ended up enabling the global eq on my helix and adding another low cut around 85hz! Something definitely weird happening.

 

Felt like we'd settled in after a few songs, until the dep singers wireless mic packed up and we hastily switched her to a wired mic during a song. Kept ploughing through and ended up having an 'okay' night. the heat didn't help matters either. It seemed to sap us all of energy.

 

I was glad to be finished by the end of the night. I felt tired, under the weather and stressed all evening. I had a chat with a couple of my band mates and said I'm really struggling lately. It feels like I'm the one doing most of the work behind the scenes. I've got a lot on my plate with work and family - I have my widowed mother staying with us, over from spain for a few weeks, and I still don't feel like I've properly grieved after losing dad back in February.

 

It's all getting a bit much. Mentally exhausted and overwhelmed - I need a holiday.

 

 

 

Edited 5 hours ago by Greg Edwards69

[ezbass]

5 minutes ago, Greg Edwards69 said:

I was glad to be finished by the end of the night. I felt tired, under the weather and stressed all evening. I had a chat with a couple of my band mates and said I'm really struggling lately. It feels like I'm the one doing most of the work behind the scenes, and I've got a lot on my plate with work and family - I have my widowed mother staying with us, over from spain for a few weeks, and I still don't feel like I've properly grieved after losing dad back in February.

 

It's all getting a bit much -  I need a mental break holiday.

 

Firstly, sorry for your loss. These things don’t always hit hardest straight away, my dad passed away in a February and it wasn’t until the September that I really let go of the pent up grief. Talking to your bands mates about is a good step, but make sure you really do take a break of some description, even if it’s just letting someone else do what you do for a while. As always, you know you can come and vent on BC, any sort of catharsis is good.

[Stub Mandrel]

29 minutes ago, Greg Edwards69 said:

Difficult one for me on friday evening at the Cricketers in Westcliff. I'm not sure I was mentally prepared for it.  For a start the wife and I were away for a couple of nights before for her birthday and a friends wedding (on the same day), and we got back the morning of the gig. We also had a dep females singer with us, covering a couple of gigs for our usual singer.

 

Me and Liam (the other singer) got there in plenty of time, drummer was late, which is logistically challenging to set up a PA around if the drums are not there yet. One of the guitarists was held up on traffic so bad we wasn't sure if he was even going to make it, which would have meant drastically changing the set. Then the dep singer arrived and called us to open the gates - the pub manager had said no more cars in the pub's private car park at this point and to use the public car park over the road. I went outside to tell her only to be met with a very distressed singer saying she's split up with her partner and has everything she owns in the car and can't leave it in the public car park. Thankfully, the landlord understood and let her in. At this stage, I wasn't even sure if she was up for singing, but she insisted on seeing it through.

 

So we finished setting up. Dep singer doesn't like IEM's so we set up a wedge that kept feeding back no matter what I did. really struggled with getting a good in-ear mix. It shouldn't really change by this point, but both singers were using different mics to what we're used to, do gain stages were all over the place. In the end, she said not to worry about the edge and she'll make do with the FOH speakers.  Finally finished soundchecking 15mins after we're supposed to start playing - then the drummer says he can't hear his overheads.  Getting rather stressed by this stage.  Having a digital mixer should make setting up and sound checking a breeze, but we're lacking so much consistency lately with either gear or band members.

 

Finally start playing, Two song in and I notice my E string is massively out of tune. Drummer also says (and he was right) that the bass sounded really 'subby'. Admittedly, I was trying out a new preset I've been using in rehearsals that seemed but, but it sounded really bassy in the room, despite having low cuts on the IR block, mixer bass channel and main mixer outs. I ended up enabling the global eq on my helix and adding another low cut around 85hz! Something definitely weird happening.

 

Felt like we'd settled in after a few songs, until the dep singers wireless mic packed up and we hastily switched her to a wired mic during a song. Kept ploughing through and ended up having an 'okay' night. the heat didn't help matters either. It seemed to sap us all of energy.

 

I was glad to be finished by the end of the night. I felt tired, under the weather and stressed all evening. I had a chat with a couple of my band mates and said I'm really struggling lately. It feels like I'm the one doing most of the work behind the scenes. I've got a lot on my plate with work and family - I have my widowed mother staying with us, over from spain for a few weeks, and I still don't feel like I've properly grieved after losing dad back in February.

 

It's all getting a bit much. Mentally exhausted and overwhelmed - I need a holiday.

 

 

 

 

Sounds like a break is exactly what you need.

 

Then maybe hire a rehearsal space with lits oftime and no pressure to set up the whole pa from scratch... everything set to defaults before you start.

[Stub Mandrel]

And a video of my first song with the guys.

 

 

 

[madshadows]

7 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Busy day yesterday. We had the first gig from 2-3 at an outdoor 'festival' like thing in dorset, that we had done 3 years in a row. They had this thing where there were electric bands on the truck in the garden and acoustic bands in the teepee thing next to it between, so 1 hour for each - but it was exactly 1 hour for each, so you got on the stage, set up, plugged in, they did a line check and then you waited for your time to go and there was no gap, so obviously sound wasn't good on stage, and not so great outside as there was no time to setup. But it went down ok - it was raining a little when we were setting up, but by the time we played it was very sunny and well attended. All in all there was a nice atmosphere there and it was a good afternoon. I would have stayed longer but in the evening we had to be back nearer home for a wedding.

The wedding we got to at 6 but they were doing speeches so we had to wait outside and not make noise. We waited for a while, they had finished the speeches but the staff wanted to move all the tables, we waited another half an hour, so finally it was closer to 7 by the time we set up to be ready by 8, for some reason it took a while to get ready as everyone was in each others way. Did the first hour, there was noone in the building, they were all outside in the sun, which sort of makes sense, way of weddings. Then it was time for food so everyone came back in and I put music on on the ipad, we went back on at half 9 to play to 11:15, the guitarist was very grumpy to go past 11. But the second half was dancing all the way through and we went down a storm so that was good. We couldn't play the last encore as it was 11:16 so the guitarist wouldn't play, and he had to be home in 5 minutes after that, so he went, but the singer stayed to help me with the PA

 

Very profitable day all in all and got all the gigs for the weekend over and done with in a day

 

Oh dear does your guitarist turn into a pumpkin if he's not home by midnight !!  😛 😂

 

John 😎 

[Greg Edwards69]

2 hours ago, ezbass said:

Firstly, sorry for your loss. These things don’t always hit hardest straight away, my dad passed away in a February and it wasn’t until the September that I really let go of the pent up grief. Talking to your bands mates about is a good step, but make sure you really do take a break of some description, even if it’s just letting someone else do what you do for a while. As always, you know you can come and vent on BC, any sort of catharsis is good.

 

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

Sounds like a break is exactly what you need.

 

Then maybe hire a rehearsal space with lits oftime and no pressure to set up the whole pa from scratch... everything set to defaults before you start.

Thanks both of you. I really appreciate it. I have another gig this week that I’m leading on (my neice’s wedding), but after that I’m going to have to get the other to step up more. I need to speak to my boss too. I’m working on several massive projects at the moment. They’re doable, but just intensive, so not doing my mental health much good.

 

Agreed to the second point. We’ve had a couple of technical rehearsals before, but the usual 4 hour slot just isn’t enough time to set up the full PA and drums and go through everything properly. I mentioned the other night about doing a longer all day session if we can in an appropriately sized room. It will make things much easier going forward if we have a better baseline to work from.

[dmccombe7]

1 hour ago, Greg Edwards69 said:

 

Thanks both of you. I really appreciate it. I have another gig this week that I’m leading on (my neice’s wedding), but after that I’m going to have to get the other to step up more. I need to speak to my boss too. I’m working on several massive projects at the moment. They’re doable, but just intensive, so not doing my mental health much good.

 

Agreed to the second point. We’ve had a couple of technical rehearsals before, but the usual 4 hour slot just isn’t enough time to set up the full PA and drums and go through everything properly. I mentioned the other night about doing a longer all day session if we can in an appropriately sized room. It will make things much easier going forward if we have a better baseline to work from.

Sorry to hear of your loss there. Never an easy time and our thoughts are with you there.

 

Sounds like a combination of band members needing to extract the digit and do more and over-whelming workload. I think you're making the right decision in talking with your boss to ease back a bit. I made the mistake of keeping it to myself and suffered no end of stress related issues until i was asked by works nurse to see a stress therapist. To be fair it worked and i felt great after the sessions were all done but once you get back to the day job it just restarts and there's no way out. I was lucky that after 40 yrs service they wanted redundancy volunteers and i was the lucky one that got selected at 56yrs old. Best thing i ever did but i realised that work isn't the only thing in life you should focus on. It needs to be more balanced. My work ended up being my sole existence for about 10-15yrs. Its all i seemed to do.

 

We used to always book a 6hr session on a Sun 11-5pm. It makes the rehearsal a lot more relaxed when you know you have time to get thru your full song list. We take sannies and coffee in too and of course cakes. Have a wee lunch break around 1-2 ish.

 

Anyways take care and hopefully things will pick up once you confront those that need it.

Dave