How was your gig last night?

[King Tut]

5 hours ago, tubbybloke68 said:

Just back from our gig at The Stables, Milton Keynes. We always sell out, such a special venue, wonderful staff (mostly volunteers) and such an appreciative audience. Took the Smithy up for a blast as I’ve been reacquainting myself with her lately. Fantastic! A guy last year unbelievably donated £1000 to our homeless charity we collect for, and blow me he done exactly the same last night!! Incredibly humbling peoples generosity, it really is! 
Great night as usual up there x 😊

one of my local venues - great place!

[dmccombe7]

Christmas gig with BLOCKBUSTARZ Glam at Longstone Hearts club in Edinburgh. Its a small intimate club and only holds up to 80 with only a few unsold tickets for the night. We know they're struggling to get money in for the club and we've deliberately kept our price same since we first played there about 3 yrs ago to try and help keep them going.

Was a bit of an odd one as we had dancers from the first song but our Xmas songs had none ? Never seen that before even tho we played well. Only Xmas song they were up for was the Wizard one "I Wish It Could Be Xmas" and even then it was only 7 or 8 people. Last song (encore) dance floor was crammed full and they were all shouting for more but we had a time limit from the organiser. 

Plenty of pics / vids being taken tho so that's always good.

As a band we thoroughly enjoyed the gig and were having a great laugh on stage. No major mistakes with just a few wee mishaps that only we noticed.

4 Xmas songs in the set for the next few gigs.

Usual gear Sandberg MarloweDK because its Xmasy looking in red and white - Shure GXLD wireless - Keeley Bassist comp - Handbox WB-100 - Barefaced 212 cab. Quite enjoying the Marlowe at the last couple of gigs. It has a nice growl thru the WB-100.

Easy drive home with hardly another car on the country roads on way home which was a nice relaxing drive and home by 2am for my ritual coffee and tea biccie before beddy by bo time.

Dave

[Franticsmurf]

It was my second gig of the double header weekend last night. A dep spot with a band I've played with before. Great bunch, very relaxed and very welcoming of the 'new guy' when I first played with them. Last night they also had a dep singer so I wasn't the newbie anymore. It was a golf club Christmas dinner, so quite formal and posh but we were looked after by the club - a tab behind the bar (being gig teetotal, I was gutted but ultimately it's the thought that counts). 

 

I decided to use my ungigged Ibanez SR300 and my ungigged Valeton GP5 into the FX return on my well gigged Peavey Minimax 600 and the pair of TE 1x10 cabs. Also present - Sine effect H24 HPF and Joyo wireless transmitter/receiver. At the last minute I was offered a lift by the guitarist and had to leave my spare bass (Ibanez EHB1000s) behind as it wouldn't fit into his car with all the other kit. I expect you can see where this is leading. In my defence, your honour, although half the kit was ungigged, I'd been practicing with it at home a for about two weeks so it was all tested. 

 

The singer turned up late and although he seemed a decent chap, he had been expressing concerns about half the setlist ('I haven't sung that one', 'I don't know the words to that one' etc) to the band in the days leading up to the gig. So in the soundcheck before he arrived, I had a go at singing 'Sultans of Swing', only the second time I'd sung it in front of a band. I remembered 80% of the words and was about 80% in tune that was deemed good enough in the cirumstances.😂

 

Three songs into the set, with the audience up and dancing, I started to notice that the volume from the amp was fading slowly up and down from the full gig volume to about half over about 10 seconds. My first thought was that I'd hit an unexpected patch on the GP5 ('Slow, Annoying Trem' or similar) but the GP5 was set on the Ampeg patch I'd set up for the night. Then I started to smell something burning. The Minimax is on it's way out, I thought. No problem, I can DI. But someone in the audience had knocked over a candle and it had smouldered on one of the napkins for a bit. Meanwhile the slow tremolo was now speeding up a bit and my bass was spending more time quiet than at gig volume. I reasoned that the battery on the bass was going and as I was due to start 'Keep On Running' with the bass riff, I called a time out. While the rest of the band played a longer intro with the guitarist covering the riff, I changed the battery. I managed to get through the song but the problem was still there. I didn't have any time to do a 'one thing at a time' test of the signal chain so between songs, I got rid of everything between bass and amp, plugged into the amp's 'proper' input with a cable and to my great relief, finished the set without any problems from my side. There were a few dodgy moments with the singer not knowing/forgetting/making up lyrics but nothing that couldn't be dealt with. 'Sultans' went well (by now I'd remembered 95% of the lyrics and scored 90% on the 'in-tune-o-meter') and got a good response from the audience. I even got a bonus on top of my fee from the band - presumably for stepping up to sing, or perhaps entertaining them with the harried, rabbit-in-the-headlights look I had as I tried to sort my problems out. 

 

This morning will be taken up with identifying the culprit, taking it into the garden, beating it with a baseball bat and burying it. My suspicion is that the Valeton was playing up, as apart from it and the Ibanez all the other components of the chain have been played 'live'. I was using the wireless transmitters at the previous night's gig with no problems. Another option is that there is some strange interaction between the Valeton and the H24 or the H24 and the FX in on the Minimax. Although the bass wasn't the issue, as the problem developed it would have been reassuring to have the spare just in case. As an advocate of bringing a spare to gigs, I hang my head in shame at the lapse. Ironically, the SR300 was purchased with a view to it being a light weight spare itself.

 

You will be relieved to hear that my footwear of choice - black Skechers - performed admirably throughout the night.  

 

EDIT: In testing this morning, I was unable to recreate the problem but suddenly the sound cut out completely. Replacing the cable from H24 to the FX Return on the Minimax with the one I used to plug directly into the amp last night fixed it. I suspect I have my culprit.   

 

Found 'Not Guilty'.

Edited 3 hours ago by Franticsmurf

[12stringbassist]

Last night we played in Heath Charnock between Bolton and Chorley.
A brilliant landlady and nice crowd.
One of the punters gave us a £30 tip and the landlady did too.

We gave this song a second outing. Played for the first time on Friday...
 

 

[martthebass]

First Christmas show with Glam Viva! last night, awesome live music venue on the outskirts of Chesterfield. We hadn’t played this venue before but it had been advertised well and we hadn’t played a rammed pub for most of the night.

Dancing from song one..like @dmccombe7 the Christmas songs were less appreciated than the normal songs but we normally stick to just 2 for this reason.

Sandberg Lionel into my normal Boss pedals using my aging Smoothound wireless. Normal Markbass mini rig of doom. 
End of gig celebration with 4 jammy doughnuts - I did share!

Crap drive back home as, as per normal on a Saturday night after midnight, plod had set the variable speed limit on the M1 at 50. Purely a revenue job as there was no roadworks or poor visibility. Cruise control is your friend.

[okusman]

Local venue with my regular gig, SlowJin. 
Lakland 55-02 via Shure GLX wireless into EBS Microbass. DI to desk, line in to Genz Benz Shuttle 9.0 power amp section and Vanderkley 2x10. 
Long term IEM user.

Big Martin house PA Rig.

We came, we saw, we Rock’n’Roll’d.

[dmccombe7]

18 minutes ago, martthebass said:

First Christmas show with Glam Viva! last night, awesome live music venue on the outskirts of Chesterfield. We hadn’t played this venue before but it had been advertised well and we hadn’t played a rammed pub for most of the night.

Dancing from song one..like @dmccombe7 the Christmas songs were less appreciated than the normal songs but we normally stick to just 2 for this reason.

Sandberg Lionel into my normal Boss pedals using my aging Smoothound wireless. Normal Markbass mini rig of doom. 
End of gig celebration with 4 jammy doughnuts - I did share!

Crap drive back home as, as per normal on a Saturday night after midnight, plod had set the variable speed limit on the M1 at 50. Purely a revenue job as there was no roadworks or poor visibility. Cruise control is your friend.

Don't know what's going on with the Xmas songs this year. Last year the Slade and Wizard ones literally filled the floor.

Dave

 

[Stub Mandrel]

4 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Don't know what's going on with the Xmas songs this year. Last year the Slade and Wizard ones literally filled the floor.

Dave

 

 

All those woke music fans cancelling Christmas this year...

[martthebass]

40 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Don't know what's going on with the Xmas songs this year. Last year the Slade and Wizard ones literally filled the floor.

Dave

 

We generally just do Slade and Mud. We have done Womblin…in the past but it was a fair bit of work for little audience reaction.

[Franticsmurf]

47 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Don't know what's going on with the Xmas songs this year. Last year the Slade and Wizard ones literally filled the floor.

Dave

 

Yes, I've done two Christmas party gigs so far and we've had no requests for festive songs. We played four on Friday (Wizzard, Mariah Carey, Bruce's 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town' and Shakin' Stevens) and they were the least well received. We played none last night and they weren't missed. 

[dmccombe7]

9 minutes ago, martthebass said:

We generally just do Slade and Mud. We have done Womblin…in the past but it was a fair bit of work for little audience reaction.

We do a Sweet version of "Let It Snow" in the first set and then Mud, Slade and Wizard in 2nd set with Wizard being last song of the set altho our encore is a lengthened version of Shang a Lang including excerpts from various Scottish themed songs. Bit of a Medoly and it always goes down a treat up here.

Dave

[Norris]

1 hour ago, dmccombe7 said:

Don't know what's going on with the Xmas songs this year. Last year the Slade and Wizard ones literally filled the floor.

Dave

 

Slade was our opener for our final set and did the job of getting them on the floor. It was the only Xmas song we played though as we just gave them a segued onslaught of dancing tunes to keep them on the floor. Most of our Xmassy songs are done tongue in cheek and they were not really the sort of crowd for that. Tonight should be better suited.