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How was your gig last night?


bassninja

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We played at a posh function on Friday night - The Law Society Ball at The Imperial Hotel at Blackpool. It was a fantastic room and there were about 250-300 people...er sorry I mean solicitors there. We arrived to set up at 5pm because they wanted the room ready at 7pm, that was a challenge but we just got out at 7.15. A quick walk down the prom for some fish and chips and then back to the hotel to watch the match. We were supposed to go on at 10pm for the first set but it was about 11.30 when we went on. We had a packed dance floor festooned with some excellent posh totty for both sets and finished about 1.30.

Got home knackered at 3.30, sat and watched telly for half an hour and went to bed.

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First gig with our new drummer last night! Apart from a couple of slip-ups with song endings the whole thing went without a hitch. Got a great reaction and I even got complimented on my bass playing and tone by somebody who normally doesn't take much of an interest in the instrument... Result!It made the night shift in a boring office that followed very manageable :D

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Was a very haphazard gig last night. We played for an old band member's 40th. In a small community centre, that used to be a chapel.
Tiny stage, no monitors, vocal only PA and the drum kit took up most of the stage.
Couldn't heard the guitarist nor the vocals only the snare and a crash cymbal, that was about 10" away from my right ear.
We were a bit scrappy on the new songs but we went down well.

On the up side I did get to play through an Ampeg 8x10" and found I didn't like it. So that's a relief to my wallet.

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Did the local Carnival again yesterday lunch time. Despite the weather poor mis-management as always, and our set going down from 45 minutes to 15 because of late bands rocking uop when they want and taking for ever to set up a frigging keyboard. The actual show was decent, nice turn out and we played well, sound on stage was good, sound FOH was good, no masive mistakes on anyones part. The likely hood of going wrong with 3 songs is slim though. Wish we could have done a few more though.

It was also the first outing for my dual MarkBass TRV102P rig. If I'm honest I've been a little dissappointed with it's performance in my bedroom, but as we all now it's on the gig where it matters. And this does exactly what I wanted it to do and sounds excellent and massive. Didn't need it balring out and the sound guy was happy enough to have it as the only bass monitoring oinstage. I had nothing in my wedge and could still here everything perfectly mixed.
sound on stage has definitly made my mind up about keeping this, and even though one is heavier than the amazing Barefaced compact, the small form factor more than makes up for portabality.

I managed to get from the house to the van iin one trip. Just need to fine tune the effects department.
Very happy being a markbass fan boy right now.

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We played at the Llay Gala last night, it was supposed to be outside in a small marquee , but the weather was so bad we set up inside , It was a bit of a struggle getting any crowd involvement , and we chopped the set about on the fly to get some interest, it worked a bit , but while everyone seemed to enjoy it , it lacked the vibe of a normal pub gig.
It was a big room though and I suppose we were on early before a disco/ Kareoke , and there were a lot of children running around.
All in all we enjoyed it , but I think we worry too much about the audience reaction sometimes, we know our stuff and should really just nail it , If we look as if we are having a good time it will rub off, Still , I think we are back again next year

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Two gigs, both weddings,Frid and Sat.
Frid gig in St Helens with a dep keys player.
Here`s the scene,(and this has been bugging me for a bit),Guitarist lives in Wigan,singer in Warrington, but his GF is in Manchester. The Reh room is in central Manchester as am I and the drummer.
The singer has managed to train the guitarist to pick him up for gigs to share costs etc,but 2 weeks ago after the guitarist turning up in Manch late to get his stuff, then go pick the singer up in Warrington, causing us to be late for a wedding in Liverpool,I did my nut at them both.
I hate loading a full van of p.a drums, guitar amps,lights bass rig etc on my own and having two members so late to a gig that I unload it on my own too.
So, cut to last weeks two gigs.
Guitarist stuck in traffic on motorway, singer waiting in Warrington for pickup. Again.
We (the drummer and I),ended up loading guitarists sh*t into my van, and going straight to the gig,where the singer met us after blagging a lift from someone,minus his suit pants.. lost en route apparently,and the guitarist driving directly there also.
No prob, gig was a late one, luckily.
>Did my nut again. Especially as, if he so wished, the singer could be in Manchester for any gig day for load ins, pickups etc as he could simply stay at his GFs..
Cut to following nights gig. I arrive at the gig with drummer and the singer turns up in...........his own car!
He apparently always had one, just didn`t fancy the hassle of using it when he could coerce the guitarist into picking him up.
Guitarist turns up separately and they aint talking much.. Conclusion, guitarist grew a pair and told the singer to make his own way from now on.
>didn`t have to do my nut again.
Result. :D
Other thing of note was for the Sat I finally convinced the others to go with the backing tracks we`ve been working on, result? Great success, more stage room,more wages, less opinions.
Punters very happy with the band and the sound.
I think finally, we are turning into something a little more professional in attitude and commitment.
To finally top his week of excellence, the singer (also the treasurer) forgot whether we had been paid a deposit for this gig or not.. and nearly asked the Groom for the difference...Then remembered we had taken a deposit.
So he`s now the ex treasurer.
I`m sure my blood pressure isn`t as good as it used to be.
Next week we have a run of three in a row with the singer complaining his voice may not be up to it and can I sing about 6 songs....
It`s going to be a long week.
:)

Edited by Monckyman
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[font="Lucida Grande, Segoe UI, Arial, Verdana, Lucida Sans Unicode, Tahoma, Sans Serif"][i]"Broken PA, no monitoring, croaky vocals, free bar for three hours before playing ... what could possibly go wrong?"[/i][/font]

The Junkyard Dogs (which as regular readers will know, features 2 of Basschat's finest and the SE Bassbash drummer) at The Kings Head, Acton, that London on Friday. The plan was to turn up before the football and set up, watch the football, then do the gig when the football finished. So making use of the in-house PA - such as it was - we set up then prepared to enjoy the free booze tokens for the band and watch the football.

10 minutes in to the match, the TV lost it's digital reception. No analogue TV any more so no picture. I took this opportunity to nip to the Supermarket next door for a spare battery for my wireless. When I got back the remaining punters were watching the match on a laptop the barstaff had put on the stage.

When we played the pub did fill up a bit, mainly the post footy crowd. From where I was stood on stage the sound of the band was great, I just hope that's what the audience heard out front. The vocalist was still suffering the effects of a lurgie, so some songs were dropped, but he battled on through - although kicking off a tune in G instead of A made my first solo sound a bit, er, jazzy lol.
We did an encore, and left the punters wanting more so can chalk that one up as a success.

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Fantastic shot indeed. To me it has the energy of,a live performance.


We had a good one. 60th birthday party in a bowling club. Could have been rubbish but we had a dep drummer who was really spot on. It's funny hearing songs played as the origial after so many years of doing "our version"
I'm backs to playing my Squier Jazz with Dr Black Beauties and loving the change.

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Second night of the weekend. Felt it went a LOT better than the previous night, probably down to a more responsive & up for it crowd - still need to watch the vids which'll no doubt change that view.

First outing with the new lights - a KAM parbar. A bit darker than the old sh1t we were using, but it provides some movement, and the guitarists amp doesn't buzz with them as it had with the LED panels I bought before and sold in a short lived fit of NEVER AGAIN!

Did the fitrst set on the sound to light, probably with the sensitivity too low sow they were changing a lot, but I thought were OK. In the break vocalist says to me "we've got to change somethigng with the lights else I'l either fit or vomit, not sure which first". Changed to a slow scene change patch instead of the S2L and that seemed OK, so I do not have to sell these 'cos of the vocalist instead of the guitarist, which is a start. Now we could just do with a second bar to fill in the light.

Here's one from the night before anyway
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnKrtV7VuGc

Edited by WalMan
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[quote name='Prime_BASS' timestamp='1339924762' post='1696233']
Did the local Carnival again yesterday lunch time. Despite the weather poor mis-management as always, and our set going down from 45 minutes to 15 because of late bands rocking uop when they want and taking for ever to set up a frigging keyboard. The actual show was decent, nice turn out and we played well, sound on stage was good, sound FOH was good, no masive mistakes on anyones part. The likely hood of going wrong with 3 songs is slim though. Wish we could have done a few more though.

It was also the first outing for my dual MarkBass TRV102P rig. If I'm honest I've been a little dissappointed with it's performance in my bedroom, but as we all now it's on the gig where it matters. And this does exactly what I wanted it to do and sounds excellent and massive. Didn't need it balring out and the sound guy was happy enough to have it as the only bass monitoring oinstage. I had nothing in my wedge and could still here everything perfectly mixed.
sound on stage has definitly made my mind up about keeping this, and even though one is heavier than the amazing Barefaced compact, the small form factor more than makes up for portabality.

I managed to get from the house to the van iin one trip. Just need to fine tune the effects department.
Very happy being a markbass fan boy right now.
[/quote]

Awesome :)

I found this with Markbass cabs too, when it sounds perfect to you onstage it's perfect for everyone out front! I rarely have any bass in the monitors or even PA support of any kind :D

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A cracker as it turned out. Open air thing at Sherston, headlining the final day of 'SherstonFest' :)
Although the weather could have been a lot better, it could have been a hell of a lot worse. The whole fest was nearly cancelled on Friday morning as all the marquees and beer tents etc were in danger of flying away in the gale. Thankfully it all went ahead and it even stopped raining before we went on. Ieuan's band the Rinky Dinks ([u]the[/u] definitive ukulele supergroup) gave us a mountain to climb with an absolutely storming "follow [i]THAT![/i]" set, but I think we did ok. Crowd seemed to enjoy it anyway :D
Here I is, doing ma grooovy Status thang.

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Absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately for the world of music, it was a "give the masses what they want" gig.

It's Fete de la musique week over here and we were on the main stage in Chateauroux along with another 3 bands. All of which were really, exceedingly good and original, except that they apparently didn't deliver what the audience was looking for. We did, with the worst setlist ever (to my mind) and we stormed it. Finished up with about 2,500 in front of us, screaming for more.

Real shame when you have really good musicians, playing to 100 people and we crack it with Little wing and Highway to hell :blink:

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I nearly didn't make last night's gig. I've been unwell all week. After we sound checked, I spent the next 2 hours sitting in a corner shivering and sweating at the same time.

The first set was terrible, we were told there'd be backline supplied and considering the pub is promoted as a rock venue I thought I'd at least get an old Trace 4x10" but was instead greeted with a 200w Marshall Dynamic Bass 15" + Horn combo. The entire first set was played from memory as the only time I actually heard what I was playing were a few notes for the intro to "With a Little Help From My Friends".

During the break I tried to work out what to do and discovered a Crate bass combo so with a bit of help I got the Marshall on top and low and behold I could actually hear most of what I was playing during the second half. I spent the entire set jumping around and having a ball all thanks to that musicians friend, adrenalin, before collapsing into a heap at the end of the night.

More importantly, playing the Rickenbacker with the bridge pickup cover removed and the wee black plastic thing installed instead meant that I could actually play it instead of fighting between playing in front or behind it. I also raised the strap quite high up to a Chris Squire level and it meant I could play it easier as well.

I'm now a very happy, though unwell, chappy

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Played in polperro last night at the legion , a pain to unload but so worth it , one of the best gigs so far , great crowd and we had an amazing guitar player dep for us , still buzzing this morning ! ;)

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I get to post in this thread finally - haven't played a gig in exactly two years, but the old band reunited to play our mate's wedding. We're a comedy trio consisting of guitar/vocals, keyboard/vocals (the keys are a cheap Yamaha portatone from the mid-90s which covers our drums too) and myself on bass and occasional vocal (I find it hard singing/playing simultaneously), coming up with our own material, most of which isn't for the ears of minors (or anyone else working underground) and our audiences are generally split between getting it and laughing/enjoying it or being bewildered. I think we managed 25% bewildered tonight, which is quite a feat for us!

Due to complications in getting together (other bands/families for the other two members), we had approximately 3 hours of rehearsal spread over Thursday and Friday evening to brush off the rust and it was definitely seat of the pants stuff. It's not a proper gig for us if something doesn't cock up (such as knocking the power supply off the keyboard), or one of us fluffing our lines (as I did with the second line of the [i]first[/i] song of the night). We like the crowd laughing at us as much as with us, so it's almost become part of the act.

To further the jury-rigged nature of it, the PA bod (a mate of our guitarist/singer) couldn't get hold of any DI boxes for us to go through the desk, so the guitarist had to use my 20 year-old 30w Laney Linebacker bass combo and I got to use his Fender BXR 100, which did a good enough job - I had cut the lows and boost the mids to cut through (negative smile EQ) but at least we were heard.

Afterwards, I had the feeling that we'd just got away with a robbery, but the bride and groom were over the moon, and we had some rather nice compliments from the other guests. :lol:

Don't know when I'll next see some action, but it was fun to step up there one more time!

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Bloody good... 'Fete de la Musique' here in France, coupled with a drive for funds in aid of a mucoviscidose charity. One of 4 bands, second act, went down a storm in the inner court of a half-restored ruined castle. Great weather (just for today, rain yesterday, rain tomorrow; how lucky can one get..?). Covers such as RadioHead, REM, Noir Désir, Floyd, the inevitable 'Highway to Hell', excellent FOH, impeccable foldback, a packed house of families, some buddies and our 'fan club' (of three..!). A good one...
Now off to bed...

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Another good one for the Terrortones.

At our last rehearsal I discovered that the B string on my Gus had died and was only capable of a tuneless and lifeless thud and couldn't find anyone who could sell me a correct replacement set of La Bella Hard Rockin' Steels in time, so for this gig I brought out the Yamaha BJ5B. It doesn't have quite the body of sound that the Gus has so it took a couple of songs to get the balance on stage right, which wasn't helped by the fact that the last band had the bass massively loud in the monitors which meant that the front wedges were producing some "interesting" sounds in time with my bass part on the opening song and and the second I was so loud I could no longer hear the drums!

Once we got that sorted the rest of the set sounded great, but overall it wasn't quite as a good a musical performance as our recent Stay Sick or Burtfest sets, but we got the audience up and dancing down the front (or were they trying to avoid being accosted by Mr Venom?) Sold a load of CDs and badges, and had loads of people rave about the performance. Saw Basschat's Pantherairsoft very briefly before we played and then failed to find him later on (sorry mate - hope you found it entertaining!) Finally got home at 4.30 in the morning soaked with sweat and rain.

Tired but happy once again.

Edited by BigRedX
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One of those nights that's perfect. Everything worked as it should, fantastic sound on stage and out front. The place was heaving and 'hot'. We only stopped playing encores because the hotel we were playing in was full and the few guests that weren't with us and the regular audience, complained that they couldn't get to sleep. One of those gigs that makes it worthwhile.

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