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How was your gig last night?


bassninja

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The pub stages are the best places to play at Faversham Hop fest. The only other stage that is not MAJOR hassle is/was the Brewery stage as
a) they pay you properly and b,) you have decent access and parking... the rest are a nightmare, IMO

Very good two days though ..for all that.
Didn't make it down to the Anchor even tho a mate was doing the sound... went to the Market instead... as thought the parking would be better.

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Well, it was Saturday, but it was Sunday morning by the time I got home so perhaps it still counts: Cherry White at the Stag & Hounds, in Bristol.
In spite of everything that went wrong, it was alright in the end - a huge thank you to Mornats and Pinball for coming down to see us, it was great to meet you both!

We spent almost as much time sitting around in a side street in Chiswick as we did in Bristol itself, as the hire car's engine decided to start playing up just after we'd collected everybody. Got to the venue two hours later than planned; not a problem as it turned out to be a very relaxed affair. So relaxed, in fact, that we discovered the "house kit" was barely a kit at all - they offered us a rack tom but no way of mounting it, so our drummist had to rely on a kick and floor tom beside his snare.

And then halfway through the set, all the mics cut out. We have contingencies for loss of a microphone, or our guitarist breaking a string, or even for the drumkit falling over, but losing all three vocals at once was not something we'd planned for. Thankfully it wasn't a huge crowd that watched us standing around like lemons for three minutes while the sound guy frantically ran to find another mic for our lead singer.

But in spite of all that? Not bad, not bad. At least the crowd seemed to like what we were doing!

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Water for Dogs played at the Swan Inn at Stone in Staffordshire last night. Arranged by, and ably supported by Dave Hulatt of Dream Circuit who runs Prog nights there once a month. This time he invited us over and it went down a storm. I must point out that although my fellow Dogs know Dave it is the first time I have seen him play and he is AMAZING. If you get chance to catch Dream Circuit please do so, they are fantastic.

We are booked in there for a couple of months time so that was good and the feedback we got from the crowd of all ages and musical tastes was great.

Looking forward to playing there again.

Met another couple of bass players there so along with some other, (lesser) musicians so it seems that Stone has quite the music scene.

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[quote name='Rich' timestamp='1194791104' post='86873'] Saturday night at the Fleece in Bristol... always a good night there, but the placed was absolutely rammed to the rafters last night... they hit the fire limit and were turning people away by 9 o'clock. Support from a very good covers band The Collective, nice guys and some unusual covers well played. We had one or two new tunes in our set, seemed to go down well. Crowd were in good voice, brilliant atmosphere and god it was hot! Too funky in heeyar..! A great night. Bassist's eye view of the punters: [/quote]

Now, that's what I call a crowd.

NICE!

Blue

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Challenging because I'm a richard head.
Could not get the sound I wanted all night. Packing up, noticed I'd put the valve pre amp on. I only like solid state. Dozy bugger :rolleyes:

Mind it made bugger all difference to the folk dancing and jumping up and down for the second set :blush:

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[quote name='steve-bbb' timestamp='1409989309' post='2545142']
haha i wont bother pushing them any more for a gig then - been emailing/phoning them for two years now offering our musicular services :huh:
[/quote]

I think you should get to play a pub during the year...and then those pubs tend to make up their Hop fest bills
from the people who play there and are known to their customers..??

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We played at small Nottingham festival Medfest on Saturday. When we arrived, I was disappointed to see a sparse turnout, with a smattering of people passively sitting watching the great Mike Rutherford Band pumping out some blues crowd-pleasers. A couple of reggae acts followed and then us as the final act. Thankfully a group of friends/fans came along and we got a great atmosphere going, with people dancing and kids with too much candy floss in their systems dancing and running like mad things.
My six year old daughter, Maya, had been promised last year that she could sing with the band on her favourite song 'Lollipop' so we decided that this would be the gig. It was lovely having her on stage, and she did brilliantly - she was chuffed to bits and is really proud, especially as she was very nervous beforehand.

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Saturday night we played in Cropredy. Good crowd, first set promising, second set (with Jenny Haan singing) was best yet since she joined us, a real tour-de-force that helped sell a few CDs when we finally left the stage after two encores (and one after the first half).

Followed of course by the long break down, packing up and drive home.

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[quote name='Roland Rock' timestamp='1410206822' post='2547183']
We played at small Nottingham festival Medfest on Saturday. When we arrived, I was disappointed to see a sparse turnout, with a smattering of people passively sitting watching the great Mike Rutherford Band pumping out some blues crowd-pleasers. A couple of reggae acts followed and then us as the final act. Thankfully a group of friends/fans came along and we got a great atmosphere going, with people dancing and kids with too much candy floss in their systems dancing and running like mad things.
My six year old daughter, Maya, had been promised last year that she could sing with the band on her favourite song 'Lollipop' so we decided that this would be the gig. It was lovely having her on stage, and she did brilliantly - she was chuffed to bits and is really proud, especially as she was very nervous beforehand.


[/quote]

What a lovely thing for Maya :D

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Sorry I couldn't make this Chris, especially as I know Paul (gtr) who I saw on Thurs, he would have been playing with Mick Rutherford (hell how old is he now!?) on the day. Doing a bit of pre holiday shopping then had a gig myself in evening. Glad you had a decent gig in the end.

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We had our first gig @ MASH in Macclesfield which went really well.

Usually more of a laid back place - blues and jazz mainly we managed to keep the volume levels 'sensible' for a couple of bars.

Invited play there regularly so it must've been ok - moderately drunken dancing and lots of silliness in the crowd.

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Just back from a rather disappointing appearance at the Flying Pig festival near Swindon. Last year we performed in almost total darkness while the lighting man wandered around the stage trying to get the lights to work, this year we had three power failures during our set, resulting in instant silence and darkness. Had to skip some songs in order to finish on time, so as I said, all in all, a disappointing evening.

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Not great past night, 50th birthday party at a local rugby club, horribly reverberant room with no soft surfaces at all I could see - couldn't get a good tone all night. Couple of dancers, but not a great reaction from the fairly small crowd; had a last minute dep on guitar, who we'd not met before, but a nice bloke and a really good player so that worked out alright.

Tonight should be better, different dep guitarist, but we have played with him once before even if it was over a year ago, but should be a busy venue with a good atmosphere as it's carnival night in Crowborough.

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Depped with a resident house band in a 50+ year old resort. Sight read happily through the set. Turned page to find Le Freak. Started playing and then had a moment of clarity that I was playing one of the great bass lines, got lost, and took a solo in the middle section because I has NO idea where I was in the song. Whoops.

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Last night was.......interesting.

I arrived at half 7 to find I'm first to get there, called the singer who was driving in with the drummer, 15 minuets or so later they arrive and give me the news we have no guitarist tonight - mis-communication with the dep means he's playing somewhere else and we can't find anyone else. However, we have a plan: the singer has a number of of karoeoke versions of our songs, so if he needed to go out as a solo act he could, so we planned to put those through the PA, whack it up in the monitor and the drummer and I would play over it.

It actually worked surprisingly well, as far as most punters were concerned there was live music and we had a fair few dancers for the first set, apparently it sounded great out front, really full.

We had managed to get hold of one of our old guitariats who agreed to play and got there in time for the second set, so normal service was resumed - bit rusty on a couple of songs as the set-list has changed a bit since he was in the band and I've not played some of those songs for ages.

All in all, despite the issues with lacking a guitarist we put on a great show, to a social club that was packed due to it being carnival night; we felt pretty triumphant at the end of the night. However, the evening was soured a little by one of the club committee having too much to drink and then ending up having a winge to the band leader about how much we charge, it's pretty simple market economics, you don't like the price we charge, don't book us, but don't book us and then have a moan about it on the night.

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2nd full gig for the band and this time at the B ath in Morecambe last night. Very different to the all round success of the first gig. Morecambe was like a ghost town on a Saturday night. Started with two men and a dog as an audience, mixed messages from staff about our start time so we did four songs the told to restart later! Weird vibe in the audience that did eventually grow to about thirty people. About 20 percent were in to it and the remainder fairly disinterested and muted reactions. Despite having our best on stage sound thus far and being fairly tight we all made some mistakes and I made a few clonkers in places I've never screwed up in before. Making my first attempts at backing vocals, need to get my head around playing and opening my yap at the same time. All in all one to chalk up as a learning experience.

Edited by stuckinthepod
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