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How was your gig last night?


bassninja

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Fundraiser at Malmesbury Town Hall. Tix sold out in 3 days flat a couple of months ago, so a big crowd well up for it. A silly xmas gig demands a silly band, so we went fancy dress. I'm the hippy on the extreme left, in the hideous tie-dye and the Itchiest Wig In The World. Darth Santa at the back is our alto saxist, he'd cut a hole in the mask to allow him to play with it on :lol:Sounded great out front apparently, but gtrist and I were plagued by hum thanks to a hearing aid loop we couldn't switch off. Grr.

 

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Christmas party / charity function at an old theatre in West Yorkshire. Abysmal weather getting there and back, but a lovely gig. We did it last year and had loads of people coming up to say they’d only come because we were playing which was nice - they were a drunken lot though! Heavily raked stage meant that after a few songs I was nearly floored by my Barefaced Compact / GK amp that had walked downstage behind me! Kept having to push it back into place during the first set with my foot, but managed to secure it ( wedged with a speaker cover ) for the second set. Got in at 3am, knackered. 

Edited by casapete
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We played at our favorite venue on Saturday where we always sound great and have a good. It was the guitarist birthday so quite a crowd. Unfortunately his wife was recently diagnosed with motor neuron disease and is already in a wheelchair. She came to the gig and was well supported. The band keeps him going and his wife is a big fan of us and has been to most gigs. Hopefully she will come to some more.

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Jazz jam in a local pub. The Urban Dictionary says:
 

Quote


Goat Rodeo: A chaotic situation, often one that involves several people, each with a different agenda/vision/perception of what's going on; a situation that is very difficult, despite energy and efforts, to instill any sense or order into.

 

 

The punters evidently agreed; when we started the pub was fairly full, but by the end of the set it was empty.

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13 hours ago, knirirr said:

Jazz jam in a local pub. The Urban Dictionary says:
 

 

The punters evidently agreed; when we started the pub was fairly full, but by the end of the set it was empty.

Off topic, but the Yankee 4 hour 8-12 gig model is getting old. I can't take anything for 4 hours. Punters can't either.

By the last set most folks are gone.

Blue

 

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2 hours ago, Bluewine said:

Off topic, but the Yankee 4 hour 8-12 gig model is getting old. I can't take anything for 4 hours. Punters can't either.

By the last set most folks are gone.

Blue

 

I've always assumed that you wouldn't be playing to the same crowd in the last set that you were in the first at 8 o'clock, that there would be a constantchirn of punters watching the band then moving to another bar and maybe coming back later?? 

I think that the UK model of 2x45 sets plus encores makes a lot  of sense for a night out watching a covers band. 

Edited by peteb
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7 hours ago, Bluewine said:

Off topic, but the Yankee 4 hour 8-12 gig model is getting old. I can't take anything for 4 hours. Punters can't either.

By the last set most folks are gone.

 

I am not suprirsed. I am always saying to the group that I don't think that doing 3 hour / longer sets are a positive. People don't want that. There is no group I would want to see for that long.

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1 minute ago, Woodinblack said:

I am not suprirsed. I am always saying to the group that I don't think that doing 3 hour / longer sets are a positive. People don't want that. There is no group I would want to see for that long.

We (The Grateful Dudes) often play for three hours, and people still want more - but the band we cover would do the same! People pay to come and se us, so we make sure they get their money's worth - plus we enjoy playing and only stop because the venues have curfews.

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44 minutes ago, FinnDave said:

We (The Grateful Dudes) often play for three hours, and people still want more - but the band we cover would do the same! People pay to come and se us, so we make sure they get their money's worth - plus we enjoy playing and only stop because the venues have curfews.

Yes. I think it's context dependent. If I went to see a Dead tribute, I would expect it to last 3 hours and for the structure of the set to loosely unwind over that time period. The duration and and feel is a big part of the music. Plus their back catalog is huge. I recently saw Devin Townsend do 2 hours and I'd never heard any of his music before. I was pretty reticent when I heard how long the set was going to be - just holding someone's attention with 120 minutes of novelty is a big ask - he's done about 18 albums though, and completely pulled it off.  I do think local/starting originals bands often make the mistake that more is better though. If these are the first 10 songs you wrote, it's unlikely all 10 are going to be classics.  30 minutes is either enough or enough to make the audience want more.  

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Yes, i guess there are differences, and I am sure there are some that have an attention span that long, I guess I am from a later generation :)

Can't really say about the grateful dead, I couldn't name one of their songs and I have seen several groups that have done 3 hours+ - Jethro tull springs to mind as quite long,  I guess hawkwind might have been too, but I doubt I was in a state of mind able to perceive time during their gigs (doubt they were either).

Don't get me wrong, we have people who watch our entire sets, in fact at one gig a few weeks back there was a woman who started dancing at our first song and carried on until we finished. I just don't understand it!

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10 hours ago, Bluewine said:

Off topic, but the Yankee 4 hour 8-12 gig model is getting old. I can't take anything for 4 hours. Punters can't either.

By the last set most folks are gone.

Blue

 

We were only playing for two hours, but were simply bad.

I suspect that the chief culprits were the horn players (noodling in the breaks, too loud, wrong keys/tempos, getting lost etc.), but that is probably not an unbiased opinion. ;-)

Edited by knirirr
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2 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

I am not suprirsed. I am always saying to the group that I don't think that doing 3 hour / longer sets are a positive. People don't want that. There is no group I would want to see for that long.

 

+1

When we play the longer sets, the place is still full but you can clearly notice some newer arrivals that stay until later, while many of the ones that were there the first hour don't make it till the end.

Personally, I don't remember the last time I stayed to watch a band for 2x45' (only when my girlfriend insists, really), and other gigs I go to, as much as I may like the band I'm ready to go before they finish. 

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3 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Reading the Dave Pegg biography, one year they had a new, young, 'modern' band at Cropredy. They played their set, did their encore and took 40 minutes. When politely asked if they could do a bit longer they sheepishly admitted they didn't know any more songs...

this is when making Mustang Sally last for 20 minutes comes in useful!

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With the covers band, we generally do a 45, then the second set is longer (an hour, or an hour and a quarter) because people are more likely to dance and sing the more they've drunk...funny, that... 🙂  We're generally flexible, tho: there's one place we play regularly that wants 3x45s...it's a city centre pub, tho, so they have a pretty steady churn of punters...

The originals band reunion gig we did last month was about an hour ten, which was enough, despite folk having paid to see us...always leave them wanting one more... 🙂

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