Gig report thread
FinsburyParkCarrots
Posts: 12,223
Inspired by lucylespian, I thought it'd be fun for us all to report our latest gigs. The idea isn't to say, "Ooooh, I just played Carnegie Hall" and explode into a dazzling spectacle of egomania gone supernova, or even to name and shame some toilet we've just played for the privilege of "prestige" alone. Rather, we could use this thread to talk about our setup, the PA used - if it isn't our own - and the sorts of obstacles or ideas for a smooth performance we come up with in our gigging lives. If you're a covers band, talk about the way you play a certain song: you might well get trips from someone else, about their approach to the number!
Also, let's not be too harsh with each other. If someone has a problem with any aspect of performing, we don't need any so-called experts saying "get used to it" or somesuch. Let's help one another!
Also, let's not be too harsh with each other. If someone has a problem with any aspect of performing, we don't need any so-called experts saying "get used to it" or somesuch. Let's help one another!
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Anything that has to do with supporting original music is a great idea!
https://www.facebook.com/aghostwritersapology/
I went what I thought was going to be an open jam last night . We had a couple of song suggestions worked up with the other guys in our band, but we had not reheased, or nailed down an arrangement etc, thinking it was going to be pretty loose.
Turns out, mostly it was established bands basicall performing stuff they had really tight, including one band of old guys that had been playing together for 30 yrs. I'm not sure what they were tryign to prove. Sure hey were tight, and they tiotally nailed the songs they did, but there was bugger all interest in anyone getting up fpr any sort of impromptu jam afterwards.
WE did some pretty loose versions of tor songs, refusing to be intimdated, but I won't be going back.
I hung around and talked over our band situation with our female singer, as there were two other guys on guitar, just not good enough, and I was unwilling to try and develop more material until we moved them on, but I didn't want to make a bad vibe over it. Anyway, she was jiggy with that, so now we are down to the core 4 of us.
So, I'm hangin around, and some guy wants a guitar player so he can sing Iris and Sweet Home Alabama.
Our bass player and drummer were with him so I said, yeah, I can strum chords.
So anyway , I get up there, my guitar is suddenly horribly out of tune, the tone from the amp is horrendous, and I can't get the intro to Iris to work, thoguh I've played it before, just not for ages. I sound like shit. meanwhile teh drummer has said to the, "this is in 3/4 time",,teh singer says, what's that ? Druumer, you know, 3/4, singer says, I don't need to know that, that's your job.
Singer gives up on my ontro, starts singing, and that's cool, I struggle though.
So, onto SHA. Now, I've looked at this song, but never really learnt it, so I'm winging it. I know the refrain bit pretty well, and when I get to it, jsut expect it to come out of my fingers, but, uh uh, not tonight baby, just bad noise. Fuck !! I give it one more go, then give up. TAlk about a trainwreck.
I come off the stage pissing myself laughing, putting it donw tto experience.
It's actualyl quite a relief to have such a shocker.
Lessons learnt..........
Open jams are never that.
Don't perform stuff you have not rehearsed.
Don't play with strange musicians
Stop playing stages where you have seconds only to set up a tone.
Apart from that, no-one lost an eye, and the sun still came up today.
Cube Root of Infinity
I know, I know, it reads like crap, but it's gonna look cool in proper math symbols.
Just be glad you're not a Jazz musician, you'd have to deal with those circumstances on a daily basis.
-Reagan
There was a blues jam like that in Cambridge. It had interludes of openness and great fun, but mostly, there was a horrible clique of chums who all played the same boring tunes in each others' bands every other night of the week, and hogged the stage for most of a session, treating it as a rehearsal. The only musicians who could get away with avoiding the pecking order were the sax players.
Yeah, I get the feeling that if I go to a few, the same faces will be there doing the same kind of stuff. I'm not into those games though, so I doubt I'll be there for more.
There was a really cool brother/sister act though. A 13 yr old kid playing Led Zep and Gunners songs, while his really bright and accomplished 15 yr old sister played bass and sang harmonies etc. They did Sweet Child, How Many More Times, Stairway etc. The kid has only been playing for a bit over a year, and it was a real buzz to see them perform. They busk a lot.
Made me hammer the last bit of that damn solo that I still struggle with tonight. I determined to get it down.
I'm gonna add Black Dog and Purple Haze to our set-list too, great fun songs, maybe Foxy Lady too.
Good PA, and expensive-looking monitor. (Didn't catch the name of the monitor. I think it was Eric.
I forgot my own words at one point, but just made up any old bollocks. "Transistor ... dalek ... Joanna Lumley ... gastropod ... midgets", or whatever. The great thing is, no-one cares, as long as it's in tune.
Nice one centurion !! I've jsut hit my work desk and naturally, I check in here first thing, and you have set me up for a great day with a damn good belly laugh to start things off.
Sounds like a nice venue, and a nice change for you to have a good sound guy.
Amazing when you think about it. They put so much design into opera shouse and orchestral performance venues, but any old concret box wil do for "low-brow" music, but it makes a world of difference.
No more gigs for me yet, but have a rehersal booked next week, and I'm busy sheddign
Meoon Five - HArder to Breathe, which is actuall quite funky
Meredith Brooks - Bitch
Robert PAlmer - Addicted to Love
while getting distracted by all teh groovy acoustci Led zep stuff in open tunings.
Hahaha, I'll never forget the set I played, when the soundman fucked off to watch the football in the other room, just as the DI box farted and departed ...
Expect a drunken review, Fanch-style, at the weekend.
Anyone else?
Also, big news I spent today wrecking a wall or two to turn two small downstairs rooms into one big sucker, thereby more than doubling the size of my practice room, so now I can fit the drum kit, a lounge, keyboard as well as all my amps and gits, and still have room to swing an angry cat.
Just gotta line and carpet , then paint, and I will be playing in the lap of luxury.
There is room for a pool table at the moment, but not after I fill it up.
you really should namedrop, just so when they are famous, i can say 'ohhhh them, well fins told me they would be famous one day!
and dalek and gastropod, absolutely cracked me up. haha awesome
I've always had a hankering for a 12 string. I was fiddling with a nice Maton in a shop yesterday morning. I was thinking that I can play pretty much everything I like on acoustic on a 12, so I could get aaway with that as my only acoustic, but then I came home and watched HTWWW, and Page was just doing such great stuff. I can't make up my mind.
Then there is Jimi playing beautiful blues on a 12 string, I'm sure you know the clip, it on the Experience Hendrix DVD.
What do you reckon ?
Is there anything you can't play on a 12 string ?
that's awesome fins
and lucy, what was the maton? i've got the diesel special. gorgeous guitar.
Dunno what the model designation was, I was goofing off from work again.
It was a dreadnought body 12 with a cutaway and a pick-up.
The Diesel is a small body as I recall. They probably mike up nice, but the only small body I have played that I liked the tone of was the 1947 Martin 00-18.
It was pretty nice, very wide neck to assodae the 12 strings, but nice and flat, and I think I would take to it nicely.
http://www.merrylandsmusic.com.au/images/Diesel-Ad_Mar06.jpg
Well, you're a little limited with what you can do with bends - watch out for that octave G! - but my 12-string style is completely different from my 6-string lead approach. I make more use of finger slide (with vibrato), where I'd normally bend playing lead electric 6-string.
The trick with a 12-string is to play it like a 12-string. When you're fingerpicking, play with or even make up your own picking patterns that bring out either the sound of the octave strings or the chimes of complementary strings in octave unison. That's when the instrument really reveals its natural chorus effects.
Yeah,I'm thinking it's not hard to substitutute a bend with a little finger slide.
What you are really saying , is that I NEED a 12 string isn't it, or I'll die unhappy wondering what could have been.
They strum so nice too.
They're what a univibe was invented for. Trust me!
HAvn'r got one of those, but I do have a H&K Rotosphere. I'm goign to look at some more 12 strings over the next few weeks. I'm really leaning toward it at present. Also, if I don't get one soon, the arthritis in my left index MCP joint will get too bad, and I won't be able to handle one. It's gonna be hard work even now.
Yep, I think you need to get one right away. For whatever reason!
Don't drink, never did do drugs, Ken Clean-Air Systems, thet's me.
But no sugar, are you crazy woman ?? I live on teh stuff. Besides which, if you mention glucosamine next, you might note that "glucos" is a big chunk of that.
It's not bad yet, but I have the start of primary nodal OA in my left index MCP and right index PIP joints. The DIP joints in my middle fingers are just starting to veer side-ways a littel too, though I have no pain there yet.
Never mind, look at Keef's hands, they are terrible, and he still plays.
i'm addicted to the sugary stuff too. at work i'm always doing my BSL and breathe a huge sigh of relief when i see it's perfect. never changes. thank god. i love my chocolate.
Any, we cut down to just the four piece. Then we get a call from another guy who saw us play and wants to join us. He was pretty good himself, so we go, OK, come for an audition, we send him a list of songs that we will be rehearsing, 5 songs, not 500.
He turns up, I had to loan him a guitar, but I knew that. Anyway, he does not know any of teh songs, but plays well, and picks stuff up as we go pretty well. Trouble is, he starts over-playing, and it gets worse and worse. He doesn't know the riffs, so he picks up on the key and starst playing lead over the top, which eventually gets almost to the shredding stage.
On one song, there is just a defined riff, and before, I said, sit this one out. So he starts the lead stuff straight away, So I stop, and say no dude, sit it out.
Get to the end of the night, and I've got very mixed feelings. I've just scaked two other guys for playing too little, and now it looks like I'm gonna diss this guy for playing too much. I wonder if I'm looking like I'm selfish, but the rest of us play with respect for everyone else sonic space, and get tight on songs really quickly because we are listening a LOT to each other.
He's a nice guy and I'm thinking he over-played cos he was keen and wanted ot impress us, and he played lead stuff cos he did not know the songs of the riffs, so initially I kinda forgave that a bit. But then it occurred to me that he had not even listen to one song once t know how they went, and that kinda shits me a bit. At the end we had a chat, and I said, yeah, I'm not sure, but lets go with him, but the more I think about it, the less I feel like I want to be fighting for space. The singer got lost in the mix a lot too, which bugged me as well. I lay back when the vocal is important, and she steps aside for the lead breaks, but he was all over the top of both of us.
Whaddya reckon ????