Carrie

Dave and I tried out Carrie as a potential bass dep in my music room. It went well on the simpler stuff and we are confident she can get up to speed with our stuff, so we have earmarked her as a dep for now.

Sheringham Social Club (The Top Club)

Left at 5pm and had a good trip over arriving at 6:40pm. The club has good access to the stage but you have to park on the pavement to unload. Got all my gear in OK by the time Dave Jenny and Dan arrived. I wanted to concentrate on setting up the PA because I had replaced the exciter with an enhancer. Also, I wanted to set Dave up with an Audix OM5 I had borrowed from the studio. Early signs were good. The PA sounded crisp and clear and we appeared to have the lost the touch of resonant boomyness we had with the exciter. A great on-stage sound. The OM5 is a more middly sound and certainly “does what it says on the tin” in that it has high resistance to feedback and picking up extraneous sounds from the kit. It cut through the mix well but I had to reduce the treble and increase bass slightly to get a compatible sound with the Shure’s. So we soundchecked OK. I got the boys to play a bit of “Good Luck Charm” without me and the vocals were well balanced with the rhythm section throughout the hall. Soundchecked the usual and it all worked really well. Dave’s family and several friends had arrived to support the band and the hall was filling nicely. So we were looking forward to a good night with everything sounding good and working well. And so it proved in Set 1. We played a good hour and it all worked very well good sound and few mistakes – an exception to the smooth run was Dave losing his voice in “Nights in White Satin”, but it still got a very good round of applause. We got some waltzers up in “3 Times a Lady” and that started the dancing. This audience likes a good mix of slowies with the medies and fasties! Took a bit of a break while Dave and Dan worked the room and I fiddled with the PA, then we went on for what we thought would be about half hour of set 2 – starting with “Walk Don’t Wipe Out” which went really well. Steve, Michele and Harriet arrived at this point and we got a lot of people up and dancing. The set was running a bit manic and there were odd problems creeping in, but we got a good reception. Did “Amazed” which was a bit untogether. The raffle guy didn’t turn up at 10:30pm as planned so we just played on with increasing verve right through the rock’n’roll – about an hour again! Also, the PA had started to deteriorate. I could detect a bit of distortion on the intense sections and although I tried to adjust equalisation and reverb settings, I couldn’t nail it. Michele danced with Derek right thru the Rock’nRoll and she was fairly hot when I greeted her at the end. Steve reported that Dave’s mic was toppy and too reverberant, so I made a few tweaks for set 3. We got underway with the usual sort of stuff but it was quite late and it took a bit of effort to get the dancers going. The main trouble was the increasing distortion on the PA. I can only put this down to the mixer, enhancer or power amp, and I’m looking forward to getting it changed out and getting an easier life! Anyway we had gone down very well, the guvnor was delighted (and slipped us a bit of extra money) and Dave looks well set to take some gigs for next year. Got underway about 1am and home for 2:30am on a cool but clear night. PS I found the Hi Freq knobs on the PA Enhancer were not where I expected and in the dark on the night I was tweaking the wrong one - may have accounted for the bad sound in set 3?

Band Off!

So Jacqui and I went to Holt for band meal at Butlers where Steve is chef. We had a slap up feed and toasted Jacqui’s birthday with Prosecco. Then we adjourned to Sheringham social club to see Nigel’s band - The PepperMint Men. Although they had a good sound, their Bose gear was not as impressive as I expected: the vocals were a bit low in the mix and not as 100% clear as I’d been led to believe by the marketing collateral. However, I was impressed with the bass and lead guitar sound which cut through without any boominess and sounded clear. The Bose poles certainly did the trick of dispersing sound evenly around the hall and, talking to the band, I could understand that they needed a bigger stage to get the full benefit of the Bose set up. You do need to get about 6 foot away from your speakers so that you are not overwhelmed by your own sound – a tall order on this circuit! They did a lot of harmony based medleys in a low key background music sort of way - and at that they were good. However, there wasn’t a lot of attempt to entertain the audience and there was certainly room for more light and shade; and passion in their playing. Taking all in all I sort of arrived at the conclusion that the Bose system would initially work best for us in a monitoring role. So its back to my plan to upgrade the PA. At this point in the evening Dan dropped that bombshell that he had taken a job in the USA and would need to be replaced from May. He asked that he be allowed to give it a month or two to fully make up his mind and he would like the option to return to the band in that case. Dave and I also sketched out the option of recruiting a full time bassist / vocalist (like Nigel), but leaving open the possibility to take Dan back as a 4^th musician on flute, sax, percussion, mandolin, keyboard, guitar etc. My only concern is that “more might be less” in the rhythm section, but it could work if done with a “light touch”, and would provide cover for absences.

Runton Village Hall Richard’s Cheese and Wine Bash

Cool clear day, met up with Dan at the hall at 5pm, so I could get the gear in and rebalance the PA. Michele had set up a white stage curtain round the back and sides of the stage, this turned out to be very good in damping down the boxy reflections we had had previously at this venue. I got set up OK and started fiddling with the PA when Dave arrived with Stephen as roady. I tried reducing some of the harmonic excitation on the hi frequencies and that seemed to give a more natural sound. Put Dave back on his SM58Beta and we soundchecked at fairly low volume. It seemed like a good balance and there was no hint of distortion during the sound check. Stephen had a listen and got Dan to adopt a deeper bassier sound which also sounded much better on stage.  Replacing the twangy sound of the bass with a punchier bassy sound has the effect of reducing competition for the mid-range which is naturally dominated by guitar and drums – in this case less is certainly more! Ran through several pieces including a bit of “Bye Bye Baby” which sounded do-able for the night. By then we had a fair few in the hall setting up wine cheese and cakes, so we relaxed and had some orange juice while we waited for Michele to bring the beer! 

Met up briefly with Steve and Alison, Steve looking suitable relaxed after giving up commuting and the MD role as the first stage of his retirement plan. Got off to an extended hour and a bit set 1 at lowish volume which went quite well. Only problem was the lights failed early on in the set – Dan got Steve to reset the circuit breaker a but a couple of lights had blown. Waved to Gill and shook hands with Peter Brooker mid-set as we ploughed on. Finished with a well appreciated version of “I Believe”. After a short break we did an extended Set 2 for another hour, going on beyond the Elvis routine through the rock’n’roll to finish with “Love is All Around”. 

After a break for some cake and the opening of a very large bottle of vintage port strained thourgh a lady’s stocking we got on to set 3 which, with encores, was another one hour and a bit. Richard did another fine speech and got the local councillor to agree to an unplanned extension of the hall opening hours so we could finish with encores of “Wonderful Tonight” and “Great Balls of Fire”. Having played around three and half hours we were a bit tired. Michele looked very happy having quaffed a couple of glasses of the vintage port and she wisely accepted help to get the stage curtain down. With Stephens help we got the gear out quickly and I was on the road for 1am getting in about 2:30am on a chilly night (-4 degrees in Swaffham).

The White Swan, Loddon

I had picked up a bit of a cold queuing to see the Terracotta Warriors in London on the Friday. So I set off at 6pm well drugged up with Contac pills to keep the symptoms at bay. It took just over the hour to get to Loddon, which still had some snow around. Parked round the back where the gang were unloading. We had Nigel depping for Dan on the night and Jenny assisting Dave. It is a warm, cosy pub with quite a bit of room for the band once the pool table was shifted. On a first glance it looked a young pub and not our kind of audience – they were playing Kurt Kobain on the jukebox! But on further inspection there were a few older “farmhands” around and they did engage us in conversation. The guvnor said there was no changing room and we didn’t need to change (not that kind of crowd) so that was one less thing to be bothered with. The room is well damped and generates a high bass response. Set the PA up and immediately ran into problems with boomy feedback. So I reduced bass on all the mics and ended up boosting the mids to get a bit of cut through. Sounded a bit rough on stage, but I had a walk out in the soundcheck and it was OK in the room. We ran Dave’s Beta 58 into a spare channel and we put a bit of a monitor signal through Nigel’s bass amp. The guitar sounded a bit weedy at first, so I cranked it up onto the hi-voltage setting and it started to cut though nicely. 

Had a couple of beers and started off set 1 much as usual and it seemed to go down OK. To cater for the younger crowd, we cut out all the sloweys out and extended the rock’n’roll - including a hi-impact version of “Jailhouse Rock” to finish the one hour set. The band had started low key but ended up rocking along at fairly high volume! Went back on to do an hour second set. Strangely we missed out “Beautiful Sunday” but we did do the Elvis routine and got a bit of reaction. Played through the rock’n’roll medley and ended up pinching some of the set 3 stuff such as “Spirit in Sky”, “Hi Ho” and “All Right Now” to get us to the hour. Another beer break and then we did about 40 minutes for set 3 starting with “Amarillo” and then playing some of the rockier pieces that don’t get aired that often e.g: “Shakin All Over” “You Really Got Me”, “Mustang Sally” (Nigel sang it) “Status Quo”. We finished with “Pretty Woman” but had enough shouts for more to get us to do “Great Balls” as an encore.

All in all the gig had gone much better than we could have expected, but I think this was mainly because we adapted to playing a rockier, raunchy repertoire and sound for this audience. The guvnor was well pleased and interested in booking us back and we handed out several cards - we have a prospect for the Loddon Jubilee Hall dance! I was pretty tired at the end and glad of some help from Nigel in getting the gear out. It was a bit of a health and safety nightmare on the frozen car park surface! But I got off just before 1am and home for 2am.