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Important gig tonight.

#62
lol holy cow batman!.how many wigs were found in the parking lot!

1980s-is-it-live-or-is-it-memorex.gif
 
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#63
hbarcat said:
So, I just now woke up (10 am) after getting home at 2 am last night and I suppose you all want an update.
;):bassist:

Before I let you know how it went, I want to fill in a few background details from when I first arrived at the gig around 4 pm. I'll describe the setup.

The stage was a big concrete slab off the side of the house. The audience area was about 100 feet away and consisted of a few assorted tables in the lawn and there were snacks set out and coolers full of all kinds of beverages. A porta potty was nearby. A few early guests had arrived and they had brought lawn chairs of their own or just stood.

The stage setup was pretty much the same as our rehearsal space.

We always play with a pretty quiet stage volume and let the PA do the work.

Guitar - 40 watt tube 12" combo amp, mic'd

Drums - mics on kick, snare, toms, hi hat, and OHD

Bass - Mesa Subway D-350 w/1x15" cab, DI out


Now for the PA:

Tops - (4) 15" 3 ways on sticks
powered by (2) Carvin DCM 1000s

Subs - (4) 18" bins
powered by (4) Carvin DCM 1500s

Floor monitors - (4) 15" wedges
powered by (2) Carvin DCM 1000s

In case you're keeping track, that's 10,000 watts of amplifier capability (not that we have to use all of it).

Lights - (2) sets of 4 way par cans for the audience, (1) set of 4 way par cans for the stage (all "vintage" incandescent bulbs rated at 300 watts each).

If you're keeping track, that's 3,600 watts of lights, in total.

I'll pause here to let that sink in for a moment and resume in my next post.
Click to expand...
Whose PA/lights was that? I'm surprised that any production company is still using such ancient gear.
 
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#65
Now for the show itself. It can accurately be described as "THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY".

I'll address them in reverse order.

THE UGLY:

The sound and lights "tech" was the neighbor/friend of the guitarist and had no experience running shows. He was basically there to turn things on and off, adjust the relative levels of guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, and be a "gopher" during the gig. Really cool guy and a fast learner, but knew next to nothing about running sound or lights. He basically took instructions on the fly from the guitarist.

Sound check was rudimentary. Vocal mics levels, then drum levels, followed by guitar level and bass level. All separately done. We never got a sound check with everybody playing at once (I thought that might be a problem but what do I know).

As we got closer to showtime, more guests had arrived and there were about 60 - 70 people there.

We had planned to play (3) 50 minute sets starting at 7 pm and ending by 10 pm. We had that time as a hard deadline because the guitarist had somehow arranged things with the city to be able to operate a festival sized PA system at full blast as long as we shut it down by 10 pm.

At 7 pm on the dot, we start the show and hit the first song running. It was "Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz.

Ten seconds into it, the power goes out as a circuit breaker trips.

Guitarist runs into the house and resets the breaker.

We apologize for the glitch and restart the song.

Ten seconds into it the circuit breaker trips again.

The guitarist runs back into the house and resets the breaker.

He apologises for the delay and works to correct the problem. He turns off all of the stage lights and the audience lights, which eliminates the 3,600 watts of par can incandescent bulb current draw.

We restart the song, getting about halfway through before the breaker trips for the third time.

Guitarist runs inside and doesn't come back out for about 10 minutes. He again apologies and tells the audience that he had to redistribute the power load to different circuits.

We restart the show, but skip to the next song in our setlist. It's "Locomotive Breath" by Jethro Tull, which we play by starting with the bass and guitar noodling around for a bit, then hitting the main part of the song when the drums come in full tilt.

Halfway through the song, the power shuts off again, but only to the mains and subs. The stage power is still on.

Guitarist runs back inside and resets the breaker.

He once again apologies and decides to shut off two of the four subwoofers.

We restart "Locomotive Breath" (skipping the intro) and make it through the entire song. Much applause follows. I strongly suspect much of it is sarcastic.

We launch straight into the next song ("You Wreck Me" by Tom Petty) and get 10 seconds in before the power to the mains and subs cuts out.

Guitarist, yet again, runs into the house to reset the breaker. He yet again apologizes and says that he's sorry but we're going to need to turn the volume down on the PA so the audience will have to put up with a much quieter show experience.

Personally, I thought it was way, way, way, too loud and turning it down would not only keep our power from cutting out, but would sound better at a more modest volume.

We restart the show and I'm thinking to myself that this is just about the worst possible way to make an impression on an audience that we're desperately trying to impress. I'm feeling pretty rattled, and I can tell that my bandmates are both also shaken up, but we all put on our best game faces and plunge ahead.

We restart the show, and this time the power stays on. We did finally manage to solve our electrical problems for good.

THE BAD:

By this time, all three of us are pretty rattled (but determined not to show it) and we forge our way through the rest of our first set.

It was not good. It wasn't exactly a train wreck, but all three of us were making mistakes.

Because there were no stage lights and we were all relying on our small, personal LED lamps (fortunately, we had the foresight to have them) to be able to see what we were doing, we were all struggling to find our spots on the fretboard and on drums. It was also very hard to hear properly with an amateur running our sound because everything was out of balance.

Apparently, it sounded great out in the audience area 100 feet away, but on stage it was really difficult for any of us to hear what the others were playing. I would describe the sound balance as "chaotic". I could barely hear the vocals at all.

The decision was made to skip the breaks between sets and play the entire show all in one go. The delay from the power glitches meant that we couldn't afford to stop or else we'd go past our 10 pm deadline.

THE GOOD:

Eventually, we settled down into our routine and got used to playing in the dark. The sound guy, despite his lack of experience, somehow managed to rebalance some of our stage sound on the fly and that made it a lot easier to play. By about 8:15 pm, we were pretty much nailing it and the audience was enthusiastically cheering after every song.

There was a constant supply of dancers (including some men and not just women) that I could just barely make out in the darkness in front of us. It was just possible to see a little bit because a nearly full moon had risen and provided a nice ambiance to the show.

We finished up the show with our final song ("War Pigs" by Black Sabbath) just on the deadline and received more applause than I could have hoped for. We thanked everyone for coming and sticking with us through the initial glitches.

For the next half hour or so, we received a steady stream of patrons coming up to us and shaking our hands, telling us how great we were and how full we sounded as a three piece and how much they enjoyed the show.

Some of them were even sober!

Later on (about 11:30 pm) while we were packing up, the guitarist told us that there were three venue owners in attendance, and they were impressed enough with us (despite the initial problems) to say that they wanted to have us play shows for them. Details to be worked out later.

All in all, I consider last night's gig to be a success.
 
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#67
Congrats - Those kind of things have never gone as planned in my world; In fact they've usually ended up 90% ugly/bad.

Rather, to be successful, it's been my experience that we had to play out constantly starting in some pretty crappy dives, paying dues as we went from passable to good.

Nice to see all the preparation and hard work pay off.
 
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#68
I promised to have video, however I was using an AC adapter for my Zoom Q3 recorder and the unit kept shutting off every time the power went out. I reset it to record both of the first two times after the power went out but after that, gave up.

Because we ended up playing the entire show with no breaks, I didn't get a chance to have it record video, even for the latter part of the show when we were in the groove.

I'm really disappointed about that because some of the songs we really nailed. Still, the video itself wouldn't have shown much visually because of the lack of lighting.
 
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#70
If anyone is interested, here's our setlist for last night's gig. We ended up skipping a few songs due to time constraints.



THE HACKMASTERS setlist 9/30/23

SET ONE:

1) Are You Gonna Go My Way
2) Locomotive Breath
3) You Wreck Me
4) Li'l Red Riding Hood
5) I'm 18
6) Won't Back Down
7) Beer Drinkers and He'll Raisers
8) Tush
9) Burnin' For You
10) I Want You To Want Me
11) I Feel Fine
12) Who'll Stop The Rain
13) Secret Agent Man

SET TWO:

1) Same Old Song And Dance
2) Banditos
3) Learn To Fly
4) Flagpole Sitta (skipped)
5) The One I Love
6) Steady As She Goes
7) Can't Get Enough Of Your Love (skipped)
8) Movin' On (skipped)
9) Beverly Hills
10) Hands Are Tied
11) Breakdown
12) The Last Time
13) Breakup Song

SET THREE:

1) One Way Out
2) Mary Jane's Last Dance
3) Have You Ever Seen The Rain
4) Suzie Q
5) Runaway
6) 8675309
7) Play That Funky Music
8) Mustang Sally
9) Walk This Way
10) La Grange
11) Cheap Sunglasses
12) Hash Pipe
13) War Pigs
 
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#72
I want to make it perfectly clear that everything that went wrong last night was our own doing and was entirely preventable.

I've been running sound and lights for my own bands and for a few other bands since the 90s, but almost always with systems that could work on a single 15 amp (1,800 watts) circuit.

When I first saw that behemoth of a PA (along with the ancient lighting setup) I was concerned that it might be a problem.

But I was much more concerned about my usual pre gig routine and getting myself mentally and physically prepared to perform and just assumed that the electrical situation was being handled.

So, this was a valuable learning experience.
:D

:bassist:
 
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#73
hbarcat said:
Now for the show itself. It can accurately be described as "THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY".

I'll address them in reverse order.

THE UGLY:

The sound and lights "tech" was the neighbor/friend of the guitarist and had no experience running shows. He was basically there to turn things on and off, adjust the relative levels of guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, and be a "gopher" during the gig. Really cool guy and a fast learner, but knew next to nothing about running sound or lights. He basically took instructions on the fly from the guitarist.

Sound check was rudimentary. Vocal mics levels, then drum levels, followed by guitar level and bass level. All separately done. We never got a sound check with everybody playing at once (I thought that might be a problem but what do I know).

As we got closer to showtime, more guests had arrived and there were about 60 - 70 people there.

We had planned to play (3) 50 minute sets starting at 7 pm and ending by 10 pm. We had that time as a hard deadline because the guitarist had somehow arranged things with the city to be able to operate a festival sized PA system at full blast as long as we shut it down by 10 pm.

At 7 pm on the dot, we start the show and hit the first song running. It was "Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz.

Ten seconds into it, the power goes out as a circuit breaker trips.

Guitarist runs into the house and resets the breaker.

We apologize for the glitch and restart the song.

Ten seconds into it the circuit breaker trips again.

The guitarist runs back into the house and resets the breaker.

He apologises for the delay and works to correct the problem. He turns off all of the stage lights and the audience lights, which eliminates the 3,600 watts of par can incandescent bulb current draw.

We restart the song, getting about halfway through before the breaker trips for the third time.

Guitarist runs inside and doesn't come back out for about 10 minutes. He again apologies and tells the audience that he had to redistribute the power load to different circuits.

We restart the show, but skip to the next song in our setlist. It's "Locomotive Breath" by Jethro Tull, which we play by starting with the bass and guitar noodling around for a bit, then hitting the main part of the song when the drums come in full tilt.

Halfway through the song, the power shuts off again, but only to the mains and subs. The stage power is still on.

Guitarist runs back inside and resets the breaker.

He once again apologies and decides to shut off two of the four subwoofers.

We restart "Locomotive Breath" (skipping the intro) and make it through the entire song. Much applause follows. I strongly suspect much of it is sarcastic.

We launch straight into the next song ("You Wreck Me" by Tom Petty) and get 10 seconds in before the power to the mains and subs cuts out.

Guitarist, yet again, runs into the house to reset the breaker. He yet again apologizes and says that he's sorry but we're going to need to turn the volume down on the PA so the audience will have to put up with a much quieter show experience.

Personally, I thought it was way, way, way, too loud and turning it down would not only keep our power from cutting out, but would sound better at a more modest volume.

We restart the show and I'm thinking to myself that this is just about the worst possible way to make an impression on an audience that we're desperately trying to impress. I'm feeling pretty rattled, and I can tell that my bandmates are both also shaken up, but we all put on our best game faces and plunge ahead.

We restart the show, and this time the power stays on. We did finally manage to solve our electrical problems for good.

THE BAD:

By this time, all three of us are pretty rattled (but determined not to show it) and we forge our way through the rest of our first set.

It was not good. It wasn't exactly a train wreck, but all three of us were making mistakes.

Because there were no stage lights and we were all relying on our small, personal LED lamps (fortunately, we had the foresight to have them) to be able to see what we were doing, we were all struggling to find our spots on the fretboard and on drums. It was also very hard to hear properly with an amateur running our sound because everything was out of balance.

Apparently, it sounded great out in the audience area 100 feet away, but on stage it was really difficult for any of us to hear what the others were playing. I would describe the sound balance as "chaotic". I could barely hear the vocals at all.

The decision was made to skip the breaks between sets and play the entire show all in one go. The delay from the power glitches meant that we couldn't afford to stop or else we'd go past our 10 pm deadline.

THE GOOD:

Eventually, we settled down into our routine and got used to playing in the dark. The sound guy, despite his lack of experience, somehow managed to rebalance some of our stage sound on the fly and that made it a lot easier to play. By about 8:15 pm, we were pretty much nailing it and the audience was enthusiastically cheering after every song.

There was a constant supply of dancers (including some men and not just women) that I could just barely make out in the darkness in front of us. It was just possible to see a little bit because a nearly full moon had risen and provided a nice ambiance to the show.

We finished up the show with our final song ("War Pigs" by Black Sabbath) just on the deadline and received more applause than I could have hoped for. We thanked everyone for coming and sticking with us through the initial glitches.

For the next half hour or so, we received a steady stream of patrons coming up to us and shaking our hands, telling us how great we were and how full we sounded as a three piece and how much they enjoyed the show.

Some of them were even sober!

Later on (about 11:30 pm) while we were packing up, the guitarist told us that there were three venue owners in attendance, and they were impressed enough with us (despite the initial problems) to say that they wanted to have us play shows for them. Details to be worked out later.

All in all, I consider last night's gig to be a success.
Click to expand...
You're consumate professionals. The show must go on, and it did. Kudos!
 
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