Worst Gigs

Well we got the gig off the back of a gig at Saltford Cricket Club which we did in August last year.

It was to be a 70th birthday at Hanham Folk Centre. When we got the call we were all  a little surprised and voiced some doubts, you know the sort off thing, are we the right band for this etc. Well we umhed and aahed eventually accepting the the booking after speaking to the people involved. Her mother in law would love us, but it was to be a surprise.... We should have spoken to the mother in Law!!

It started to go a bit pear shaped on arrival,

We couldn't get in the venue until six, with seven members and 2.5K rig we need a couple of hours, they needed us sound checked and consigned to the tradesman’s room by seven thirty!

Once we were in the alarms went off, the stewards had no idea how to switch them off!

The room had been changed from the main hall to the much smaller Wessex Suite, not much bigger than your living room! This had a stage about 5m x 1.5m, on which were two immovable tables and a piano, and "by the way you have to keep the right hand clear as this is a fire escape" came from the mouth of some jobsworth!.

We had been led to believe there were stage lights available, there were two PAR cans, one without a bulb and  neither with gels. The room lights were fluorescents!  We were told that we had to use the ONE double socket painted orange for our supply as this was on an RCD "Health and Safety you know" (Yes we do, we have our own RCD's -its called Health and Safety!!!!!!)

Well guess what, it wasn't actually connected to any circuit!

We found power else were, thank God for extension leads!

Eventually we got set-up, no real hiccups there, but by now, guests were starting to arrive.   We then started engineering, Dave our erstwhile sound man, (aka Rocket scientist), was at the controls and started to set up the kick, immediately one of the blue rinse brigade came over and said to him "Can you stop that, it's frightening the baby". We looked at each other in utter amazement, this wasn't even thought the PA, Dave was just setting the input gain!   Well, we carried on, eventually getting through to a full sound check with comments of "It's a bit loud" and people walking around with their fingers in their ears as they passed the PA.

Now at this time, we weren't even at full performance level, in fact, we were almost acoustic!

At 9.45 we went on for our first set, and we played well. now we are a rock covers band, we play an eclectic range from Echo Beach to Sk8ter Boi. The lady whose 70th birthday it was, approached Dave and said, "Can you turn it down"? No said Dave I can't turn it down any more there is nowhere to go! She then asked, "Can you play some Waltzes or foxtrots?"   We were stunned!

We finished the first set which is by far our quieter set with some smooth, jazzy blues numbers like Van Morrison and Fleetwood Mac and we were then asked by the daughter-in-law, who booked us, if we would not mind playing anymore as a lot of the older guests were leaving! (during the course of the evening ,we it became apparent to us that daughter-in- law and Birthday Girl, did not see eye-to-eye, were we the unwitting co-conspirators? draw your own conclusions on that one.)

Being professional, we allowed the Birthday Girl to say a few words, using our mics and ours PA, her first words were I quote, " Apologies for the very noisy band", she then went on to mention her apparent partner, so it didn't help matters when one of our singers asked her how long have you and Roy been married, they weren't, they had been having an affair for thirty years! Oops!   After that, every time she passed a band member she looked daggers at them.

Anyway, we got paid, the full amount, although it was suggested that we might take less as we had only done half a gig, NO CHANCE!

We packed up and headed for the bright light of Clifton Triangle for a few beers.

Steve, Sarah and the crew - Something For The Weekend...!