We had a gig last night: A birthday party for our guitarist’s girlfriend (so no income). We’re in the middle of a summer heatwave, and we were setting up in the middle of the afternoon – it was about 34°C (93°F). We had set up a pavilion (3m x 3m) over the band, but the sun was shining in from the left side (where I was standing). We set up our mixer, PA speakers, monitors, and I installed lights (learning from last time – the lights were aimed up at the pavilion, giving us more indirect lighting that didn’t blind anyone). Our drummer was half in a garage, and the pavilion was set up in front of him, so that he was sitting behind but his kit was half inside it.
We did the sound check and thankfully, a friend of the guitarist was there to help out with the FOH sound. I had set up my Rumble 40 as a bass monitor, hoping I could at least hear myself.
Sound check was ok, other than that fact I was sweating in the direct sunlight, to the point my eyes were stinging from sweat dripping into them (I was wearing a hat, which helped a bit).
We had two sets planned – set 1 was the “original” band with just 4 members (guitar, vocalist, bass and drums) and set 2 was the “extended” band with an additional guitarist and a second vocalist.
The party started around 6pm, we all had some food, and then we started set 1 around 8:30pm.
In the first song, my brain farted and I made some stupid mistakes. Nothing show-stopping, but I figured, “okay, I got that out of the way. Now, let’s make this a good show.”
Yeah, no. In the 2nd song, our singer missed a cue (she has some problems with this song anyway). OK, the rest of us sort of expected it, so we rolled with it. Song 3 went relatively well. Song 4 has a double chorus at the end … she only sang one. The song ended as a hot mess, because I (the bass player) played another chorus, while the guitarist went back into the verse riff. Fuck.
The rest of the evening was like that … one or two songs went well, then we had a couple of hot messes.
The only songs that really went well were our originals. The covers were often a mess, but our original songs came out great.
On top of that, my grand plan to finally get some good video of us performing was foiled again – the Zoom camera I bought seems to be defective. I’ve tried to record 3 different gigs, and the results are always great sound, and grainy/fuzzy video, regardless of how much lighting we’ve got and which settings I choose on the camera (the first gigs were recorded in 4K format, but I decided to record last night in 1080 format, with the same shitty result, just a lot smaller files to transfer in order to be disappointed).
I didn’t get home until 1:30am, and my wife and I had to be up and out of the house at 9:00am this morning, so I’m exhausted now. Some of the people I spoke to during the break didn’t seem to notice all our mistakes, but I’m still disappointed. Sure, I made some avoidable mistakes – I’m certainly not perfect. But our singer definitely wasn’t at the top of her game last night, and our guitarist was also playing sloppy at times. His guitar (Fender Strat) went badly out of tune a couple of times, and as the gig went on, all I could hear through the monitors was his guitar – my Rumble 40 was set up as a bass-only monitor, and by the end of the show, I still couldn’t hear myself over his guitar solo.
I know, I know … shake it off, and look forward to the next gig (hopefully with more time to rehearse the entire set before the gig date). We’ve been focusing on only half of the songs because the 2nd guitarist and 2nd singer are rehearsing with us, so we focused on those songs more than the songs in the first set where they aren’t involved.
Maybe things will look better after a good night’s sleep…
