We experienced two of the most unexpected technical problems that I have ever
faced!
1. We came on stage, all neatly soundchecked, only to discover that the pad
on the CD backing track was a whole semitone out with all the guitars! Now,
I had just tuned the guitars (4 of 'em!), so I knew it wasn't that. What it
was was that the house CD player was one of those DJ jobs with varispeed.
Some prannet had obviously leaned on the varispeed button at some point,
thrusting Wilson into the Omniverse. A quick appeal from the stage brought
the house soundman hurtling across the dancefloor to "reset devices" and we
carried on happily.
2. Having broken a string on my telecaster, I was delighted to see it
reappear, fully strung-up, on my guitar stand. I picked it up for the start
of "Secret Government" only to discover that it was in regular EADGBE
tuning...which was odd, as it was supposed to be in an open D tuning. I had
to spend the first verse of the sing dragging the tuning back. Thank God for
silent tuners! Anyway, it all went smoothly enough and we carried on without
incident. It was only about 3 songs later that I became aware that it wasn't
my telecaster at all, but a look-alike kindly loaned by the other group!
Doh!
I tell ya - we thought we were SO well prepared!
Still, for all those little irritations the set went down well.
The audience was a fairly imposing bunch, about 100 strong, with pretty much
every pro musician in town, along with various representatives from the
Spacemen/Spiritualized axis, so it was quite a relief to hear people saying
nice things about us.
(It was even more fun to overhear bona-fide punters shouting "brilliant" at
each other at the bar.)
After the show we retired to Shakespeare Villas for a knees-up.
Imagine our surprise when the entire staff of the club, promoter, manager,
soundman and even a couple of barmaids showed up toting a crate of beer!
I think we might be "in there".
We all enjoyed ourselves (in a scary kinda way) and will definitely be doing
more shows wherever we can.
I think we're going to play The Packhorse in Leeds on 14th April, and we
could well be back at the Soundhaus on 19th April, but neither date is rock
solid yet.
Music? Wot's it like?
A sort of small and moody Sumosonic, but with more emphasis on dub and
general phatness (phatitude?)
We've started recording a demo with Ian the Sumo vocalist/producer.
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