Some Christmas Cheer!

[Vito Corleone]

 

 

One of these days I'm gonna have a video to share with you all that's actually watchable.   In the meantime, it's still either from behind the stage or the back of the dance floor and a bunch of heads in the way. Especially when we're set up on the floor.

But this one touches on a few things we've been talking about here on a couple of other threads:

This was far from our best gig, performance-wise, for a lot of reasons.   We were playing in a tented area outside a San Francisco hotel on what was a very cold night all across the West.   SF didn't see the single-digit and below-zero temps that other places in California saw, but we also were set up a block from the Bay (corner of Mission and the Embarcadero for those who know the city) so it was pretty chilly and the half-a-dozen hot-air blowers they had under the tent couldn't really keep up.

Also, the floor was carpet on some sort of wood frame that was setup on what is probably asphalt.  The whole room was rocking back and forth a bit!

We were also told to play VERY quietly by the hotel manager.   We were set up right underneath the windows for all the rooms above.   The drummer was barely tapping on the drumheads.

It was a VERY mixed-age audience.    As you can see from this video, there were a lot of old farts there.   It was a play-for-the-oldsters-at-the-beginning-play-for-the-younger-crowd-at-the-end kind of deal.   We are always able to make those sort of nights work, but it brings up it's own challenges with pacing and I'm usually calling out a lot of songs on the fly.

This is a Christmas medley we threw together without any real rehearsal other than running through it once at what passed for our soundcheck.   Here it is complete with botched notes, flubbed lyrics and a guitarist without much idea what to do during what's a sax solo on the recording.  You can't see the singer much, but she's spending a lot of time reading lyrics off a sheet she set on my keyboard.   But nobody other than the band and MAYBE some other musicians who MIGHT be around notice that stuff.   Just goes to show you that as long as you have a solid, danceable beat and a strong vocal you can successfully muddle through pretty much anything.

The good stuff about the gig: 

Those funny-dressed people walking around?  They had all gotten up a couple of songs before to sing lyrics they wrote for their company party to the music of YMCA.   They were dressed like the Village People.   Being easily accomodating with stuff like this and having fun with it is one of the things that gets us these sorts of gigs, I think.

The crowd loved the band.   We had most of the crowd up and dancing all night.   We even had a nice little crowd of people on the sidewalk out in front of the tent dancing along.  That was kind of cool.   Best of all, the owner of the company sent us an email on Monday morning telling us to send out a contract right away so he can book us for their Christmas party next December.

This was a party for a real estate firm.   A husband of one of the agents told me that this was the premiere real estate company in the East Bay and, after a few slow years, they had a gangbusters 2012 selling some $500 million in real estate.   So hopefully that's another sign of things looking up.

We'll be playing this one again this coming Saturday.  The purpose of these recordings is so I can send them out to the band so we can hear all the flubs and all work harder on playing it much better next time.   Cuz it IS all a lot more fun when you play the songs well!

 

 

[Vito Corleone]

Another thing that came up during this gig that's a topic for conversation:

one thing that is unique about private event gigs is very often you are not hired by the people who own the venue.   And it seems there is almost always some conflict that arises from this.

This time it was the fact that we were contracted to play from 8-11, and the hotel manager tells us before we start that they have a strict 10PM cut off time.  We tell him that we're not really the right people to tell.   We'll do whatever we're told to do, but we're contracted with the client and our contract says play until 11.    We tell the client this and he says "we were supposed to have all of that worked out!"

So after a good deal of back and forth, it's all agreed we will stop at 10.  Fine for us: we have a shorter gig for the same pay on a cold night.  But it sucks being caught in the middle.   You don't want to come off an uncooperative with the people who run the venue, and you don't want to violate the contract you have with the client.  

[jeff42]

 

---

guido61 wrote:

 

 

Another thing that came up during this gig that's a topic for conversation:

 

one thing that is unique about private event gigs is very often you are not hired by the people who own the venue.   And it seems there is almost always some conflict that arises from this.

 

This time it was the fact that we were contracted to play from 8-11, and the hotel manager tells us before we start that they have a strict 10PM cut off time.  We tell him that we're not really the right people to tell.   We'll do whatever we're told to do, but we're contracted with the client and our contract says play until 11.    We tell the client this and he says "we were supposed to have all of that worked out!"

 

So after a good deal of back and forth, it's all agreed we will stop at 10.  Fine for us: we have a shorter gig for the same pay on a cold night.  But it sucks being caught in the middle.   You don't want to come off an uncooperative with the people who run the venue, and you don't want to violate the contract you have with the client.  

---

 

I dont play many private gigs but this has happened to me and my response was the same. Talk to the people who hired us.

and of course the manager gets pissed at ME.

[Vito Corleone]

Nice! The majority of gigs we do end up being shorter than the contracted length due to late start times or early end times. Not the worst thing in the world, that's for sure.

[flemtone]

---

guido61 wrote:

Nice! The majority of gigs we do end up being shorter than the contracted length due to late start times or early end times. Not the worst thing in the world, that's for sure.

---

 

Yesssss.  We're sure that's the reason.

 

 

j/k 

[tele-vangelist]

I thought the sound quality was pretty good, was that striaght out of the board or from the camera mic?  What was the patch you used at the beginning?  Nice warm piano/string layer.

[Vito Corleone]

 

---

tele-vangelist wrote:

 

 

I thought the sound quality was pretty good, was that striaght out of the board or from the camera mic?  What was the patch you used at the beginning?  Nice warm piano/string layer.

---

 

A blend of board mix and camera mic.  The patch was a piano/string layer using stock sounds on the Kronos with a tiny bit of vocal "aah" pad underneath.

[wesg]

Video is private. Can you go into your YouTube video manager and change the settings to either public or unlisted?