Members incubass Posted January 2, 2003 Members Share Posted January 2, 2003 salutations everyone. my band played for new year's eve at this party/event in which there were two other bands. we got the gig because our new bass player was in the headlining band and he and they left on good terms. so we were told that we would get thirty minutes and be second because stylistically speaking our sound would be a good mediator between the other bands, one being fairly light and the other relatively heavier than the other. so it would be light band (i'll call them light), us, and heavy band (the bass player's old band that i'll refer to as heavy). so we arrive and meet the heavy and they tell us that light has taken over the stage to do their soundcheck and convinced the promoter to use their system for the whole night b/c it was the best. so heavy is mad about that because apparently the two of them have been swapping members for a while and so there's this bad blood and now we are caught up in the middle. but being the person i am, i'm not getting involved. light declares that they are gonna be the second band and we should open because they are gonna let us use their sound system. we agreed in the name of peace and began to help them get their stuff off the stage to load our own stuff on to do our soundcheck. light then informs us that we are gonna have to set up around their stuff because they spent so long getting things set up and so we are given about 1/3 of the stage in which to set up our drums, guitars, vocals, and bass. at this point i decide to appeal to the sound guy and see if he'll be the voice of reason. however, i soon find out that the sound guy is the father of two of the members of light. so naturally, he's gonna make sure things work in their favor. so by the time we get our 10 minute soundcheck done, we have around 5 channels for our whole band, including drums, and about 1/3 of the stage. So I'm caught in this catch 22, if i ask for more, i run the risk of angering the sound guy, which is suicide as you all know for a live band, and if i settle, we are basically being set up for a rough show. so fast forward to the show time. we get on stage and five minute into it the crowd is digging it and the a fuse *mysteriously* blows( i say mysteriously because light's soundcheck was at least 40% louder)...so its like 8 minutes of dead time which obviously kills the atmosphere. so we get back up and running and the volume is waaay down. so we finish and the show's over and i'm content that we did well but the guys in heavy are pretty angered about it. angrier than i was to be honest. my other bandmates were put off, but not really angry...so we all leave during light's set to eat and my bandmates all leave with their gear before heavy's set but i stayed to support them and all. so anyways i found out later that light is totally funded by the band member's parents (they were mostly high school and college, i'm in college BTW) and so that explained the custom dw's, total of 40 pedals between two guitarists and a bass player, and various keyboards and midi system's and huge sound system from a group of guy's a couple of whom i heard don't even have jobs...well anyways that was my new year's experience and i had a blast because my band played well and i sang and played exceptionally that evening, but its sad to see people like that act so selfishly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mopzilla Posted January 2, 2003 Members Share Posted January 2, 2003 reading your ranting was actually pretty interesting. Glad you had a blast! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Judas-Christ Posted January 2, 2003 Members Share Posted January 2, 2003 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BlueStrat Posted January 2, 2003 Members Share Posted January 2, 2003 Why don't you just learn enough material to do a 4 hour gig and get your own PA so you don't ever have to put up with this grade-school crap? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LynGrey Posted January 2, 2003 Members Share Posted January 2, 2003 Originally posted by BlueStrat Why don't you just learn enough material to do a 4 hour gig and get your own PA so you don't ever have to put up with this grade-school crap? word to that brother.. heck ya.. easist way to solve that problem.. don't gig with them.. use your own gear! I had that type of thing happen.. I set the gig, and i was gunna be the opener of a more famous local band... adn they had a 3rd band.. and the set was us(Emo-corish, friends Emo, headlining HardCore) so it was a decent set... man i got there and the HardCore band let the Emo band run the show, they got the first sound check, and like tottally smacked up around.. i was like you guys are HardCord and you letting an EMO band smack you around... like atleast i got the sound guy to side with us, cuz i knew what i was talking about. Like the Emo kids were liek 14 and 15, adn the Harcord kids were like 18ish.. i was like damn dudes! We were like 19 ish or so.. and i am there for the gig, i try to draw the crowds and stuff, and we are too small to draw a crowd everytimg so i slap up a more famous band with us. But i just try to score it with the gigs... its all about he connection you establish.. like how music it decent for any place.. so like i got a bunch of places that know me and my band personally.. were just not a nother emerging local band. But i was mad that this like band of punnks that were playing on mommys and daddys gear was like running the show! Damn they had some nice ass gear. ... no character in their tone. .but some nice gear . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members incubass Posted January 3, 2003 Author Members Share Posted January 3, 2003 Originally posted by BlueStrat Why don't you just learn enough material to do a 4 hour gig and get your own PA so you don't ever have to put up with this grade-school crap? well, the whole thing came about rather suddenly.i'm the singer and i write most of the stuff, but i don't like to play guitar live because the stuff i do vocally takes so much i get overwhelmed, so we got this friend of mine (he's like 27) to fill in on guitar for us so i could focus on singing...we've only been a band for a month so we hadn't yet found a guitarist, i'd just been playing guitar without singing much during practices. so we practice some with the friend and its all going well and then a week before the gig he quits because he wants to hang out with his wife more he says...so i had to scramble just to put together the set we played. otherwise we would have been able to put together a much better set. we wanted to take our name off the bill but we'd already said we'd play and we didn't want to pull out with less than a week and possibly get a bad rep. and yeah, i'm definitely not playing with light again. the heavy band i'll play with because they were all really cool and professional. in fact, they have a string of out of state shows in few months that they said they would let us share with them if we get our lineup stabilized. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kingnome Posted January 6, 2003 Members Share Posted January 6, 2003 But did you get LAID ?? I remember those nights......No-win situations....How did you even get a ten-minute soundcheck? We never did. Sounds like you've got enough common sense to stay focused on your goals, anyway. I sure don't miss those local band pissing contests, especially when somebody's bankrolled by a wanna-be has-been parent. It's worse than junior-league soccer !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members incubass Posted January 6, 2003 Author Members Share Posted January 6, 2003 nope, didn't get laid, but i wouldn't have tried had the opportunity presented itself anyways. As for the soundcheck, basically i think the headlining band said something to the sound guy b/c i didn't think we'd get a soundcheck either but he said aight, let's run through the sound...but it was the kind of s.c. where you're just trying get your stuff into the system, not much eqing or mixing going on...yeah, i'd say i'm pretty grounded and composed. i've been talking to people who were at the show the past couple of days and i've heard some really good things so that's encouraging. LOL about the junior soccer thing, i agree wholeheartedly!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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