Bush's Bar 19 Nov '05

Last night The Negotiators played at Bush’s Bar from 7-11 pm. Bush’s Bar has only recently opened up in the site of one of Port Adelaide’s landmarks, Black Diamond Corner. It is a vast rambling ornate two story edifice, mainly run down, of which the present bar is only a small part of the structure. The publican is working on renevating the rest. The locals are right behind him. Good luck to them.

We played at the conclusion of the Port Adelaide Christmas Parade. Maybe ten thousand people were lining the streets that the parade passed down, and there would have been close to a hundred different community groups which each put their own float or marching group together. Brilliant. They passed by right out front of the pub so we got a great view of Santa.

Again, we set up at floor level in a corner in the front bar. Used less space than the last couple of shows, but it was much cleaner on stage (not having cables etc crowding the stage space). We must be getting better. Sound check before 6 pm. Had Steve and Sox in the back row, with my amp under the keyboard (and thus accessable to me in front of it). I, at least, could hear everyone (including myself!).

We had between 50 and 60 people in there when we started, between 40 and 50 for second and third sets. Maybe 30 left when we stopped playing after a long fourth set and encores. On top of this, perhaps a dozen kids aging from 1 – 15, some of them to the end. The kids loved it, often had three or four dancing away. Particularly our youngest grandson kicking on was cool to watch. The teenagers all got up at some stage to dance together.

Opened the first set with “Stuck in the Middle” for a change, aim being to get straight into lively music and warm everyone up at the same time. Worked fine, drew quite a few in as they were leaving the official festivities down the road. This seemed to be the way of it, we would only have known around a dozen of the audience and the rest were drawn in. I noticed that there were quite a few who stuck their heads in, but had to go because of their kids. Also saw several people dancing on the footpath outside on several occasions, either waiting for a bus at the bus stop or walking past. Haven’t seen that since we played ‘The Federal’ a couple summers ago.

Four notable members of the audience for the first set were some clowns that came in. They were having a ball. Quite surreal to see clowns rock’n’rolling to ‘Waterloo’, even stranger to see them headbanging to ‘Smoke on the Water’. We finished the set with ‘Ring of Fire’, one of our better harmonised performances of it this year.

As if four clowns weren’t enough, we had ‘Tweety Bird’ and ‘Slyvester’ come in for the second and third sets. The kids loved Sylvester in particular, especially as he stalked and played with them in front of stage. ‘Tweety Bird’ got up on stage with Nancy during ‘Eagle Rock’. Weird.

Sound was pretty good throughout. No need for drum mikes in this venue (narrow, high, deep room with pillars and vinyl flooring). I noticed Terry adjusting Steve’s amp in the final break. Added sparkle to his guitar in the last set, but the volume was a touch too loud in my opinion. Although we played several pieces a bit quick, it was only marginal. Some of the music got a bit muddy in the final set, not sure why. It was disjointed parts, even though we were all coming down on the same beat notes. Will have to work out why.

All in all, again a good gig. Better performance than last week, rolled from one song to the next without long breaks. Instrument changes very smooth, even me picking up Steve’s spare guitar when I broke a string (haven’t done that for ages – will have to get clear of D’ario strings). So we’ve pulled off three weeks in a row of good gigs. We know we can do it with the covers. Next challenge, bring in the originals.

By the way, we played two encores. Well done.

Next Saturday we are off to a studio recording a demo disk of covers, hopefully to help get us more work. Will fill you in on the joys of recording once it has happened.