Blackdiamond Hotel - 19 Feb 2006

The Negotiators played again at the Blackdiamond Hotel in Port Adelaide this afternoon. I've called it Buff's Bar for earlier gigs, but I don't know if that's still the case 'cause I don't think Buff is there anymore. I gather there are other people involved in the running of the pub, as it was business as usual today.

We are still soxless, not sure how long he's out of action for as I haven't seen him recently. Chris, meanwhile, is doing mighty fine in Sox's stead. Today I could hear and feel him beginning to spread his wings as he gains familiarity with us and our music, and confidence in playing along with it. Buff's has a wooden floor, covered in vinyl, and is a long chamber of a room. Chris was really laying deep into his floor tom, which was setting up some dead zones for Terry's base. They fixed that in the third break.

We played four sets, and a total of 55 songs. Nancy tells me that 23 of them are songs we didn't play last week. So we're turning over about half a show from week to week. That's good. We played 45 - 50 min sets, had two ten minute and one 15 minute break. The encore was four songs, took us to 7.10 pm. We started at 3 pm. Nice day's work, was all packed up and ready to go at 7.50 pm. Having no lights to pack up was cool.

Numbers were good, I think pub was happy. 2 dozen at start of first set and end of last, 3 dozen through the middle sets. Steve's crowd numbered about a dozen, there were another dozen that we either knew or recognised, and the third dozen were drawn in from the street. Roughly. Which is a nice mix, would have been a bit crowded for a Sunday arvo if there had been too many more.

Had 'Betsy', a bit of a port adelaide character, dancing from first song to last. Mind blowing that someone could do that, and be able to pass through the fatigue and still be smiling at the end of it. At 58! Puts most younger people to shame in terms of Stamina...

First set was a bit strained to my ear, but others enjoyed. Second and third sets rocked along, with constant influx of technical problems. The worst of which was a major feedback problem, which shows how the acoustics of a place can change between shows for no obvious reason as we haven't had that problem here before.

Last set was a ripper. Might have been 'dumb things' as a starting song, but it certainly kicked off to a great start, and then drifted through high energy until stumps. Nice to see Nat turn up for the fourth set.