The Negotiators played the Cumberland, at Glanville, earlier today. We played from 3.30 to 7.30 pm. We had four days notice for the show. We had little opportunity for publicity. The audience was pretty good never-the-less. It was Barry's first show with us as bass player. Chris is still playing drums with us. Stage layout was the new improved version. We used the 'new' PA and all the equipment for the first time and, also for the first time, it was up to Steve and me to hook up and operate the PA. Surprisingly, it all worked. It was a good fun gig.
We got called up on Wednesday to see if we could play Sunday. We had hoped to have the weekend off, after a busy month. But, when someone wants you to play, what can you say? A couple phone calls, and we were all on board. That night, get the add up on this blog and take a copy of the poster down to Steve so he could photocopy it and get copies of it down the pub itself. That night, enter us onto a couple of gig guides on the web. And that was the limit of our publicity.
We had around one and half dozen people when we started, up to 3 dozen at peak in third set, and around thirty at the end. Publican was happy. Around half a dozen were loyal fans - lovely to see them again. The rest were locals. Of these, I recognised around half of them from previous shows, the remainder were of a younger group and stayed right through. We didn't lose very many through the day, quite a few seemed to have initially 'planned' to stay for a beer, and ended up staying for three sets. Cool.
Barry had only played with us for one rehersal. Steve had jammed with him for about five hours this week. He was game to get up though, and thus this was the gig Barry was blooded on bass with The Negotiators. It worked well, in the songs where he was confident, his bass certainly provided a heartbeat and harmonic skeleton to the piece. In the songs where he wasn't so sure of himself, he didn't crash them and the audience didn't seem to mind. So, all is good on this front. And best of all, he was having a great time and enjoyed it immensely. That is a key requirement for playing with The Negotiators.
Chris seems to have grown into his role behind the drum kit, there's quite a lot of binding of the music together. And he did it without fold back tonight. Considering how helpful fold back is to hearing, it will be interesting to see how it flows when so provided.
Barry was stage left rear, Chris centre rear, Mark left front, Nancy centre front, Steve stage right. The keyboard was nearly ninety degrees to stage right, at the front. The mixer was on table along the wall between keyboard and his amps at stage right rear.
We had the amp and gear set up within an hour, and even a sound check left us 15 min to play. No feed back through the night, and the mix was relatively even. I know that we were performing well within the mixer's limits, and should be able to get a fair bit more 'sparkle' out of it with practice. Terry, who was there around the last hour, reckoned we should put up the midrange for Nancy a bit. I think we should unmuddy Steve's guitar just a shade on several songs, it has to play a bit more open or risk muddying our basically clear style. One can use distortion in a 'clean' manner. I busted a shitload of strings, can't wait to get a new guitar in a few weeks...
She was a good gig though. Brought the audience along with us musically from the poppy first set though the rocky third, and into the anthemic final set. Sound was a bit thin at times, that will pick up with more flying hours in current lineup. That means, rehersals. But, that's fun. And I think we need to get the originals happening again, there are actually people who have stopped coming to see us because we never seem to play many or any of them at present.
There's some food for thought.
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