Club 168 Gig - 1 June 2007

The Negotiators played at Club 168 in Port Adelaide last night. It was a latish starting gig, we kicked off at 10:15 pm. Played though till just after 2:30 am, four sets and none of the breaks over 20 min. Took about an hour to set up, perhaps 35 min to pack up. We didn't need to bring our lights, the venue had its own setup (though Nancy got to use her new battery powered lyric light).A good show to blow off the cobwebs as its been over eight months since we last performed together.

Club 168 was a pretty cool place to play. We got the gig, apparently, because another band had cancelled. They put on bands Fridays and Saturdays, with apparently quite decent crowds on the later. We played on a Friday night, with about a dozen in audience at both beginning and end and a peak of maybe twenty sometime during the third set. This was just enough that the large and spacious poolhall/bar/venue, on 1st floor above old shopping mall entrance on St Vincent Street just down from Blackdiamond Corner, didn't seem on the barren side of empty.

I thought it was really cool that there was a bunch of folk there from the Cumberland Hotel (Glanville) - click here for report from our last gig there. One of them said that they'd not noiced us in gig-guides etc for 9 months. Nice to be noticed (that being the time elapsed since we were last in the gig guides. Genuine fans?

The stairs of Club 168 were neither too steep nor too narrow, the room was big but not echoey, and there was a two layer stage (drum platform slightly elevated) big enough to comfortably accomodate us. Their lighting was neatly done, with some quite trippy sequencing around the dancefloor and stage but calm and subdued light through remainder of venue. A comfortable place.

Sharon was there for the first three sets, kept an ear to our sound and made a few minor adjustments to clarify it for us. Without her feed back we wouldn't have known how we sounded at the far end of a big room (which can be quite scary and sometimes embarassing). Most valuable thing from my point which she did was suggest a few changes to the EQ on Barry's Bass Amp. Pulling down the treble and pumping up the bass in the big space all of a sudden allowed me to hear Steve a lot more clearly for the remainder of the gig, and added a definite bottom end to our music. Thanks Sharon.

It's a bit hard for me to judge how we went as a band, I had a couple real fuckups myself so they tend to dominate my consciousness of the evening. On the other hand, for the rest of the show I held my own quite well. I locked onto Chris's drums as my reference point for most of the night, and relied on Barry to give me hope when I realised a couple times that I'd really messed up a chord sequence.

Chris was cruising really well on the drums. He wasn't laying in as hard in the first set as he was later - which was really good 'cause it then cut through the on-stage noise (which sometimes bears little resemblance to what is happening acoustically in front of the stage). Having spent a bit of time focusing on the drums recently at practice and now at the gig, my appreciation for Chris's style as a muso is continuing to deepen. There's a lot of subtle variation in what he does that allows the listener to 'read him' without too much effort, without it descending into ear candy. And he holds a pretty steady tempo without seeming effort.

Steve and Nancy did well as the lead duo. Steve's leads continue to progress along the rock idiomatic line he has been pursuing over the past year. I also think that his melodic tendencies are again making themselves heard - which is his own stylistic infusion into the leads breaks he manufactures. Is good, because there is a balance between the two aspects of his leads now. As he continues to work with modal theory in his personal practice, I expect this will only continue to develop.

Nancy pumped it out as always. She still has a bandaged hand from last week's electrocution (click here for the story) but, with the exception of the addition of her new battery powered stage light and an infusion of electricity jokes, there seems to be no major effects upon her performance. My favorite electricity repartee from the night was when Nancy introduced 'Rock n Roll is King' as being originally and appropriately by The Electic Light Orcherastra, to which I added that it was just as well she's a good conductor!

The most noticeable addition Nancy has made to her performance spectrum has been a willingness for vocal ad-lib as part of the improvisational mix in the extended instrumental rock hypnotic moments which arose several times through the night.

And I guess it's those moments, which sweep away your sense of hear and now and just drop you in the sonic tides of hard rock, that make this game worth all the hard work. And there were several of them in last night's show. Which says to me that if we can get back into a steady groove of rehearsal and gigging we will get a chance to explore yet another outreach of musical experience. Yay!

We play at what I hear is a private show towards the end of this month down in Pennington. I'll probably post before then with something about that.

The Negotiators Duo (Steve, Nancy and a midi machine) play at Burra this coming Friday (8 June). They always have a good show there.

PS We taped the show with a walkman. Upon listening to the recording several thoughts come to mind which I have posted here.