apple induced epilepsy

The first gig of the year and we're back at Stinky's again.  A bit of an ordeal to get through after a busy year and before the lull that is always the begining of January.

 

We'd decided to make things easier for ourselves and split the day into shifts.  I was the first out of bed and arrived (sans hangover this year) for noon to set up.  As they were only opening then it was a bit quieter to begin with than the year before. 

After the rush of setting up, it was only really starting to get a few people in by the time Andy turned up to handover.  We managed a fairly seamless crossover and I was out of there by 6pm.  Which meant that the entire evening felt far later that it should have done....

I'd helped Ian set up earlier in the day as he was playing in a marquee over looking a lake whilst lots of people enjoyed a three course meal and a live singer - it's amazingly wonderful and bizarre some of the situations you find yourself in :)

Andy and I were covering this one and got there nice and early.  Found a nice dark corner to set up in and ran a feed out to the two 50" plasma screens that were sat either side of the DJ booth.  Then came the not so easy task of running a feed to their installed screens in the room.  This was up a wall, round a corner, behind the bar, through a hole, behind a door and then on a shelf.  It came to four lengths of cable and more connectors than the signal could take and after much faffing around to make sure all the connections were sound we had to give up on it and resort to the backup plan of a pre-recorded disk with logos for those screens.  Shame as it meant that we were only live on two of the ones in the room.

I have to say I'm quite glad they weren't my screens as they took a fair amount of punishment throughout the night, so much so that one of them went down and refused to be resurected.  There were also a few technical problems with the screens which were installed in the room - they were being run on some sort of digital signage software to display student tv as their normal display.  This kept crashing and then rebooting which gave a nice ten minute cycle of blue screen, windows logo and desktop before landing on a nice big splash page that announced that 1 in 10 students has chlamydia.  In very big letters.  Right behind the DJ's head.  Which made me laugh.  Although I guess there's no better place for such a warning than at a drunken new years party at a student union.

The midnight countdown went without a hitch and we had a live clock up for the big countdown with pre-recorded fireworks and a welcome to 2009 message for the right moment.  Andy and I celebrated in style with a can of stella and a ham sandwich!

Rock and Roll!

It's been a busy year - 42 gigs in total, trips all over the country and further, more video production going on in the background than ever before and lots of fun adventures, bizarre situations and fun memories :)

We'd split the duties on what turned out to be a marathon 16 hour event and after doing a lightning round of boxing day family visiting I arrived to offer Andy some relief around 7.30.  A fairly painless switchover left me in charge.

I'm always amazed at how many people want to go and spend boxing day in a dingy nightclub, but the place was packed and still going at 4am when I managed to get out.

After having missed Saturday's Slimes outing due to just being so horribly tired from a hectic work schedule I decided to make this the last Modulate gig I do for the forseeable. It's been a blast though :)

Although it has to be said - this one was something of a trial. Rapidly encroaching flu, four lots of airport security in 12 hours and very little sleep all combined to make for a fairly gruelling ordeal. I managed to get through the set without being sick, passing out, or collapsing in a coughing fit - benylin be praised.

Antwerp is a nice place though - even if it was dark for all of the short time I was there. Quite tempted to go back at some point.

The gig went well - nice big screen that was already in place - no problems with the cabling and the set went well. Seemed to be quite a big crowd as well. Pity I didn't feel upto taking advantage of the selection of Belgian beers in the rider though.

It has to be said I was more than a little tired before this one after a fairly hectic week.

Set up was fairly straight forward and a conveniently painted white wall made the screen I'd brought with me slightly redundant and we got a nice big image right across the back of the stage.

Up first was Esa, the monitors weren't that cracking to say the least and it was a bit of a battle keeping up with where we were some of the time.

Modulate next and the monitors weren't much better, but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

Didn't hang around after the gig for any longer than it took to pack my gear after the week that I'd had I was just too tired

After the debacle of last week’s lack of ladders I’d made a few requests for this week – I was fairly gratified to find about 15 of them stacked neatly behind the back of the stage when we got there.  Made setting up, far less of a headache.

So much so that after getting the screens up and the cameras in place and everything neatly wired in and gaffa taped down, Andy and I had a spare 15 minutes to stand back and enjoy a beer together.  Which was jolly pleasant.

For some reason the promoters had decided that the end of November was the perfect time of year to have a pyjama party and that an old warehouse in a less than reputable area of Leeds was the ideal place to hold such an event.  Despite the sub freezing temperatures a good proportion of the audience obliged by appearing in the designated attire.  And little else.

Not quite as hectic as last week, but it was still sold out and very, very busy throughout.

My high point came towards the end of the night; attempting to distinguish which was the power unit to my remote camera on stage and accidentally pulling out the power for one of the cd decks.  Note to self – label power units.

Was more than grateful when we got outside to the waiting car and off into the night…or very early morning depending on how you look at it.
 

That was a fun night....

We got there with two hours to rig everything as we thought we'd better leave plenty of time to set up both rooms.  Damn good job we did as the ladders had gone missing - when you're trying to hang projectors in a warehouse with 20' high ceilings that's a bit of an issue.  After much scratching of heads and looking at options we managed to get something set up which looked pretty good, even if things were a little low down.

The night got off to a good start and was going pretty well to begin with.  Things started to get messy around 1am as the sell out crowd started to get a bit boistrous (High Contrast, Scratch Perverts and Groove Rider - so who can blame them really).  With the only security in sight resolutely stood at the back of the room intent on his mobile I ended up trying to play crowd control as people tried to enter the stage and more importantly the area where I had my equipment set up.  The rail we had the projectors mounted on wasn't looking too happy by this point either.  Between us we managed to keep content up, equipment safe and people off the stage for the main rush until around 4.  There was also some raining sweat at some point - not a nice occurance at the best of time; particularly un-welcome when you're using expensive equipment.  At this point the circuit powering the projectors in the second room went (I'm guessing spilled drink somewhere or knocked plug) and we had to kill the second room.  Got packed up and moved through to the first room which had a bit more space until the place shut at 5.

We loaded the gear out as the snow drifted down and managed to get the heck out of dodge.

Really a quite stressful night - and we're back there again next week...

The whole team were on hand for this one as we had a rather large van full of kit. Four 6x8ft screens and their associated projectors, two mixers, three computers and two live video feeds; took us about two hours to install it all, but it did look rather good if I do say so myself.

Annie Mac was good fun and Atrak played a pretty interesting set. Tear down was a fairly quick hour, but I've a feeling that the cables weren't quite as neat when we finished as when we started.

There would have been pictures, but the batteries on my camera died and then then the spares died...which was annoying.

Ian and I

Ian and I

Andy and I

Another gig, another round of youngsters getting enthusiastically drunk (they were born in 1990 this year!).  Always a pleasure to play at Rock City as the crew are well organised, friendly and know what they're doing.

We got both rooms set up with about an hour to spare.

The music was a bit of an odd mix in the main room.  The Audio Bully's sounded empty, I didn't really get Reverand and the Makers (maybe I'm too old) and Reggie Yates complaining about the technical setup on stage when all he was going to do was play a few random crowd pleasers back to back interspersed with inane banter seemed a little un-necessary.

Still, we were out within five minutes of the night finishing, which makes for a pleasant change and ensured that I was tucked up in bed at a relatively early 4am on a school night.

We were booked to play in the restaurant of a hotel - which was novel.  They'd decided that they'd like to do something a bit different with their bar and eatery area and try and get a few more people in staying a little longer (and inevitably buying a few more drinks).

 

So in came a set of decks, a few DJ's...and us.

Quite pleased with the setup, due to the surroundings we made sure everything was nice and neat, no trailing cables, desk all neat and tidy.  The screens looked nice, set at odd angles filling sections of the wall.

The music wasn't quite the 'chilled out and funky' that we'd been told, getting a lot more upbeat as the night went on.  So much so that Ian went on guard duty on the gear to stop it being knocked over at one point.

Promoters (and no offence to anyone reading this) are often not the most organised bunch of people in my experience, so I was somewhat confused when I got an email on Monday asking for me to send Thursday's invoice in advance.  A quick phonecall to establish what exactly was happening on Thursday revealed that our presence was desired, the promoter had just forgotten to actually ask us.

 

Fortunately we were able to cover it.

Again, the screens were in place, which is always pleasant.  The Valve Soundsystem was in, due to past experience we bolted everything down, on top of foamand made sure we were set up well away from the speakers. 

The place was heaving with freshers, who all seemed to enjoy themselves.  And rightfully so - Andy C did a storming set (as ever) and I actually really enjoyed myself.

I didn't particularly enjoy getting home at 4.30 on a school night - but thems the breaks...

Andy played this one with me - a rather quiet affair due to another club re-opening in town. We'd got a feed out to all the little 15" tv's in the venue as well as the 6' screen this time, everyone still seemed to be in a fairly good mood after the back2space event.

I've not actually seen daylight for a while now...

Shot by me, edited by Ian

This was a fairly large event, and one of the few times that we got to play on our home turf.  The event was being held at the student village on the outskirts of Huddersfield, for those of you in the know, this used to be the a psychiatric hospital.  The event was one outdoor stage that was running from 2pm - 11pm and 7 indoor rooms running until 6am.

We were on site at about noon to rig the outdoor stage with a couple of 4'x6' screens, and to set up one in the main indoor rooms.  Then the afternoon was spent filming and getting some interviews for a video that'll be put together later. 

The real rush came around 7.30 when it started to get dark, we powered up the projectors and started playing along.  The place was pretty busy and there was a good atmosphere going.  They had a couple of live acts on, which we made sure we got plenty of footage of and then kept things going until 11.

As soon as the outdoor stage shut, Andy and Ian were inside to play there whilst we de-rigged outside and then did more filming.  Ian was showing mixed up footage inside of what we'd shot outside during the day by the time I got up there at about midnight.

It was a bit of a long day, and by the time we got everything packed up and out of there at around 6am I think we were all more than a little tired.