1st June -2007 - YCBOB gig

As I suspected last night getting up at 8:30AM was a bit rough however we survived and with caffine pumped into us we soon where firing on all cylinders. We got to the venue, Gareths local church, the name of which is "The Church of the Good Sheapherd" or somthing similar if. Now, from the name I'm sure your thinking what I thought when he told me it. Not really a name that you would expect to see on the flyer for a rock gig...however supprisingly the hall which the gig was in was a decent venue.

We unloaded the van, which was literally 2.5T of gear including two stacks of W8, EQ and FOH racks, A&H GL2800 desk, 8 monitor wedges (F12's and Behringer wedges), Amprack, Monitor Amp rack, trunks of cable (LX, NL8, NL4, XLR, etc etc), mic's, mic stands etc.

After a 15min get in we had very little to do other than set up the FOH mix position as we had to wait for the LX guys to turn up with truss, lanterns, dimmers and cable to rig the LX. Rob set up the FOH and soon the LX guys showed up. The LX rig consisted of two 8m spans of truss, one hung from the roof girders with slings at the font of the stage with the second length on two windups at the back of the stage with the lamps totalling 12 PAR64's, 10 PAR56's, 4x Martin MX-1's and 4x LED PARs. Once all of the rigging for the LX was finished the W8 rig and cabling started to get laid in with mic leads going in once the bands arrived and got thier drum kit and amps on stage.

The gig started at 7PM and consisted of three acts. The first two were not the best that I have seen in the world if I'm being honest but still, they give it a good shot. The third was an accoustic act which made a nice difference from the first two very "noisy" bands which I enjoyed. The final band were "The Bench". They were very good. I enjoyed thier set alot! During the evening Rob was the main engineer and mixed alot of the gig including all of the headliners, while I engineered for some of the previous acts with another guy that lived in Aylesbury who was a really nice guy - unfortunetly my memory is rubbish and I can't remeber his name! Anyway, the gig went well although the crowd turn out wasn't good really, but I think that is down to what was apparently poor advertising. The Bench and the Accoustic act look really good...and to say the LX rig was under powered and the LX-op was a complete noob the lighting looked alright too.

Once the gig was over the derig started, which took an hour. The LX guys returned and got thier kit out, forgetting thier Strand 200 desk, and the Audio was just placed ready to go the next morning as we couldn't be bothered to load the van. Alot of people helped out including Frank and Paul from the church as well as the other engineer and a guy that did alot of work on the stage - again I really need to learn some technique or somthing about remembering peoples name - I really hate that I forget and just think that it appears quite rude!

Anyway we grabbed some food on the way back, ate at Gareths, dropped off the LX-op and then went back to his where we consumed a few beverages of the alcoholic variety. Gareth got off to bed at about 1:30AM and Rob and myself continued to chat about things until about 4AM at which point we decided it might be an idea to go and get some kip!!

Over all the gig was good. There were some nice people working on it - a really good team effort. The sound was good - specially for the last band - the lighting was good the only shame was the turn out for it! The venue had an apparent capacity of 200, although I believe that you could get more in there for a standing event, but when I counted the room only had about 45 people excluding crew and the artists in the room! Shame really!

Still all really good fun! Oh and I liked the way that in an after show meeting of the crew, bands and other adults and some audience, that Gareth bigged up Rob and I...and mentioned about the 4AM arrival - made us sound even more pro than the stacks and stacks of kit!