We’ve got a new Zoom H2 recorder (well, actually a refurbished one off Ebay).
It had its first try-out at last Saturday’s gig.
We thought we would share a couple of tunes via the blog.
But first a health warning.
We simply stuck the recorder on a mic stand in the middle of the stage area.
The sound the band hears on stage has very little relation to what the audience hears out front.
This is because the horns and vocals are being projected by the PA. On stage we have monitors for these, but the sound can’t be too loud or we would get feedback. That’s a particular problem with the vocals. Not only was Veronica the furthest from the recorder, but the horns, who are naturally louder anyway, were much closer.
No bass, drums or guitar go through the PA so they have to be loud on stage so that they project with the PA into the audience. The recorder was also close to the drums and bass.
And of course any commercial recording is carefully mixed before issuing. You can’t do that when you just stick a microphone up in the middle of a band.
So if you’re prepared to use lots of imagination to imagine what the sound was like on the dance floor, here’s Man in the Street. This is one of the 60s ska original instrumentals we play, so the very quiet vocals are not a problem here.
Next up is our version of Kylie’s Can’t get you out of my Head – this is one of our bonkers covers.
We played the last of our summer wedding gigs yesterday somewhere between Stoke Poges and where the M40 leaves the M25. Once again we were joined by Joe on drums who was as tight as usual.
Sri Lankan food
The venue was a marquee. Our PA is fine for such events, though wisely a temporary dance floor had been installed as the ground was a bit uneven, and people prefer to dance on something smooth and solid.
But this is a gig we will remember for the food. The bride is Sri Lankan in origin, and so was the food.
Here’s the band tucking in.
tucking in before we played
Steve certainly enjoyed it.
Thumbs up from Steve
It got too dark to take any further pictures after this (and we had some music to play), though it would have been good to get some shots of the packed dance floor.
But once again we proved that ska can cross every boundary to get people dancing.
“The band were great, can you thank them all very much please. Hope they enjoyed it too”
We certainly did Charlie.
Thanks for booking us.
The answer is that I’m not sure as my watch stopped half-way through the set.
As it’s a bettery operated watch that normally stops about once a year this could not be anticipated.
But my guess is that we were just a bit over.
What I do know is that it was a fabulous gig, where we got three encores.
There was a heaving floor of dancers the whole time we were playing, and a good part of that was that we did get through the songs more quickly than we normally do. Slightly fewer solos and a slicker transition between songs mean that we really kept the energy levels up.
I reckon the final tally was 17 songs in 75 minutes. That’s still a record for us.
We’re playing the Last Days of Decadence in Shoreditch tomorrow (that’s Saturday July 24th).
You can read about the gig – complete with a spectacularly out of date photo – here.
I’m not sure about the Oi! reference either. We don’t exactly do skinhead punk.
We’re due to play for an hour, so have set ourselves the challenge of fitting 15 songs in. Normally we play about 12 songs in an hour, but by having slightly shorter solos and moving slickly from one tune to the next, we will be trying for 15.
Come along with stopwatches and counters to find out how we do.
We had huge fun at the weekend playing a gig in a barn on a farm outside Reading.
This was no pretend theme-park kind of barn, but a real one with chickens and bales of straw.
The best thing was that we were able to get a great sound. Playing in the open air – or a marquee – can sometimes mean the sound tends to disappear into thin air, while playing a boxy space usually means you get feedback and strange sounds in the bass.
A barn turns out to be a happy medium. There’s enough structure to keep the sound from blowing away, yet we had no feedback or boxy sound issues.
That all worked to make a great two sets gig.
We had a special guest, Joe the Drummer, on drums who provided his usual rock solid groove.
And we at last got the chance to play our new ska’d up version of the Dr Who theme.
So thanks to Charlie for laying on a great gig – and for feeding us so well (something that doesn’t always happen!)
We are gearing up for a function gig this weekend near Reading.
It’s a private party so no more details in advance, though I’m sure we’ll do a report here.
But it’s now only a couple of weeks until our next public gig in London.
It’s Saturday July 24 at the Last Days of Decadence, 145 Shoreditch High Street, London, E1 6JE.
Here’s the Facebook invite – and here’s the venue website
We are all just back from a fabulous function gig in the middle of some woods on the Hampshire/Dorset border.
As it was half-way between two villages – one in Dorset and the other in Hampshire we are not exactly sure in which county we actually played the gig.
This was an elaborate affair. It lasted all-night, and the logistics of putting a big event in a clearing genuinely in the middle of some woods accessible only by farm track were colossal.
And did I say it was fancy dress – with a Regency theme. So most of the men were in huge wigs (the audience – not the band.)
Mark ready to play
We got to play one long set starting about 1:15 in the morning in a huge marquee – with an extremely professional sound company doing the PA. It’s not that often we get our own monitor engineer and individual monitor mixes for each band member. Quite often we don’t have any engineers at all.
I’m not sure that ska is very Regency, but that did not stop the audience dancing continuously. We have no idea where they got the energy.
We were looked after very well too – and came off stage to a cooked breakfast at 3am.
our post gig breakfast
And then after a few hours sleep at the village pub, we got up for another fry-up before a somewhat weary return to London.
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