Dave's Gig Guide
National Space Centre, November 2003.
We laughingly referred to these two gigs as our 2003 mini tour and yet it was just another support slot, this time for Ian Boddy. Alas, it was also a real disaster.
As a band, we were fairly tight and focussed because we'd played at the CRS gig less than a month previously. However, something in the sound system screwed us badly - it sounded like a compressor between us and the main desk at the time though, later on, I found out that it was because the useless monkey on the sound desk had our mixer plugged into a -10db channel instead of a +4db channel. This mistake isn't even worthy of a third grade trainee.
We played the same set as the CRS gig a month earlier but, by now, I was sick of it. I hope I never, ever have to play "Gazing at the Edge of Forever" again. And "Question of Time" - I hate that with a passion.
After our set, I stormed up to the mixer desk and lost my temper with the sound guy big time. He promptly stormed off and refused to man the desk for Ian Boddy's set. I quickly realised that I'd made a real dick head of myself and apologised profusely to everyone concerned. The sound guy went back to his desk, still sulking but at least Ian was able to perform. Dave Law of Synth Music Direct still hasn't forgiven me. Consequently, I can't see us being asked to perform at a SMD or MusicZeit concert any time soon.
Dave and Tanya had already left by the time Ian had finished his set and so I was left to pack up more or less on my own, which included moving all of my racks, keyboard cases and wiring back to the car. It was also raining. To make matters worse, I was having some nasty chest pains, which hurt like a bastard and were probably attributable to a mix of nerves, stress and adrenalin, so much so that I convinced myself (and Jules) that I was having a heart attack. I'd already seen a doctor about chest pains in the weeks prior to the event and so I was pretty scared. So, rather than drive straight home, Jules and I spent 40 minutes driving around Leicester looking for an Accident and Emergency Department with an ECG machine. Gradually, the pains eased. It wasn't a heart attack and was just stress-related, thank mercy.
Later on, we found another potential cause of the sound problems - the stereo feeds from our mixer to the main desk has been cut through. I don't know how you do this accidentally because the cut was sharp and well defined, like it had been done with something like a Stanley knife. Our conclusion was that it had been done deliberately. One good thing was that the event had been videoed as part of SMD's "Virtual Ticket" scheme so I thought that we might be able to see the culprit. Sadly, the video footage didn't show anything incriminating but a couple of people have pointed fingers and named names. Be warned.
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