Down and Dirty With The Shades
It’s been a few days since my last post and quite a lot has happened. The most annoying being the snow that’s brought the UK to a stand still and essentially closed London’s borders. Not the greatest situation when I’m on the other side of the country and want to get back but that’s for another post.
Todays post is about my gig with the Shades over the weekend. I have to say, they’re never boring.
It was a long 3 hour journey from London and I arrived at the post code I was given in Staffordshire at 5pm when I started my usual hunt for the venue. I tried to save time by pulling up to ask for directions. Unfortunately it turns out that the guy I pulled up to was the guitar dep for my gig and he was lost as well along with Neil (sax) who was asking directions from someone else. I turns out that the address we had was to the organizers house and not the venue… Useful.
We were told that sat-nav wouldn’t take us where we needed to go so we had to follow her directions the old fashioned way. We ended up driving around a square mile of this village for 45 minutes and gradually bumped into other lost band members on the road adding to our lost convoy of a motorbike 3 cars and a big van full of 5 band members, PA and lighting rig.
But this is when the fun really started. We finally narrowed down where the venue was (by traveling up and down every road in the village) and ended up on a dirt track through a wood and of course it was pitch black by now.
At this part in the story we are all tired, frustrated and late to set up so what’s the worst thing that could happen? That’s right, the van got stuck. In the mud. By a river
As random chance would have it, a lone stranger was walking down this abandoned track and told us that he had a JCB. I still can’t believe our luck. 10 minutes later he pulled Chris and half the band out of the mud and we were back to being lost.
Eventually we arrived at the venue which was, as it turns out at the end of the mud track, we could now start to set up. It was a pretty standard gig; tuxedo’s, ball dresses, champagne etc.
Unfortunately the place was filled with the kind of upper class offspring who are so inbred that it’s a good job Mummy and Daddy can pay for their entire existence. I only say this as I was treated to the company of some of these girls as they snuck round the back to slum it with the band. I want to say they talked to us but it’s more accurate to say they talked at us.
On the plus side they were really into the music and when it came to Chris shouting; “do you want to hear a trumpet solo”, I got a chorus of “yeah!” – which was cool. But ideally not the best time to have my wireless mic cut out on me (I’ll be making a future post on the wireless mic). To say that particular solo was good wouldn’t be accurate, to say it was loud to make up for the dead mic would be much more accurate.
Even though we had a few disasters that evening I think we all had a good time. The audience loved us and it was nice to see all the guys from the Shades since being back from Abu Dhabi.