Godiva AfterShow Party @The Dog & Trumpet

blitzsounds wrote:What happened?

Interesting that you should ask that question - you may wanna have a word with Tom at D&T about the PA...

John - a big old +1 for your work on the night!

I went home and cried.

Not really, but I pissed Em off on Sunday, cause of my consant moodiness.

Full disclosure please

Thanks for that Martin. It was a pleasure to meet you at last and I really enjoyed The Red List immensely.

I thought the bands were all really good and from that point of view it wasn't all a dead loss.

I don't know what the fook the story is with the PA - I'm not an engineer - but I do know enough to say it was a mess [/understatement] - if Tom hadn't been available to just drop in we wouldn't have had a gig at all.

Dan - shit happens mate. Over 10 years, I've lost count of the amount of times I've gone home and thought "what WAS the point". Gigs I've promoted the Bejeezus out of have sometimes ended up empty and others I haven't put any effort into have, strangley, been rammed. You tried and it didn't quite work out as planned. So what? Onward and upward as they say.

sorry to hear it didn't go as planned

we played to an empty D&T a month or so ago, the place obviously can't shift the stigma

fair play to the organisers for having a go though

.

But was cool being able to meet some CovMusic Scene 'identities' and see them in the flesh.

We've had no problems with the FOH system each time weekend (apart from one i did where someone had tried to play football with the desk powersupply - nothing on onspot service couldn't fix!) The monitor rig is less than desirable though that's why we put one of ours in at our gig. Also the desk needs a bit of tlc, again we put our own in for our gig.

Re-branding required at The Dog, even then it might not help.

I've heard twitters of Steve re-naming the place. He's talked of it for a while. The name is synonomous with underage drinkers even though that's been dealt with. Back in the day we always used to frequent it get our pre 18 drinks in!

blitzsounds wrote:even though that's been dealt with

No it hasn't.

blitzsounds wrote:We've had no problems with the FOH system each time weekend (apart from one i did where someone had tried to play football with the desk powersupply - nothing on onspot service couldn't fix!) The monitor rig is less than desirable though that's why we put one of ours in at our gig. Also the desk needs a bit of tlc, again we put our own in for our gig.

I think you've said it there. Desk is dodgy and overall the kit has really seen better days. The wiring in there is a mess and like you said, the whole thing just lacks TLC. Personally I'd get rid and do a fixed install with a more suitable, updated system for a small venue of that size. There's a lot of things I could do there, moving away from sound for a moment. Changing the name isn't a bad idea but on its own wouldn't make much difference.

I reckon I could make that place work in 12 months tops - I see a lot of potential there but it wouldn't be easy. Good job I don't do that sort of stuff anymore though - the wife would kill me if I even thought about it!

And yes, it was great to meet you too Jigster - really enjoyed your set too - some very nice influences in there - was a familiar yet original feeling. Good stuff.

John cheers - only sorry that for about an hour you were the most stressed looking guy in there - until Dan walked in that is!

You might fancy The Clash celebration of London Calling we're doing at Kasbah end of July. Details posted earlier on the Gigs page.

drunk dan wrote:I went home and cried.

Cheer up mate (offers tissue for snuffly nose).
John's right, shit happens, though it's convinced me to shift venue for a gig I was planning to put on there. A few on here did say they wouldn't set foot in the place and I'm inclined to agree with them now.

Sound Foundry wrote:Thanks for that Martin. It was a pleasure to meet you at last and I really enjoyed The Red List immensely.

Likewise sir (not the bit about enjoying The Red List, although I always do even if we only play to girlfriends and bar staff!)

Martin - The Red List wrote:

drunk dan wrote:I went home and cried.

Cheer up mate (offers tissue for snuffly nose).
John's right, shit happens, though it's convinced me to shift venue for a gig I was planning to put on there. A few on here did say they wouldn't set foot in the place and I'm inclined to agree with them now.

Really? What's that wrong with it?

blitzsounds wrote:

Martin - The Red List wrote:

drunk dan wrote:I went home and cried.

Cheer up mate (offers tissue for snuffly nose).
John's right, shit happens, though it's convinced me to shift venue for a gig I was planning to put on there. A few on here did say they wouldn't set foot in the place and I'm inclined to agree with them now.

Really? What's that wrong with it?

Read from about halfway down the first page of this thread, you'll get the general idea.

Well no not really. Most of what i've got from the thread was that someone or other turned up expecting to be able to push some faders and got a nasty shock when they found out that they actually had to understand how to engineer and not just operate. We've been doing sound for gigs in there since January and had some cracking sound considering the rig that's there. It just needs someone that knows what they are doing. To be fair, Dan was warned. The equipment is far from the best, i agree. But it's better than in a lot of local venues using similarly unbranded systems.

The venue's a reasonable size, has no noise issues, has a central location and cheap bar prices. Funny how everyone said the place was a lot better after we put a night on down there. Nothing's changed in that time. Once again seems more like the local scene isn't prepared to go to a local gig somewhere that's outside their comfort zone. Same everywhere in this town.

I was warned to leave the venue well alone and I should have either found a different one or just canned the whole thing. My bloody mindedness was that I wasn't aiming this at the music scene.

I thought I could do enough to get the general public down from the festival. We must have spoken to over a thousand people at the festival and still no one shows up. The place has 'No Fucking Way Am I Going There' written all over it. But by the time i found out how bad the general perception was it was far too late.

Its the wrong shape n'all

drunk dan wrote:I was warned to leave the venue well alone and I should have either found a different one or just canned the whole thing. My bloody mindedness was that I wasn't aiming this at the music scene.

I thought I could do enough to get the general public down from the festival. We must have spoken to over a thousand people at the festival and still no one shows up. The place has 'No Fucking Way Am I Going There' written all over it. But by the time i found out how bad the general perception was it was far too late.

Agreed, you did put a lot effort into promoting it and I think it probbly does show that it's difficult to get people in there. But I do think the venue has changed a lot for the better over the years. Unfortunately the Scene's perception of it hasn't. And I'll very much agree with Mithy on the shape of the place. That bastard pillar centre stage is a nightmare from the mix point!

blitzsounds wrote:Well no not really. Most of what i've got from the thread was that someone or other turned up expecting to be able to push some faders and got a nasty shock when they found out that they actually had to understand how to engineer and not just operate. We've been doing sound for gigs in there since January and had some cracking sound considering the rig that's there. It just needs someone that knows what they are doing. To be fair, Dan was warned. The equipment is far from the best, i agree. But it's better than in a lot of local venues using similarly unbranded systems.

The venue's a reasonable size, has no noise issues, has a central location and cheap bar prices. Funny how everyone said the place was a lot better after we put a night on down there. Nothing's changed in that time. Once again seems more like the local scene isn't prepared to go to a local gig somewhere that's outside their comfort zone. Same everywhere in this town.

Can't disagree with you more on that one Jamie. The above demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the whole point. So I'm out of this one.

And for the record, I didn't turn up expecting to 'push a few sliders' - but neither did I turn up expecting to have to build a PA from the mass of semi-working spare parts the last "sound engineer" had left.

Sound Foundry wrote:

blitzsounds wrote:Well no not really. Most of what i've got from the thread was that someone or other turned up expecting to be able to push some faders and got a nasty shock when they found out that they actually had to understand how to engineer and not just operate. We've been doing sound for gigs in there since January and had some cracking sound considering the rig that's there. It just needs someone that knows what they are doing. To be fair, Dan was warned. The equipment is far from the best, i agree. But it's better than in a lot of local venues using similarly unbranded systems.

The venue's a reasonable size, has no noise issues, has a central location and cheap bar prices. Funny how everyone said the place was a lot better after we put a night on down there. Nothing's changed in that time. Once again seems more like the local scene isn't prepared to go to a local gig somewhere that's outside their comfort zone. Same everywhere in this town.

Can't disagree with you more on that one Jamie. The above demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the whole point. So I'm out of this one.

And for the record, I didn't turn up expecting to 'push a few sliders' - but neither did I turn up expecting to have to build a PA from the mass of semi-working spare parts the last "sound engineer" had left.

Ok. Firstly, I didn't realise that you were the engineer. So apologies if I was disrespectful. However, there's not a mass of spare parts in there. There was a fully functioning PA rig in there that the desk has to be connected to because of the restrictions room wise enforced by the venue. The venue hasn't let us buy new equipment unfortunately. We've had to get everything that was there working. And it does - perfectly. If you know what you are doing. No offence but since when have you been a sound engineer? We have used that rig regularly since January without problems. What didn't work according to you? I may be able to clear some of this up. And on that point did it never occur to anyone to pick up the phone to ask if there was confusing?

Its very different if you own/installed the rig to if you are walking in and seeing it for the first time, if what you encounter is a miss mass of crap it wont make life easy.

Agreed, it won't make life easy. But if someone puts a load of amplifiers, crossovers, speakers and cabling in front of me i'd be able to get a working system sorted that sounds reasonable (as long as the drivers of the speakers are reasonable quality, along with mics). Unfortunately there's too many people that say they can engineer when in reality they can't. They can only operate a desk. An engineer is someone who can fault find there way around any system they are put in front of. The likes of Derren Hardwick, Ash Hannis, Myself, Chris Fairless, John Oddy are the people that will get a system going regardless and get the job done when all is said and done. I'm sure there are a few others in Coventry that can do that. But not many. Too many people play with things that they just don't understand properly.