Thoughts On The Black Celebration / 80s Invasion Gig 1/10
Last night’s show at Neumo’s was great despite the fact that I began the day with a horrible headache that never completely went away. For shows where a modest crowd is anticipated, the bar has a policy of closing part of the room off with a curtain. This allows them to work with a smaller staff and minimizes production expenses. Our show on Saturday was a “curtain show”… at least at first… when we arrived for load-in we knew there had already been a lot of interest in the show. Once we hit the stage as “Black Celebration”, it was clear the curtain needed to be removed (which occurred right on cue). Playing to a full house is always more fun, and with the whole room dancing there was a lot of great energy. I managed to catch a good portion the middle band “Love Vigilantes”, and had to sprint to our dressing room to change before taking the stage again as “80s Invasion”.
My general impression of the gig was things went very well. Load-in is just about as easy as any gig could be: there is a door directly opening onto a loading area, and the path from street to stage is flat. Separate power circuits are dedicated to the lights and audio gear, with additional power drops for each circuit onstage. This is important to our bands because we bring a number of stage lighting effects to augment the house gear. This was one of the first gigs where I used my in-ear monitor setup and I did have a number of observations after the gig:
It’s great having some of the stage volume blocked out. I really like being able to clearly hear my guitar. But with such good isolation I couldn’t hear the rest of the band quite as well. I’m thinking of getting a 4-channel mixer, plugging a microphone into it, and combining that ambient mix with my guitar. That would provide the best of both worlds.
During the “Black Celebration” set I made some mental notes about the backing vocal arrangements. It seemed to me that our collective phrasing is decent, but there are some places where we don’t consistently carry notes until the end of phrases. I’ll bring that up during our next soundcheck. “80s Invasion” had a really great set with some fun high points. Nicole is really nailing her vocal parts and she’s a delight to work with.
By the end of the night I had pretty much forgotten about the headache (which I still had the next day, but that’s another story). The bar staff and production team at Neumo’s are top-notch and really made the night go smoothly. I felt very comfortable with the way we played and look forward to our next show.