Next up was 4 gigs with the Rubettes.

The first was near Zürich. All went well, if I remember writely it was an MH3 which (from my Cavern Club days) made the gig easy. The only restriction was the 93db limit made all the more difficult by the fact the audience cheering peaked at 106db!! Heaven help “The Sweet” that was on after us.

The great thing was the day after as we had a day off and I caught a train in to Zürich and spent the day there.

The following day we had an outside gig which due to the fact there was going to be a lot of kids around we had a limit of 88db!!!! Argh, you’re killing me, we were outside for gods sake.

Again, all went great but at this point I was really getting fed up with the number of flies in Switzerland, “get off my food”.

2 more gigs followed in Belgium, practically in the same place. The first was on the back of a moving trailer (a float if you prefer) which consisted of me mixing on the trailer with headphones and trying to not inhale carbon monoxide.

The second was a full on gig in the town square which we had previously driven through earlier in the day. It was raining and I was getting blinded by a knob with a laser. FUN!

Ok, so it looks like I can add Drum Technician to my list of skills. Why? ‘Cos it seems I’m now the Cradle Of Filth’s drum tech! An interesting turn of events but a good direction to go in if I want to do more touring. I’m actually looking forward to going with my good friend Daniel who is luckly enough to be doing front-of-house and with make traveling far more fun. One of the most interesting things is that the first gig which is in Latvia which will be a first for me. Sound engineering has so far taken me to Northern Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany & Holland, soon to be added to the list are Switzerland, Latvia, Finland & Spain. Not too bad when I look back at it really.

So anyway, I’m currently away on holiday in a little hideaway in Cornwall called Coverack. It’s great to almost be forced to calm everything down. No internet, 4 TV channels and no shopping other than Lou’s who is well known for being expensive and unless you like weather proofs or dust gathering tat then you aren’t interested anyway. I also get the time to understand the concept of having a pint or 3 before your evening meal which unsurprisingly gets you drunk a whole lot quicker than drinking after a meal.

So I was involved with the recent Hope Street ’08 Parade which I had to rig an outdoor stage and the stage inside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool. Although it would seem very simple and quick to set up it actually took ages due to long cable runs, 14 vocal mics for the gospel, full band set up including perpex drum screens, 8 Nexos (SP10s, 15s & 2 subs) all in the round and all in a room which unless you were sat 2 metres or less infront of a speaker sounded like a rave in a car park.

Yesterday I got back from doing 3 nights in Northern Ireland with the Cavern Beatles. First we had to catch a 3am ferry from Fleetwood which at the time seemed like an odd time but with having a cabin and an 8 hour journey we slept most the way.
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The first gig was in Riverside Theatre, Coleraine which was a nice intimate venue and a good gig. Halfway through setting up some of us decided to take a short trip to Giant’s Causway which is odd when you’re there. Sometimes nature can do things which make you question whether it’s happened by coincidence or been put there.
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Although there were moments when it looks like a Marshalls exhibition!
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So, with a drummer scaling wet rocks, in the rain, with smooth soled leather boots on, all before we’ve performed one gig we decided maybe we should head back and get down to business.
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Accomodation wasn’t sorted until after we arrived in Coleraine and we were given a local B&B to stay in. It felt like we were staying in a friends grandmothers house, especially when you walk through their living room, past the birthday cards to get to the dining room.



After breakfast we headed on down to the Island Arts Centre, Lisburn.

Now that's a place with a great stage delivery entrance, you can practically park your van on the stage! Really nice bunch of people, they're currently in the middle of upgrading their system, new lighting rig, new audio rig including an M7CL.

Nice, new theatre but acoustically crap! Not helped by the even crapier mix position.



Finally we moved on to Braid Arts Centre, Ballymena. Great new and old building conjoined unfortunately this meant compromises were made in design with regards to access. There was a load in bay, but.... we had to move all the equipment on and off 3 separate lifts! The bad design came from the fact that 2 of those lifts were only moving the equipment no more than 4 feet!! Please excuse the exclamations but it's just really bad design.

The actual theatre sounded great, it was nice to hear a reverb tail rather than a slap back delay. However due to there not being a full time technician no one knew where the stage power was so we had to use multiple 13 amp sockets which wasn't ideal (we did try some 16 amp sockets but after we found the lighting guy was able to turn our amps on using his dimmers we quickly disconnected the power).



One nice side story of our visit was blowing people away with my iPhone. Not knowing where we were and looking for sustenance after the 2nd gig I was able to direct us to a Tesco’s just as we were about to give up. The day after at the Braid, Roy (Ringo) was telling me about a clip of him on YouTube which within seconds I had playing on the iPhone (and here is the reaction).



So after the last gig it was finally time for a relax and a bit of a drink, when in Ireland there is only one official drink allowed.


One last thing worth mentioning was the food given both in and out bound on the ferry.


Next, Hope Street Festival.

Tags: Beatles, Gig, Live Engineering, Northern Ireland