Originally Posted by
Casual77
I don't normally write gig reports but I had an interesting one last night so thought I'd share.
It was a large marquee wedding in the garden of the bride's parents' grade 2 listed building in a small rural village in North Yorkshire. I had been warned in advance that it was a fair distance from the front of the house to the Marquee at the bottom of the garden by the groom and he certainly wasn't kidding! Fortunately I arrived three hours before I was due to start and it was just as well because I needed every minute of it! The marquee was huge and located about 500 yards down the garden, or at least the front of it was! The rear part of the marquee, where I was to set up, was about another 60 yards or so back and made worse by the fact I had to circumnavigate the catering tent though a mini forest and enter from the back so as to preserve the disco's element of surprise. I decided to give my little rock n' roll cart its first outing because I had my newly acquired Alto subs and I thought it would come in handy. Unfortunately, I was only half right because the cart wasn't all that effective on the long stretches of pebbled paths or through the dense woodland and I still had to handball all my equipment over half of the way.
I soon realised that I had become accustomed to the easy set up of a pair of Gigbars on recent gigs having not done a wedding since New Year's Eve and my full wedding setup took far longer to assemble than I remembered. This was probably down to the fact I knew I had time for a fairly leisurely set-up so didn't feel the need to rush. I got it all set up and looking presentable and then had a minor panic when I came to check that the DMX lighting was working as intended. What I didn't realise was that when I was playing around with my Wifly NE1 during the week, creating profiles for the Chauvet 6Spot and 4Play, I had managed to inadvertently delete the settings for all my other lights. After a bit of nervous playing around with the settings I managed to get everything re-programmed with my 'first dance' settings, but I was fortunate that things were running about half an hour late which gave me the time I needed. Anyway, by the time that the events management staff dragged down the dividing curtain and revealed me to the party guests I was happy that I was 'good to go'.
The disco itself was fairly standard fair, ranging from Motown to R&B/Hip-Hop, stopping off at current chart and obligatory wedding 'cheese' along the way. It started with a raucous first dance of 'Can't take my Eyes off of You' by Andy Williams enjoyed by all 200 or so party guests through to a similarly well attended final rendition of 'Hey Jude'. Perhaps the only remarkable thing about the disco was that everything seemed to be surprisingly well received and I managed to keep the 10 metre square wooden chess board dance-floor full for almost all of the night.
The only negative of the gig was the fact that I managed to collect no fewer than 8 broken glasses in and around my set-up including one pint glass full of lager which was dropped onto the top of one of my subs from a few feet above. This inevitably smashed showering my sub with lager and fragments of glass. It's a wonder that it didn't blow the electrics because there was an extension socket located just behind the sub. I had spent most of the night removing people's glasses from the shelf on my Equinox booth but was fighting a losing battle trying to keep them off my subs. I've thought about getting some custom made sub covers but they would cost as much as I paid for the subs so I'm not sure it would make much financial sense.
The gig finished at shortly after 12.30am and I then had an hour of packing away before trying to navigate my way back up the garden in the pitch black. I managed a couple of trips before the catering team took pity on me and offered to transport the rest of my gear back up the garden on a pallet using their fork truck. I gratefully accepted and even got a ride down the garden sat on the pallet (which gave my weary legs a welcome break). In spite of the kind assistance it was still approaching 3am before I set off home and 4.30am before I got to bed. At least the night had gone well and I received high praise from the Bride's mother and the groom who said that I had 'absolutely nailed it'. When you receive positive recognition for your efforts it at least makes the tiredness seem worthwhile and I drove home in pretty high spirits, which even a closure on the A1M failed to dampen. I'm feeling tired and washed out today but satisfied that I helped contribute to what appeared to be a successful and enjoyable day.
