Don't squash the artist. As if you should need telling damn you!
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Hi all. Hope you had a nice week despite all the rain. what has happened to the summer? I don't know but at least we get randomity here. I've lived where the sun always shines and despite the jealosy when I tell people, let me tell you, for me it get's boring. I love living here (despite Gordon and the crew) and watching the changing of the seasons and all that goes with it. There's nothing quite like a cold crispy winter evening and the smell of someone's coal fire burning in the air..or the smell of the summer morning with or without a rain shower..
Anyhow, Friday nights gig was at "Wiston House" near Steyning in West Sussex. A famous old house no doubt steeped in history. I had a couple of "bedroom/just do it for a laugh" deejays wander over to have a look at my "dash board" behind the public front of the show and they were awestruck at the technology on show! You can't help feeling proud at moments like that can you? All that hard work and investment over the years hits someone square in the face and you suddenly get a reminder on the weight of what you've gone without holidays and the like to achieve.
last night's gig was a great in that the couple I was playing for (wedding couple) were older than of late so it gave me a chance to play some old skool disco for a change. These days when I do a wedding gig, of which I do a lot these days, I play for a lot of younger folks while the older folks don't seem to want to get involved in the dancing part of the evening. It never used to be that way. My mate Ian says that fans of nineties piano house and the like are getting married these days and he's been waiting for this time for all his career! Good for him. I love that too but I don't seem to get as much opportunity to play it as he does. I seem to be playing nothing but "Boom boom pow" and "Bonkers" and "Wearing my rolex" and other heavy bass rap type grooves these days. Oh well, It beats "Come on eileen" and the "Macerina" for me. One thing that spoiled the gig for me was that at the Landsdowne as at other various venues was an evil box in the corner called a "noise limiter". It's not so much the hotel's fault these things have to be installed (although sound proofing would go a long way), but nearly always the local residents who nearly always move there after the hotel was doing ok for many years
beforehand and seem to be able to get the full weight of the council behind them on getting these draconian devices installed.
Some past deejays have to take the blame for having cheap over loud and destorted systems that blew everyone's ear drums out and invoked this horror in the first place, but not always. Sometimes the neighbours just didn't have all the info before parting with hundreds of thousands of pounds of the bank's/government's/tax payer's/their own money. What happens with these devices is that if you have any bass at all - that's the low frequency stuff that makes you want to move youre feet; it cuts the power to your super expensive computerised system causing as mentioned in last blog, my laptop to go mental mental, chicken oriental. So what do you do? I'll tell you what you do: You go over to laptop deejaying on vertual auto-pilot whilst you spend all night watching the l.e.d. diode box on the wall with one hand on your bass knob (insert pun here) on your mixing desk. Occasionally you quickly turn it up to it's normal "unity" - meaning neutral level just to tease your self and remind your self what it would sound like at a normal non suppressive gig, though not for more than a couple of seconds, lest the dreaded black box circuit breaker do it's cold unemotional deed.
I just think it's great testimony to people in general that they still make the best of bad situation and have a good time anyway. I suffer more because I want to give the best show I can and find my self stymied/cut short/suppressed/choose your own adjective at it all. The only upside is that thankfully these things are relatively rare. If you're a customer reading this, ask the hotel or even me if the venue has one before booking. You'll have a show with much more impact if you avoid venues like this. There. Did you spot that? I've just started a crusade! We'll sort it out. "Bookings go down for noise limited hotels" Good job too I say!
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