28/12/2006 by david.

Most gigger’s will know the story.

You’re slap, bang in the middle of a song, perhaps just about to start a lead break, or doing some sweet backing vocals when a punter comes up, beer in hand, trying to get your attention.

“Can you play xxxxxxx ?”.

You can’t hear, because the PA is right beside the ear he’s shouting into and you’re just about to start the leadbreak!!! And here’s what happened next…

“What?” I shouted.
“Can you play xxxxxx, it’s blah blah end”
“Whaaat?” (PA right beside my ear)
“Can you play xxxxxx, it’s for my girlfriend”
“Don’t know it, sorry” (bum note)
“Well what about xxxxx, can you play that ?”
“No, sorry, but we’ll play another one by that band” (PA still blasting in both of our ears)
“What ?” he shouts.
“I said we’ll play another another one by that band, how about xxxx xxxx?”

The guy recoiled in horror. Not because he disapproved of the song I’d just suggested. But because I’d just bit his ear !!! I bit his EAR !!!! I had to get SO close to his ear and shout that I actually got his ear in MY mouth and bit the damn thing !!!!

Talk about embarrasing. I watched him go back to his girlfriend, just sauntered off, rubbing his lug and drinking his pint.

Thankfully there was no serious damage done. In fact we both had more damage done to our ears by the PA blasting into our ears as we tried to make sense of, and communicate, with each other. But it has started me thinking a lot (again) about the way we set up our gear. Generally, most of the gigs I do the PA is right beside my right ear, no more than a a couple of foot, and I use it as my monitoring. When I want to hear how we’re sounding I stick my head into it, and try to determine whether I’m in tune or not. How wrong is that?

I try to be polite when I’m playing, and not have the guitar too loud on the backline, in fact it’s barely audible (or is that because I’m now nearly deaf after over twenty years of gigging ?). But I intend from now on to find some sort of monitoring solution where I can hear what I’m actually playing and remove the need to have the the PA speaker slightly angled towards me, and dip my head into it every now and then to hear what’s going on. I have thought about it many times over the years, because I know, like you do, the dangers of having loud music projected at my ears for consistently long periods of time. But, to quote Alanis Morisette, “isn’t it ironic” that it took someone else’s ear to finally bring it home to me that it was time I actually did something about it.

Even more ironic (or perhaps moronic) is the fact that we have a perfectly good monitoring solution available to us. We have a couple of small wedges that we have plenty of room for in the van, yet we never bring them with us. They sit and gather dust in a shed, except for every now and then when we play a venue we have never played before and then we bring them out ‘just in case we can’t hear ourselves’. What, like the way we can’t hear ourselves every gig we do ?

There are many monitoring solutions out there and we have one of them. It’s a very good one, and we have it now, so from now on we’re going to use it. It’s a very simple affair of powered wedges fed from the main PA mixer head. But there are so many solutions out there now, from wedges to in-ear phones, that frankly, there is no excuse for not hearing what you’re doing, and at a reasonable, non ear damaging volume.

Don’t wait until you’ve bit someones ear, it’ll probably take years for the nightmares of embarrasment to go. Get yourself a monitoring system if you don’t already have one.

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28/12/2006 by david.

Jamiroquai frontman Jay Kay is quitting music for a year, in a bid to return to his creative peak.

The Virtual Insanity star feels Jamiroquai’s Greatest Hits album has given him a sense of closure and he wants to take a break before returning back to the basics he mastered with the group’s early material.

He says: “On the first album we had flugelhorn solos. I know we probably overdid it, but it was fun, it was good, it was creative. I want to get back to making music like that.

“I like the sense of closure that the greatest hits album has to it. I’ve closed this chapter of my career at the right time and it’s great.

“I’m ready to move on and see what comes next - a year off, that’s the plan.”

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28/12/2006 by david.

Bruce Springsteen on Tour 1968-2005 celebrates three decades of The Boss on tour.

Few artists wield a Fender quite like Bruce Springsteen and there’s plenty of proof of that in Bruce Springsteen on Tour 1968-2005, a lavishly illustrated new book by uber-rock critic and Springsteen biographer Dave Marsh, who was actually present for most of the milestones in the Boss’s amazing three-decade (and counting) career.

Authorized by Springsteen himself, Marsh’s 234-page book presents a detailed, often gig-by-gig live history of the career of one of rock’s most articulate and electrifying performers, from his first concert at the Woodhaven Swim Club in his hometown, Freehold, N.J., to the formation of the E Street Band to Born to Run to Born in the U.S.A. to his 2005 Devils & Dust tour.

The photographs are terrific, and Marsh’s behind-the-scenes writing is the next best thing to being there. Springsteen is known as both a modern-day poet and an unusually exuberant live performer, and the book captures the formation and evolution of both those sides of the man.

And, of course, Fender fans will note that there’s hardly a photo in which Springsteen isn’t clutching, picking, strumming, throwing, punishing or otherwise wielding one of his ever-present Telecaster® or Esquire® guitars.

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28/12/2006 by david.

Liam Gallagher has branded Pete Doherty, Justin Hawkins and Tom Chaplin “idiots”, following their recent stints in rehab. The Oasis star claims 21st century rock stars are lightweights when it comes to taking drugs, insisting Babyshambles’ star Doherty is “cabbaged”.

Liam was speaking after Doherty, Hawkins and Chaplin emerged from The Priory, having sought help for their problems with alcohol and drugs. He said: “None of us have ever been in The Priory, like all these little idiots today. They have one little line, they have one burn and they’re all in rehab. “That Pete Doherty is cabbaged already. And it’s like, ‘How old are you? Priory at 27 years of age? You idiot.’ Posh boys can’t take drugs, man. They’re lightweights.”

Oasis release their greatest hits, “Stop The Clocks”, on November 20.

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28/12/2006 by david.

Just think—had Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland not stepped off the same train in central London’s Oxford Circus and recognized each other one day in early 1977, you might not be humming, singing or whistling any of the zillion or so Police hits we all know so well by heart today.That serendipitous meeting provides the title for Summers’ new autobiography, One Train Later, out in October from St. Martin’s Press, in which he gives an alternately hilarious and pointed account of his amazing journey from struggling London guitarist with a love for jazz in the heady ’60s and early ’70s to worldwide domination as one third of hugely popular, hugely innovative and hugely influential trio the Police in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Painstakingly honest and often very funny, Summers chronicles the highs and lows of a decades-spanning career as one of the music world’s most successful and respected guitarists.

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