Sometimes, a
venue’s understanding of what you need to put on a show can vary considerably.
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| The Usual Suspects; posing with Reginald D Hunter at last night's London Mostly Comedy (14.06.18) |
Such was the case
at last night’s gig, which took place in the restaurant of an aircraft museum,
where we arrived to find the only staging available was a single 1x2metre
rostrum that could barely fit a performer on it, let alone a mic stand too.
Thankfully, after
a little gentle pushing to get the staff to search the other spaces on site,
they managed to find a few more blocks to bolster our bijou stage. I don’t know
what we would have done without them; it’s not like we were presenting a
small-scale open mic night: the acts appearing were in the top tier of their
game. We’d also been as clear as we could in the lead-up on what we needed, and
ended up supplying all the equipment bar the stage, which we’d left in their
hands.
This wasn’t the
only setback, though the second one was less easy to predict. It just so
happened the room we were performing in had enough windows to essentially be
lit by natural light, which our projector couldn’t fight; the image was washed out enough to be completely unusable; a particular problem as it’s 99.9% of Glyn’s and my act.
Thankfully one of
the venue’s technical staff remembered there was a large LCD television somewhere onsite
that was just about big enough to replace our screen and do the job. At first,
we relaxed too soon, as a thorough search of the various hangers and storage
rooms didn’t bring it up. Then, with just over an hour to spare he found it.
It’s no exaggeration to say he’d saved the day; if he hadn’t found the TV we
would have had to scrap all of our material.
Once these issues
were ironed out the show went well, though the first half felt a little sterile
as the bright room made the audience self-conscious. Reginald D Hunter was
first on and one hell of an opener, but it was frustrating to watch him work against things we would have never let happen if we’d known about them. He
approached the whole thing magnanimously, but it still niggled to be representing
a less-than-perfect version of a club we try so hard to make the best it can
be.
By the time
Arthur Smith went on the audience had relaxed and the setting sun helped gave the room more
atmosphere. All in all it was a good night, but it served to remind me how
tired I’ve grown of all this constant problem solving at the expense of a relaxed mind; these things shouldn’t be such a sweat.
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| Sound-checking last night. |