Isle of Man part 2

My drum monitor - RCF 1 x 18" active Sub Woofer and 2 1 x 12" w/tweeter active wedges! 

James is happy with the sound of the bass amp for once, RESULT

View from the Stage

One of the side fills. This is the same 1 x 1/4 of the Circus of Horrors front of house pa!

Ian and Phil setting up.

On approach to Douglas (the Capitol) I was struck by how wonderful the coastline is. I thought to myself that it must have amazing scuba sites as I could see amazing rock formations and clear blue waters.

Despite my nerves of flying, after the amount of vodka I consumed I was flying in more ways than one. I more or less stopped Clive trying to sleep, everytime he'd put the headphones on I'd say something profound, offensive or just plain annoying in a metaphorical "oh no you bloody don't!!!" type of way.

Landed ok and we weren't all killed in a screaming firey ball, bonus!

Got picked up from airport in a big mini bus and headed off to the hotel. Had something to eat and wandered the town looking for a Barclays bank in which to put my cheque.

Soon after I returned and went for a drink downstairs from the hotel where Phil, Paul and Anna were. A single vodka and diet coke was £3.75! Recession my arse, not for these charletan bastards! I was looking at the prices of houses in the area, no wonder it's a tax dodge. There wasn't one that was less than £350,000 and several well over a million! And I'm talking about houses that are nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. For the amount they were going for I thought they were selling the whole island not some poxy 2 up 2 down! After a while it was time to get to the venue and set up.

I was first struck by the scale of it. I've not played a gig this big in many years, probably not since I was in Spain when Lizard played at Vigo in summer 1997. Ah, that was a great year! Anyway I was furnished with red pearl world series kit, probably made early 1990's. Drums sounded like shit but a quick tune got more from them.

The snare however was beyond hope. I think I would have got a better sounding snare if I'd taken an empty Daz automatic box (guaranteed to stop coloured running) filled it full of rice, sea shells and other shrapnel and coated the outside with shit. I tried to tune it but the head was battered and so a quickly realised there was nothing I could have done save replace the head which I couldn't do as I didn't have a spare head.

The sound check was smooth enough and Jim for once didn't have any monitor issues much the relief of Dan, the tireless monitor engineer.
After that we had another "meeting" of the Elders in accordance to the phrophecy.

...it was about arrival times and other show related stuff not relevant to the band really.

I pretended like was meant to be there anyway, like I had some huge influence on everything.

Did nothing after that apart from wander about the town some more. I watched the red arrows perform along the sea front, man those guys seriously have nothing to live for doing the crazy shit they do. I imagined a drunk guy in the cockpit, can of Tennents super in one hand with a lit spliff singing like a piss head at closing time, seriously not caring for anything or anyone least not himself. That's how I'd imagine someone's frame of mind to do the stunts they do. It was incredible!

Not long until we have to go to the gig so I'm going to sign off now.

More later about how the gig went.