Wave World Gig in Germany, October 1st

[Gert van Santen]

Just a short impression of our gig (after re-reading, I noticed it is actually a long impression :-). 

We arrived in Gütersloh a day early, and had a couple of beers in the hotel-bar. Nice to know you don't have to travel 250 kms before setting up.

We had rented a 7000 ansilumen beamer, which was somehow faulty, because it gave about the same results as the 3000 ansilumen beamer we used a couple of years ago. We will complain with the rental firm, of course.

Although we had planned to release our "long awaited" double DVD Membrane that day (one man told us he drove 300 kms, just to get this album!), the graphics were still not finished, and also the music needed some extra work. It's what you get when you need a daytime (and night time, for that matter) job to keep yourself alive.
So we planned to do an EP without graphics - you really want to be able to offer a new product when you do a new show! Both Harry and me had some music on the shelves, though, and we ended up with 2 complete albums!

Appart from everything that went well during the last couple of weeks (composing, recording, mastering, printing CD's, getting new merchandise, searching for lost cables, plugs, and power supplies), one thing was frustrating. The whole process left us with too little time to rehearse. I had been so "smart" as to come up with a couple of songs with lots of modulations - resulting in black keys gallore! I think I never played so many wrong notes during a gig in my life!! Aarghh. Interestingly, most people in the audience said they didn't notice, and the gig was received with a huge applause and very positive reactions. Any professional music critic will for sure mention this in his review, though. 

Another thing - since the day was 45 minutes behind schedule when we had to build up our rig, there was not enough time for a thorough soundcheck (what's new?) and we ended up with the unpleasant situation where the signal from my submixer was too hot for the guy behind the mixing board, which led to several weird problems (like me not being able to play my Virus Indigo louder than 9 o'clock). I should have checked that main out knob...

Next time, I will definitely make my stage-life a lot easier and add an extra week for rehearsals! Plus I will turn the main output knob on that Beringer down, to start with;-)

So you see, I have again learned lots of stuff, even at my age of 382.619 years. 

Last but not least: the people from the organisation and the other bands were extremely nice and helpful, there was plenty of free food and drinks for the musicians, and we got to talk to a couple of big names in the business, like Gandalf (who's real name is, in fact, Heinz), and Michael Huijgen (Neuronium).

That's it, folks :-)

gert
www.gertvansanten.nl

>> Short video impressions supported by a track of our new album "Hieroglyphs".
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nx0iZUe1Yw
> 
> Video by Kristin, 2 pics by Kai. Thanks :-)