I went to France at the weekend to see an old friend

It was his 40th birthday a couple of weeks ago and his wife had organised a surprise for him. His mum, dad, sister and me were to visit them for the weekend. I took the day off work and flew from Birmingham. After a nightmare journey to the airport taking 4 + hours and involving 2 major traffic hold ups I arrived and boarded the flight with my usual flying trepidation. It was a small 52 seater jet operated by BritAir for Air France and was pretty comfortable. I’m fine on an aeroplane – I just don’t like the thought of it. The plan was full and I only heard 2 other English voices as we headed south to Lyon, a few minutes late.
I was to meet his parents and sister at Lyon airport, though we had not arranged a time or place – they should have arrived 30 minutes or so before me. Once through passport and customs I searched the small terminal (Terminal 2 I now know) and couldn’t find them so headed to terminal 1 and met them looking for me. We had a pizza in the airport and waited for the daughter to arrive. She was a little late so we had 2 ½ hours to wait. My friend’s wife had organised for a taxi and we met the driver with whom I had a conversation about Lyon airport (they are building there at the moment) Scotland (we had both just been) and Anglo-French relations, and my French, which is normally OK felt very rusty.
The taxi took 35 mins from Lyon to his village (Mornant) and we were dropped off away from the apartment so that we could creep up on him. His sister rang the bell and from the top floor his wife’s head appeared whispering “he’s asleep”. It was 11.30-ish. She came down and opened the door and we went up into the apartment where Tim and his children were fast asleep.
His sister led the way, followed by me and then his parents as we crept into his bedroom to find a leg, back and boxer shorts. Marie-Line his wife woke him up and took a picture of him as he clocked his surroundings. His only words were “Oh” several times, dusted with a few light expletives.
I hope to get a copy of the picture soon.
We had a cup of tea with him and gave him some birthday presents (a good single malt and a picture of him with our entire day’s catch at Blenheim palace fishing lake some 20 years ago – one tiddler).
We went to bed, secure in the knowledge that the surprise had been total – his boss had given him the day off and come up with a plausible excuse when Marie-Line had requested it.
The next day we went and bought croissants and pains-au-chocolat from the bakery on the main square, played with his train set(!) went and had a fantastic lunch in a local restaurant – paid for by his parents and had a general catch up and natter. It was so good to see him and his family. It was as if we had never had 10 years without any significant contact. We also went to the local sports centre to sign his sons up for gym and tennis. All the sprts clubs from the areas were holding a type of “Freshers’ Fair”. What a great idea for Gamlingay. I will suggest it to Bridget. In the evening Marie-Line’s mother and her friend came around and Marie-Line prepared a fantastic meal of caviar, chorizo, guacamole, cheese, vegetables, mini sausage roles and, of course, champagne. That was a little tricky as they speak very limited English and Tim’s mum, dad and sister speak limited French, and mine was still very rusty (though it wouldn’t take too much to get it a little more fluent I think), but we all had a great time.
On Sunday we spent the morning eating, talking and eating some more. This include learning from Colin about some of the projectors that both he and Tim collect. You can see some of his that he has donated to a museum here. Tim then drove me back to Lyon airport where we talked about all sort of things before I got back on the 52 seater jet and headed north to Birmingham, where I struggled to get out of the car park and noticed a horrible noise in the car when going round corners or bends at anything above 30 mph… must get that looked at.

Highlight moments
Kath’s howlers
Tim’s arrival reaction
Marie-Line’s hard work and hospitality
Sue’s sunny disposition and laugh
Colin and Kath’s laughter
Trains and projectors
Tim’s butterflies here

Love and peace
Phil
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Gamlingay Rock Festival

Gamlingay Rock Festival
Current mood: breezy
Category: Music


I played at the Gamlingay Rock festival yesterday. I also did the sound. It was an interesting day as it was in a field, it rained and was quite windy too. And there was limited protection for the sound equipment. The event was organised to raise money for a local hospital ward, however so few people turned up that I would be surprised if there was not rather a large loss overall.

Set up
I got there at about 10.30 to find two lorries in a muddy field. Some people were trying to erect a gazebo to put the sound equipment in, but t would not stand up due to te wind. It was very flimsy. We set about setting the stage area up. The two lorries were not quite touching and were arranged to make a deep stage area… however there was a gap between them which made an 18" hole running the length of the stage in the middle – the drum riser was on one lorry and the rest on the other. Over the next hour or so some expert carpentry was deployed to get rid of most of the hole.

Meanwhile the gazebo had broken, so Wayne, star that he is, went to get another one (with sides) that would be more solid. This arrived with no instructions, so 4 of us worked out how to put this together and half an hour later we had some shelter for the sound equipment. Meanwhile Wayne called the owner who kindly came along to help us, but arrived after we had just finished.

Sound set up (fairly technical bolony)
I ran two mixers in parallel with one feeding the other (a Peavey 14 channel and a Yamaha 12 channel) which gave us enough i/o. I ran the drum mics (6 or 7 depending on the number of bass drums!) into the Peavey and submixed them to a stereo channel on the Yamaha, and then had vocals and guitars into the Yamaha which fed the PA and monitors. I also ran some reverb / echo from the Yamaha. We had 9 bands playing (including me) so by the end of the night, while I still had the drums submixed from the Peavey to the Yamaha, other tracks were pretty much all over the place – as we moved from 4 vocalists to 1; from 2 guitars to 1, an acoustic and a keyboard, to a Mac, a minidisk player etc. with microphones switching from instrument to instrument and the floor box getting increasingly deluged with rainwater. The monitors were soaked through and the PA took a hell of a weather pounding. All the electrics on stage survived, though it is remarkable that no-one got electrocuted. On reflection the organisers should have cancelled it, but once we were there and setting up we all wanted to play.

Sound check and running
Once we had sound checked we had some problems with many of the drums clipping, as well as the voices. I had applied a limiter to the main outs to control the overall volume level, as well as some equalisation. With the 3rd last band I ran into severe difficulties, as we had terrible crackling on one side of the PA, which we thought was water getting into the line somewhere. Wayne tried various things on stage, I tried various things at the mixer end. Eventually I worked out what the problem was – I was distorting the final output by pushing the limiter too hard. I got Wayne to turn the PA up to full while I cut out the limiter and dropped the mixer output volume and got rid of the problem. It also meant I could have a greater volume for Wayne's band (next up) as their back line was not mixed (except the drums) and the vocal levels could be pushed up. Had I had more time on the set up I would have compressed the main vocals and the drums, but it wasn't to be.

Bands
9 of us, from 2.00 until 10:30 in the rain on a stage open to the elements with wind and rain making a mockery of the late summer billing.

The first band up were called the Why Birds / Y Birds (can't find them on myspace so not sure what there name was). They were a four piece who looked a bit like Kings of Leon and had a great American rock sound. They were quite tight and charismatic and had the small crowd (30 people at that stage?) tapping their feet and moving a bit – not bad for a wet and windy outdoor gig. I don't know anything more about them, bit would certainly see them again. They were lead by their drummer but all four shared vocals and made a good job of it. I didn't recognise the songs so don't know whether they were their own or covers, though I suspect their own. Great to see.

Then we had a band whose name I didn't catch – a young three piece. They were fronted by their bass player, who had a terribly trebly sound, though he played pretty well,with some fast and accurate fingerwork. They were rather immature as a band and played the gentlest version of Pretty Vacant I have ever heard – the singer's voice was just far too nice. They wanted to be punks but were far too middle class I'm afraid. Their own songs were immature and simplistic and didn't work for me. Not much audience reaction either. But they had fun and they were quite a good spectacle.

We then had Noize – one of the bands on the Gamlingay Record Label. They were great as usual – playing their own brand of garage grunge which was loud and infectious. Will makes an enigmatic front mad with real rock star attitude – and the drums and bass were tight. I thought Will's guitar sound was over the top, but I think he did too, as he finished by smashing his guitar on stage which brought a brilliant reaction from the growing crowd – the guitar ended up smashed and its going on Ashley's wall – signed by Will I hope.

A real treat followed – Wayne and Paul (from Phoenix Impact) did a 15 minute acoustic set covering some classics, and once I had sorted the sound out (sorry about the feedback guys!) they sounded fantastic. They looked the part as well. You'll see that from some of the pics.

Phoenix Impact were next up (another or the bands signed to the record label). They sounded tight and seem to have come on quite a lot since I first heard them – Paul's unique voice sounds more mature and flexible and the bass and drums worked well together. They played some covers and some original material and their original songs sounded pretty polished.

I played next – my computer just about surviving the rain. It's always difficult to judge your own performance but it went down OK – it was lighter than everything else, so made quite a change from the day so far. I played 4 covers and 2 of my own – remembered nearly all the words (sorry George) but forgot to play Wayne's favourite "Feel" because the playlist names had not come onto the CD I used so I couldn't see it. Disappointed.

After me we had a band called Slippage (I think). A rock covers band who were quite professional. They were fairly tight (though the bass and guitar were not always in with the others – both together and separately) and their singer had a good rock voce – they played some later Rainbow, Whitesnake, The Who etc and did a good job.

Now, for me, the highlight of the evening. Wayne's band. Don't know what they are called cos they're not the Victims. They were awesome – this was my first experience of Wayne on stage and he's wild. They played AC/DC, Sabbath, Zeppelin and Wayne's voice was great- the lad guitarist who played a left handed SG was great, as were the bassist and drummer – the bassist getting a great sound from his Laney stack. Wayne never stands still and loves the whole deal – in fact he is the real deal. Loved it. There was also a cameo performance from young Ashley who played a bit of guitar on one of the tracks.

Finally we had the Abba tribute band, headlining (AbbaMax (?)), though we only had the singers and minidisk player. But they were great – the sang about 10 classics and had the whole of the meagre audience singing along and copying their dance moves. They spoke accented English and had all their moves off perfectly. All in all a great evening's entertainment.

I was also given a CD of Helen Penfold - interesting acoustic music - check her out and let us know what you think????
With better weather and a bigger audience this would have been a great event – the music was pretty awesome and the facilities pretty good. Thanks are due to Barry and Laura for organising it all, as well as to Debbie, Jen and our long-suffering children who sat and stood in the wind and the rain for many hours feeding us, watering us (pardon the pun) and doing any odd job we had forgotten about.

Lots of love

Phil

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