This is the inevitable first theing on a Monday colleague question (even if, like me, you don’t get into the office until about 1pm). So here’s part of the answer …

Well, on Saturday I got a lift from a brewery to Bristol (continuing the alliterative theme, the brewery’s called Bingham’s and it’s where the Filthy Spectacula’s bassist works). This was to play at a birthday party (more alliteration! my life is turning slowly into Piers Plowman!).

I can’t remember the last time, if ever, I played for money at a private party (well, unless you want to count string quartet at weddings, which is a bit different, especially if you’re playing during the ceremony rather than the reception). Nor the last time, if ever, I came across a birthday party at a music venue – not a bar or a pub function room, but booking out the whole of a bona fide gig venue. It’s also quite unusual as a band to be the only live act playing a given night.

Despite all of which novelty, and it being only our third gig, and having been asked to provide an hour set (and we just about managed it!) when we previously hadn’t done much over 30 minutes, it was an absolutely cracking gig and the bits of the audience we could see appeared to love it (most importantly, the birthday girl!) – in a testimony partly to being a very visual band, Facebook seems to have been flooded with photos since, in most of which my bow at least is blurred from how fast I was playing. All right, and long exposures due to low ambient light helped. Don’t mess with my act.

Three gigs in, a certain amount of my stage persona with the Spectacula is taking shape already. There’s the weaving around, power-lunges, ‘riding’ chugging strings of notes, ‘firing’ the fiddle on stab chords, elbowing the lead singer out of centre stage for solos – all more or less copped from daft heavy lead guitarists. There’s also the intermittent bits of knock-off clog dancing (well I wear hiking boots onstage with these guys – what other dancing can you do in those?!), mostly when I’m not playing … and the wandering into the front of the audience for some of the longer or flashier solos. Further proof, by the way, of the solid dependable value of the Headway Band pickup – I’ve never had any trouble with it feeding back even well in front of front-of-house speakers. Crowds evidently love it (there’s usually some bloke doing the Wayne’s World ‘We are not worthy!’ reverence!) but it’s trickier than it looks.

Firstly, there’s the matter of getting on and off. The arrangements are fixed enough in these songs that I’ll generally have a very specific amount of time to wrap up before the next verse / chorus / whatever. And the odds that I’ll have to sing backing at least at some point in that section are fairly high, though it’s not guaranteed by a long chalk. That means I have to time getting back on stage and behind a mike stand. Secondly, so far I’m sticking to a straightforward jack lead from the fiddle pickup. So I have to judge how far I can get on it before being yanked back or suddenly finding myself playing acoustically. I should probably try walking gently forward around setup / soundcheck so I know where’s safe, but I haven’t got round to it yet. Then I also have to try not to get the wire round my legs, particularly when jumping on and off stage. The stage last night was about two foot off the floor – low still, but more than the mini-risers that were all the obstacle at the first two gigs. You don’t want to trip and go flying, in mid-performance, with about £700 worth of fragile musical equipment in your hands and no spares, however good an insurance deal you got with Musicians’ Union membership.

The logical solution is, of course, a wireless belt pack. 10-metre range, nothing to get in the way, if you do go too far you’ll lose signal and fade out rather than ending up on your back or unplugged and you can just jump back into range. But of course they’re not free. Somewhat oddly, I would probably have gone for it if I was still purely amateur – not so much because I was earning more as because of less literal ideas about return on investment. But at this point, when I can gig reasonably with what I’ve got, and music is tending not to pay for itself plus its share of living costs (certainly not bands, with the cost of rehearsal rooms and forward investment in recording and merch to be made back out of fees split), RoI seems like it should be quite black-and-white and I shouldn’t buy the radio gear till the band gigs have paid for it. I’ll have to stick to jumping off stage carefully, like a responsible and clear-headed rocker. Er …

So that was Saturday. Sunday can have another post I think.