NWB - Community Blog

not really funny but defiantley something we'll never forget was when we once tunred up to the gig, loaded in, setup and soundchecked. all was fine. sat down for an hour. then when it was time to go on got up there guitar in hand flicked the switch to turn the pa on....... nothing. somehow itd blown in the hour we'd been sat down for. we had top borrow a fuse from the landlords dvd player.

thats wicked mrs nwb! you seemed really nice on saturday as well! your showing a whole new side to yourself!

what definately wasnt amusing was the time we turned up to do a charity gig, we were told to be there to load in and setup for 6. the guy opening the venue didnt turn up till gone 7 and watched us carry ALL our gear up 3 flights of stairs before telling us that we would be using all their kit and then watching us carry it all back down whilst he sat at the bar doing fuck all! that was about 2 years ago and im still pissed off about it! =) its going in the biography though!

something definitely going in our book - for three years out of four (foot & mouth kiboshed 1 year) we had ourselves a cracking little gig - a week in the Isle Of Man for TT week - playing in a hotel each night with the days completely free - first time we did it for nowt which included return ferry, board and food and free beer - by the third year it was all the above and £300 a night. Now then, the 4th year came around and hotel manager came to see us - he was consistently pissed - and said how much did i give you last year, was it £300 or £400? The obvious answer was given, yer it was £400 last year - "shmashing" he says "you can have £500 thish year ... hic!"
So Friday arrives and we're due to gig that night, pack up and head straight for the ferry. I went in to the Manager in the afternoon - we've not been paid yet I says .... Oh dear boy, says he, leave it with me I'll sort it. Comes out a few minutes later with an envelope containing ........ £500!!!
I rings Oggo, our chief negotiator, who's out in town ... almost crying! shut the fk up says he and get back in there and sort it.
I goes back in, explains to Mr Manager that although he's paid us for last night (£500) we hadn't been paid for the previous nights and tonight ... £2000 short!
He flustered and flustered mentioned something about can't get the staff, said to leave it with him and he'd sort it.
When Oggo came back the lot of us headed out for some lunch - and lo - Mr Manager found us and gave us profuse apologies and a bag of cash!! All sorted.
Except -
6 months later Oggo receives a call from Comfort Hotel's accountant - are you Fnarr! Fnarr! and how much did u get paid at xxxxxxxxxxx hotel - who wants to know .... etc etc .. we're not with the tax man, just tell us how much you got paid? Oggo - you tell me and i'll confirm or otherwise - £2500 says the accountant - correct says Oggo - now why?? Cos Mr Manager has only gone and done a bloody runner and the hotel is going into receivership!!
Oh dear! I guess we won't be playing back there again in a hurry!!

©Fnarr! Fnarr! - life in the slow lane
published soon
WillowFnarr

what a dream gig that mustve been willow. sounds gr8!

Was ace Ben ..... proper like being on tour ... closest I've come anyways. Shame about the cock up that ended it all.
I've still got me kevlar(?) bikers jacket tho and the memory of the tall blonde stripper haunching over the back of a bike!!!

<sigh>
<drool>
WillowtooOldforAllthatNow!!

ooops forgot to switch names

beautiful! we've got to sort a tour out next year

From my blog in September 2005 (and probably from the book I am now writing, too)

Agents... Love 'em or ignore 'em, you can't kill 'em.
"Five phone calls does not an intelligent Agent make."

Where to start? This gig came in a couple of weeks ago via one of our agents. He rang me to ask if we were available on the given date, so I said we were. He said he would get back to me with where the show was to be... and then he didn't. He sent out the contract.... after a good few days. A good job nothing else had come in.

On examining the contract, it said we were at a club which I have played before, but the address on the contract was definitely wrong, so I rang him up. He confirmed which club it was but could not give me the real address for it. I left it for a week then rang him back. Call number three. He confirmed the club was the one I knew and said the address was as per the contract. I said the address was wrong and didn't want to go and turn up at the wrong club. He didn't have time to talk to me.

A lady from his office rang me again a few days later to confirm the booking and when I re-asked the question (and said that I was asking again), I was passed onto the agent himself. I said we weren't going to go to a club to be turned away. He advised me to 'go to the general area and ask for the club'. I wasn't happy. Again he didn't have time to discuss it with me. He was flustered as he was too busy confirming bookings with other acts to talk to me or to notice that our gig was beginning to look 'unconfirmed'.

OK. Proceed to investigate without the aid of the agent, then.

An internet search showed that the club at the address given on the contract was NOT the one we were being told it was, so I rang THAT club up and they had someone else on. Fabulous.... I rang and spoke to the agent for a fifth time, with two hours to go before setting off, basically saying tell us the address of the club please or we're not going.

He was very flustered as he was in South Wales, not his office. He confirmed the club name, gave me totally wrong directions to a road a mile or so past the club, as it was all he could think of as he doesn't know the area... The details on the contract were the fault of the agent he took the job from, he said. So, it was ok for him to send us to the wrong address. He got off the line as quick as he could. Five phone calls about this gig - and still being misinformed as to where the club is.

We went along to the club and I luckily found it from memory. No thanks to his directions. The other club (whose address was on the contract) was about 4 miles away.

With us having found the club, you'd think we'd be able to relax... Mmmmm.....

When we loaded onto the stage, the resident keyboard player was taking up one third of it, by himself, with his great banks of keyboards. He must have had three or four great big ones on stage. There was also a good sized drum kit, but at least that was set up thoughtfully and compactly at the rear of the stage.

The stage pulled out at the front, into the dance floor space, so we piled onto there. The keyboard player was just a bit (oh, call a spade a spade), he was terribly awkward last time about things being placed at the side of his keyboards, presumably blocking the view of his 'adoring public'. He needed even more stage to put up his music stand. Shoving a guitar stack a few inches more towards the very precarious edge of the stage placated him.

He also very nearly managed to knock over our guitarist's much loved Gibson 335 guitar.

Oddly enough, the clumsy organist at a club the night before had also managed to attempt the destruction of the very same guitar, causing its owner to fly 50 feet across the room at a scary speed, just before it hit the deck. That went down very well, I can tell you.

The Keyboard player then proceeded to grumble about where we set our gear up - by necessity - in front of him. He also didn't like the look of my bass rig. Six ten inch speakers in two cabs worried him, so he gave me a stern lecture about volume, that I in no way required. He obviously didn't know that all bass rigs go from zero to ten. Zero being where the volume is off, one being quiet and ten being excruciatingly loud. I have never ever needed to have the volume set above two on that rig.

I got my two basses out of the bag. A string had gone on one of them. Great. Fortunately, I had a new spare set of bass strings with me, so I had to change them all. Changing one wouldn't have done it, as the strings were beginning to dull a bit. So I went backstage and did a full string set change as fast as I could. We were then told we were due on stage 'shortly'. No bingo on Sundays there...

On getting back to the stage, I found that our vocal monitors were reverberating through the pull-out stage and causing a low rumble of feedback, so we had to put them just onto the dance floor to solve that. The compere immediately pounced on us and asked us to move them.

By this time I was just about stressed out, but did my level best to keep my cool. "Right, sod our vocal monitors" I said. The others said we needed them, so we turned them down quite a bit. We were all getting just a bit frazzled by this point, I think; Not much stage to set up on, sound problems, due being obliged to set up on a small hollow stage and also moving our stuff round to suit everyone else but ourselves. A disapproving crowd eyed our rather impressive backline and prepared to moan to us about volume.

The organist and drummer were far, far, far louder than we were.

The dressing room was about the size of a phone box - between four of us - while the compere had an equal sized one all to himself. All he did was nip in there and put a tie on. We went into the other bar for a quick drink or two and prepared ourselves mentally for the show.

The show itself went surprisingly ok, despite the grim glares of the keyboard player, who had sat himself at the rear of the room, right facing us, as we went though our two sets. We even went down quite well and had a full dance floor for the second half. We were approached by two people who asked for cards to contact us for private events.

The resident drummer, by the way was completely devoid of 'personality issues' and we had a good chat with him and he said he thought we were great.

The club themselves were fuming that another act had got lost the other week, after trying to find them via the incorrect info given by the very same agent (and probably the club at the other address), so the agent was in for a really well-deserved rocket from them. Nice.

Another case of 'we came, we saw, we left'.

some may have seen this before, and i can only laugh at it well after the event, but.....!!
http://www.northwestbands.co.uk/blog/post/3503/viking/hazards-of-the-trade

Oh..... such fond memories of the crappy pub in Blackburn where a housebrick came sailing through the front window and missed HOTD drummer Ken's head by about 3".