AllTheseThingsIveDone.com

It has taken me nearly a week to post about Delirious?’s recent gig at ‘The Embassy’ in London’s Mayfair. However, I’m not really sure where to begin with it all. So, here’s my day:

07:30 Pick back line tech Lee up ready to travel to Furious? Records
07:45 Depart Furious? records in Transit van
08:10 Get stuck in traffic jam having covered no more than 7miles
11:15 Arrive venue after a huge traffic jam down Piccadily. Unload van
11:30 Pick up production assitant Tim and head towards Park Lane
11:45 Arrive at Tour Bus in Park Lane. Commence re-loading Transit van.
12:15 Depart Tour Bus
12:30 Arrive back at venue ready to unload the van
13:15 Head off to park van
13:30 Parked van
13:40 Arrive back at venue ready to help where I can
14:40 A job has been found, I’m off to Romford to get a new microphone. Head back to van.
14:50 Depart for Romford, Essex complete with Trevor’s (FoH engineer) mobile phone acting as Sat Nav.
15:15 Sat nav breaks. Many phone calls.
15:25 Sat nav now working.
15:50 7 Miles covered. 10.9 to go.
16:50 Arrive outskirts of Romford. 2 Miles to go.
17:15 Finally arrive at Digital Village (having got lost) ready to buy this new Microphone. Could have problems getting back, the phones battery is now flat.
17:35 Having purchased microphone get back in van and head back to venue. No sat nav. Relying on a battered old A to Z and ‘the force’. I’m doomed!
18:15 Start seeing signs for bits of London I recognise. Maybe I could do this.
18:30 Not far, navigating using an A to Z isn’t one when you’re the only person in the vehicle.
18:45 Trafalgar Square. So close. I can only hope the signs aren’t true and I can get down Regents Street.
18:55 Arrive. Hand Microphone over to Ian Cattle and head off in search of parking.
19:00 Park.
19:10 Arrive back at venue to see another white van. This one’s delivering the PA which isn’t a great sigh. Guess I’d better help with that one too…
19:30 Finally get inside. Say my hellos to friends from Furious/Fierce and Pura*Shop. Also say hi to Dave Wood (who I again must thank for the photo).
20:30 Gig begins. Some serious rocking. Stare The Monster down and Kingdom of Comfort are going to be killer tracks once the new album gets released.
21:15 Get the nod from Ian to retrieve the van ready to get out.
21:45 Return and wait.
22:15 Start loading for run number 1.
22:30 Head off for the tour bus which has returned to Park Lane.
22:40 Arrive at Tour Bus and start unloading.
23:05 Depart Tour Bus.
23:15 Arrive at venue to collect equipment for run number 2.
23:30 Depart for Tour Bus.
23:40 Arrive at Tour Bus and start unloading van.
23:55 Depart for The Dorchester hotel. I’m not staying there. Rather the crew are showering before heading off for Dublin.
00:05 Head for home
00:30 Get Diesel somewhere in South London
01:15 Have slight scare when back end of van starts to slide
01:55 Get back to Furious? records and my car
02:15 Get home and head to bed

Yesterday I had the privilege of going on a gig with my friends ‘Delirious?’. Officially I was there to help their back line tech, Lee, out with some of his duties. I should, perhaps, explain this a little more;

Since July I’ve been helping the boys out by driving their van to the airport. See here. As well as this Lee has been training me in the ways of the back line tech. We’ve looked at a few bits and bobs, including the wonderful world of pop riveting. He’s also taught me how exactly Tim’s keyboard rig all goes together.

So, back to Horsham. The main things I had to do were unload the smallest trailer in the world and shunt things onto the stage area of the National Revival Centre and then set up Tim’s keyboard equipment. Once that had been done I set about giving Lee a hand with Stew’s drum kit. After that, well I got to play with a few toys; Mainly Jon’s MIDI Bass pickup that allows him to produce those big phat synth lines. Not for the first time my bottom wobbled (perhaps I should sort that).

After lunch and some sitting around in catering (later to be renamed d:’s dressing room) support band Electralyte arrived and I helped load them in onto stage. After I returned to catering and sat around waiting for the boys to arrive. Slowly they began to appear; First Mart, then Stu, then Jon, then Tim, and then…well I’d like to say that Stew arrived but he took his time. So long that the boys plus FoH engineer Trevor were thinking of forming a new band with Martin playing drums. It was an interesting sight. Once Stew arrived the boys all got on with the business of Sound Checking.

Dinner was next on the agenda complete with playing with new mobile phones, and finding out why Stew was late. It seems the post code that had been published was wrong. If, like me and several others, you followed it you ended up in a housing estate. Not good.

Time passed and all too soon it was time for one legendary Dave, Dave Payne, to pray and with that the boys headed off to do what they do best. Since I’m pretty rubbish at writing gig reviews I’ll leave that to another legendary Dave, Dave Wood, who runs delirious.org.uk. And whom I have to thank for the picture at the top of this post.

After the gig pretty much the reverse of setup happens, except a lot lot faster. I was out of there by 11:15 ready for the short drive home.

Bring on Tuesday. Except that could be a harder day.

Another day, another town ticked off. There seem a lot more to tick off. It was another early start; Though 6 am is much better than 2 am.

If you’re reading this and are American I have to tell you that I shall be mentioning the town of Buckingham. Though don’t go there as Buckingham Palace is in London. Though it was named after Lord Buckingham.

Anyway, back to the gig. We arrived at what has to be one of the most beautiful Churches that I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, when we first arrived there was no time to take it in. We had 40 minutes to get all the equipment in and the set the majority of it up before Jim started his training seminars. A word comes to mind: Bugger.

Still with no superhuman powers, but having had Brentwood as a warm up everything was inside in 15 minutes flat. And I was soon working out cable runs. I could sound big headed but I won’t otherwise Rosie will be popping my ego down to size! I did get everything ready for a rig test, but that would have to wait. When I finally got to the test everything ran smoothly. As did the other seminar. So, we’ll skip a few hours past lunch (which I definitely won’t mention) to sound check.

As I mentioned in the Brentwood post Jim uses IEM. This makes it ever so easy unless you come across a frequency problem or a radio dead spot. So, exactly like happened here in Buckingham. A lot of head scratching later and we finally decided that we’d move the piano to see if that improved things. Amazingly it did slightly improve the situation. Well, enough to keep using them.

With sound check completed it was time for the show. Jim’s new start is both surreal and hilarious, it constantly reminds me of Austin Powers. Oh, Behave!

Much of the show hasn’t changed since late 2006, and we’re about 6 to 8 months behind in the development of the show. But none of this matters. Jim is still Jim. His style is so unique and the way he delivers the gospel message is so subtle yet powerful. You can’t fail to be impressed.

It was a better show than Brentwood, but that’s not surprising before Brentwood we’d not been on the road since the beginning of September. As life makes another shift and gigs start becoming more regular things will develop and a fairly normal service will resume.