Tall Red
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Gary Numan 50th birthdayHas anybody been to the Gary Numan gig on Saturday March 8th in Manchester?
I would love to hear any good stories about that night, as I know one of the bands who played at the afterparty (DeviantUK, which is a band worth checking out!).
The story on their review was a nightmare for any musician. I'll share a bit of it with you guys:
| Quote: | The venue had - some might say unwisely perhaps - booked an under 18s club 'night' running from 6pm - immediately after the soundcheck - through to 9.30pm in the very room we were going to play in. This meant our gear was at the mercy of what later turned out to be the Children of the Corn, only with hoodies, eyeliner and in some cases a penchant for self-harm. Trepidation turned to impending doom as we were almost trampled under the feet of the first wave of befringed emos [who all seemed about ten] crashing up the stairs.
I couldn't resist popping back into the venue an hour later, in an attempt to alleviate my fears. No alcohol on sale - how bad could things be? I had to ask, didn't I? Drunken pilled-up carnage. 400 My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy fans moshing to the Killers, of all things. They were on the stage. They were behind the barriers. They were on top of the barriers. A group of half-cut girls had mysteriously decided to use one of my stage jackets as a picnic blanket and were sitting on it. And as it turned out, their friends were on top of the PA moments later. Oh good.
We surveyed the devastation just before doors opened at 10pm. It appeared that Hurricane Katrina had just torn through the venue with the sole intention of destroying the PA, leaving just enough life in it to last until the very moment our intro started. The cabs had been toppled over tearing all the custom cables among other things. I was not filled with confidence when I saw the soldering irons coming out.
The endless stream of euphoric Numan fans pouring into the venue just piled on the pressure and as the crowd neared the 250 mark, the control freak within me started to rock back and forth repeating 'it will be fine'. That's the last time I ever listen to him, I'm telling you.
BJ arrived with Gary Numan's full band and Gemma, his wife, who had come over to see us play. No pressure then. He took one look at my face and my panic slowly infected him too. A worry shared is a worry halved. What a load of bollocks that turned out to be.
YTDS rocked through a set of classic Numan favourites, dogged slightly by inconsistent sound but powerful nonetheless [an hour later, 'inconsistent' would be something we could only dream of]. They'd invited me to join them onstage to sing on 'Cars' and it was a lot of fun despite me having about 24 inches to move in and apparently bereft of anything approaching stage presence.
Then, a whole new pantomime - attempting to put our gear onto the stage while keeping it plugged in. Every single power cable seemed to be precisely two inches too short to reach the powerpoints. I vainly attempted to stretch them somehow in the same way I would be stretching my own hard-earned credibility to breaking point for the next 30 minutes.
The intro started and sounded great. Worries over, I swaggered onto the stage. Each step I took made it increasingly clear that the sound was, in fact, rubbish. For all intents and purposes it seemed to be coming from somewhere under a very large pile of cardboard boxes. In Runcorn.
I was literally cringing that the quality of sound that I pride myself on was gone. As if to add insult to injury, everytime I stepped within a mile radius of the monitors, a squeal of feedback threatened to permanently perforate my eardrums. I am expecting a visit from the RSPCA asking what I have against all the dogs in the North West.
My new mike stand took the brunt of my frustration and was dead before the end of the first song. I sincerely apologised for what was truly awful sound. And then it got exponentially worse. We couldn't stop but carrying on felt like baring my arse live on primetime television.
Every now and again, I appeared to have some invisible cable attached to me - step this way, the bottom end suddenly kicked in. Step back and it disappeared, only to be replaced by a bone-rattling hum or occasionally disappeared altogether. We were tortured by a very occasional burst of our usual pristine sound and then it was gone again. Each time, BJ and I would look at each other in vain hope as if to say 'here we go, we're back' and each time we were left shaking our heads. In disbelief. And for my part, seething rage.
We halved our set for damage limitation and to salvage something of my disintegrating ego. Total helplessness. Had I stormed off like I was very close to doing from about 30 seconds in, I would have looked like a total diva. {BJ later revealed he had been contemplating feigning a heart attack onstage and how I wish he had]. Tempting as it was to strop off, we soldiered on until we realised that the problem wasn't going to be fixed. We dropped six songs, apologised again and finished on our cover of 'We Have a Technical' in a bid to leave the audience with yet another terrible sounding song but at least it would be a terrible sounding song that they actually knew. |
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Will
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I was there!
Saw the little buggers hangin around outside while wee had our pre-meet
Deviant are a cool band(known Jason from the Numan scene for many a year)
Y.T.D.S. were also playing,eqiupment just managed to hold up for them but by the time Deviant took to the stage most of it gave up the ghost.
The gig was superb!! Great music,great friends.
I had been at Newcastle gig the day before and had a great time but this being the 50th birthday gig many of the long term fans were there,great to see so mant of my freinds,chatted and hugged people all night 
They brought a cake onto the stage for Gary and the crowd all sang happy birthday.
Got a message from Jason appologising about the gig and saying he'll put it right by playing Glasgow soon
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Will
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Gary gets his birthday cake on stage
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Will
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Couple of pics for you too Edith of DeviantUK on the night
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Loretta
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Werent they in the film Salems Lot? 
Jus kiddin Will.. I love Numan.
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