From den121961@yahoo.com Sun Aug 05 21:37:36 2012
Subject:Gig from Hell


It was a gig from hell tonight! I was ready to go an hour early, and decided to grab a sheet of music from the rental van (the work van blew a spark plug out the engine last week). I couldn't find the key! The ONLY key u-haul gave us. Being the boy scout I am I had the van packed with the wurly, Korg CX3 and Leslie, and all the associated accessories. I also had the spare older organ in there, along with the Ventilator (fake Leslie) just in case anything crapped out. So after looking throughout the house, no key! I scram to the Uhaul place, only to find them closed. I come home, thinking I can't stand a band up, and wander down to the studio, looking desperately for something that'll work as an organ. I'm now down to 15 minutes before load-in and it takes ten to get there. There's nothing usable, so I start to dial a friend who I know has a CX3 to beg to use it, when I see the key on a music stand. I grab the key and race over to Musicfest
and it's pouring rain, so there's a bit of a delay on loadin. After it finally slows down I take the leslie on stage, hook up the organ and the piano, and am ready to go. I fire up the organ and all I get is the upper horn on the Leslie. They're now doing soundcheck and the guy from three tower audio has the leslie perfectly miced and everything, but it's unusable without the bottom speaker.So I have to get the ventilator out of the bag, hook that up through a DI box, and there's not even time to grab the monitor amp out of the van. So I'm playing through the vent, can't hear myself, and I'm hoping this thing sound halfway decent out front at least! A little repositioning of the monitor and I can finally hear myself pretty good (thanks to the cooperation of the sound guy). SO I drug out a heavy leslie and didn't even get to use it! However, I learned a lessson, it's not being paranoid to plan for the worst! In spite of the way stuff got started I did have a fun, good night playing with Dina and the gang. Turned out the leslie was a cold solder joint on a resistor, looks like that resistor is heating up, so I'm gonna have to do some reconstructing. The price you pay for going vintage!