(no subject)
I'm getting sloppy trying to keep this up to date. I'm having one of those weeks were things have gotten interesting. As of this Friday I will have been to four gigs in a week, and at three of those I've been working.
On the Friday it was off to the Shaftesbury to see the inaugral flight of The Memepunks. Said 'Hello' to a few. Had a interesting chat with some bloke outside who wanted to know what goth was doing or something. Explained the geneology of 'punk begat positive punk which morphed into goth' sort of thing. As for the band, I didn't get it. They just seemed (to me) to be an in-joke for a select group.
Next gig (Sunday) was the happy little bunch of ne'er-do-well heavy metallers. A fairly easy night, no real hassles. The one thing of note was the bald guy, about late-20s, who was absolutely munted. I didn't let him in so he proceeded to hang around outside the venue for about the next 90 minutes. He was there, in a shirt and badly-stained sweater,trying to join in with the groups outside, double-punching the air or putting his chin on some girl's shoulder. How he didn't end up maced or knee'd in the nackers is a testament to the patience of those concerned. He finally snuck into the venue during the set break down. Luckily the door guys from the Fly were there to get him out the venue.
Then on Monday I'm sitting at my portal of power, controlling the destiny and future of many millenia of dead things when I get a call from saucy_goth. Seems that the gig's she was working later in the day were short of someone to play some interstitial sounds and wanted to know if I could do it. OK why not? She said they were looking for "post punk", I can think of a few more qualified to cover that but why should they have all the fun/glory? Agree a time for me starting, I get through my work day, hop on a tube and back to base. Pick up the laptop (about the only way I'd have a chance of covering it at short notice) and down to Dingwalls. Get in, say Hi to Claire, get set up and pressed play.
There was one fluff, a space, about three tracks in when I made the mistake of watching the timer rather than looking at the levels. Oh well, this was not a "club night" just playing filler between bands so no really worries there. Three sets, all of them avoiding playing anything by the headliners (I think it's bad form to play studio mastered tracks of a band just before they play live) and trying to stick to the "post punk" label. I weasled in a Smithereens track *grin* It seems to have fitted with the crunchy, slightly rough-at-the-edges sort of thing I was aiming for at the time. The last set got a few comments of "Like!" and such, but by then I was slip-sliding into the land of the G-word.
Finish up early as there was no play-out after the Chameleons (Vox). Got paid (thanks to saucy_goth for that). I'm sorry if you haven't had as many in as you were expecting so your door take is down. That's one of the dangers of being "a promoter". You don't make a lot of/lose money, sometimes. You make absolutely certain that everyone gets paid, the bands, the DJs, the venue, the door staff, the bar staff, EVERYONE... and they all get paid before you even look at how much money you the promoter has made. That's the risk that YOU, as the promoter, has to take.
Which brings me to last night and a swift bounce over to the Fiddler's Elbow for the Wasted Sinners gig. Made a HUGE mistake by binning my half-read newspaper when I got off the tube (it's a habit I've formed when I get off there normally). Got setup quickly. Lorraine had gone proper "professhernul" by having wrist-bands for people. Early on there was sone twat who turned up in a £30 Primark suit, black shirt, shiny bald head and a Tesco bag full of lager cans. When I told him it was six quid in he suddenly came over all Lock-Stock with "You're 'aving a fuckin' larf, inchya?". No, It's six quid I said as I stood up from behind the table. At this point he seemed to "gt it" and pissed off sharpish. Good riddance! :P
Anyway four bands, Wasted Sinners, Nightwish, Four-Play and Futureshock. Some good performances, some spirited play. Luka's new offering, Futureshock, seem to be coming along nicely. I don't really remember Four-Play. Nightwish I think I've seen before and think they could've cut about 5 minutes off their set by not having the excess guitar-noodling at the end of their last two songs. The Wasted Sinners played well, a lot of cover tracks, a bit too much "Fucking" in the gab between tracks I thought.. and a birthday announcement. Got a nice slice of a light chocolate cake out of it, so can't complain. Lorraine covered her costs and made a little bit on top, possibly, so well done to her.
Back to the day-to-day. Work is wearing me out. I think I'm going to have to get my big boots on and take the driving seat a bit more with a lot of my current list of projects. I'm currently assuming the role of letting other people do all the decision work (with the odd bit of requested input) and me doing the actual grunt work of getting the systems up and running. However it seems that when I do actually poke my head out above the trenches and ask people what is going on, what needs to be done then things actually get done. I'm particularly concerned that there is a lot of undocumented change going on in the electronic environment particularly with vm/Windoze guys just setting up linux/unix vms to do one job, not hardening the systems, taking up a lot of the resources and then moving on to something else. I may do a domain sweep sometime and try to find out just wtf is going on.
My systems are still doing happily, although there are a lot more of them coming into existence than I can give the levels of proper due TLC I'd like to. There will come a consolidation period sometime soon. There has to be or the environment will start to suffer badly from system creep.
I'm doing fucking appalingly at keeping up with timesheets. I'm still waiting to get paid for October, which would close out the Halloween and I've still got to punch through November's numbers. Consideirnf I have to get December's in this week, it must be done. Be a nice little chunk of change to get me through Christmas though! :)
Oh yeah, I got another three months added to my sentence! So I'll be giddilygainfully employed until to end of March. Nice! :)
I'm having an issue with a head squirrel. A few weeks back I had "a moment" with a really cute girl. Problem was (then) that I found out she had her relationship status listed as "It's complicated" and her supposed bloke is someone I work with occasionally (he's also a bit of a "playah"). Well since then he's gone on to state publicly that he's in a relationship with A.N.Other and cute girly seems fairly cut up about it. I'm leaving it all well alone until the new year and then play it by ear. I don't want to get caught up in yet another (post) collapse trauma.
It's cold. I've just had a wonderful pot of chicken balti soup but I'm still feeling the chill. There's birthday drinks on at The Fox, and a club or two happening which I should try and get to if I can stay awake.
On the Friday it was off to the Shaftesbury to see the inaugral flight of The Memepunks. Said 'Hello' to a few. Had a interesting chat with some bloke outside who wanted to know what goth was doing or something. Explained the geneology of 'punk begat positive punk which morphed into goth' sort of thing. As for the band, I didn't get it. They just seemed (to me) to be an in-joke for a select group.
Next gig (Sunday) was the happy little bunch of ne'er-do-well heavy metallers. A fairly easy night, no real hassles. The one thing of note was the bald guy, about late-20s, who was absolutely munted. I didn't let him in so he proceeded to hang around outside the venue for about the next 90 minutes. He was there, in a shirt and badly-stained sweater,trying to join in with the groups outside, double-punching the air or putting his chin on some girl's shoulder. How he didn't end up maced or knee'd in the nackers is a testament to the patience of those concerned. He finally snuck into the venue during the set break down. Luckily the door guys from the Fly were there to get him out the venue.
Then on Monday I'm sitting at my portal of power, controlling the destiny and future of many millenia of dead things when I get a call from saucy_goth. Seems that the gig's she was working later in the day were short of someone to play some interstitial sounds and wanted to know if I could do it. OK why not? She said they were looking for "post punk", I can think of a few more qualified to cover that but why should they have all the fun/glory? Agree a time for me starting, I get through my work day, hop on a tube and back to base. Pick up the laptop (about the only way I'd have a chance of covering it at short notice) and down to Dingwalls. Get in, say Hi to Claire, get set up and pressed play.
There was one fluff, a space, about three tracks in when I made the mistake of watching the timer rather than looking at the levels. Oh well, this was not a "club night" just playing filler between bands so no really worries there. Three sets, all of them avoiding playing anything by the headliners (I think it's bad form to play studio mastered tracks of a band just before they play live) and trying to stick to the "post punk" label. I weasled in a Smithereens track *grin* It seems to have fitted with the crunchy, slightly rough-at-the-edges sort of thing I was aiming for at the time. The last set got a few comments of "Like!" and such, but by then I was slip-sliding into the land of the G-word.
Finish up early as there was no play-out after the Chameleons (Vox). Got paid (thanks to saucy_goth for that). I'm sorry if you haven't had as many in as you were expecting so your door take is down. That's one of the dangers of being "a promoter". You don't make a lot of/lose money, sometimes. You make absolutely certain that everyone gets paid, the bands, the DJs, the venue, the door staff, the bar staff, EVERYONE... and they all get paid before you even look at how much money you the promoter has made. That's the risk that YOU, as the promoter, has to take.
Which brings me to last night and a swift bounce over to the Fiddler's Elbow for the Wasted Sinners gig. Made a HUGE mistake by binning my half-read newspaper when I got off the tube (it's a habit I've formed when I get off there normally). Got setup quickly. Lorraine had gone proper "professhernul" by having wrist-bands for people. Early on there was sone twat who turned up in a £30 Primark suit, black shirt, shiny bald head and a Tesco bag full of lager cans. When I told him it was six quid in he suddenly came over all Lock-Stock with "You're 'aving a fuckin' larf, inchya?". No, It's six quid I said as I stood up from behind the table. At this point he seemed to "gt it" and pissed off sharpish. Good riddance! :P
Anyway four bands, Wasted Sinners, Nightwish, Four-Play and Futureshock. Some good performances, some spirited play. Luka's new offering, Futureshock, seem to be coming along nicely. I don't really remember Four-Play. Nightwish I think I've seen before and think they could've cut about 5 minutes off their set by not having the excess guitar-noodling at the end of their last two songs. The Wasted Sinners played well, a lot of cover tracks, a bit too much "Fucking" in the gab between tracks I thought.. and a birthday announcement. Got a nice slice of a light chocolate cake out of it, so can't complain. Lorraine covered her costs and made a little bit on top, possibly, so well done to her.
Back to the day-to-day. Work is wearing me out. I think I'm going to have to get my big boots on and take the driving seat a bit more with a lot of my current list of projects. I'm currently assuming the role of letting other people do all the decision work (with the odd bit of requested input) and me doing the actual grunt work of getting the systems up and running. However it seems that when I do actually poke my head out above the trenches and ask people what is going on, what needs to be done then things actually get done. I'm particularly concerned that there is a lot of undocumented change going on in the electronic environment particularly with vm/Windoze guys just setting up linux/unix vms to do one job, not hardening the systems, taking up a lot of the resources and then moving on to something else. I may do a domain sweep sometime and try to find out just wtf is going on.
My systems are still doing happily, although there are a lot more of them coming into existence than I can give the levels of proper due TLC I'd like to. There will come a consolidation period sometime soon. There has to be or the environment will start to suffer badly from system creep.
I'm doing fucking appalingly at keeping up with timesheets. I'm still waiting to get paid for October, which would close out the Halloween and I've still got to punch through November's numbers. Consideirnf I have to get December's in this week, it must be done. Be a nice little chunk of change to get me through Christmas though! :)
Oh yeah, I got another three months added to my sentence! So I'll be giddilygainfully employed until to end of March. Nice! :)
I'm having an issue with a head squirrel. A few weeks back I had "a moment" with a really cute girl. Problem was (then) that I found out she had her relationship status listed as "It's complicated" and her supposed bloke is someone I work with occasionally (he's also a bit of a "playah"). Well since then he's gone on to state publicly that he's in a relationship with A.N.Other and cute girly seems fairly cut up about it. I'm leaving it all well alone until the new year and then play it by ear. I don't want to get caught up in yet another (post) collapse trauma.
It's cold. I've just had a wonderful pot of chicken balti soup but I'm still feeling the chill. There's birthday drinks on at The Fox, and a club or two happening which I should try and get to if I can stay awake.