As you know from my previous blog entry, I was sound engineer for the private party at the Phoenix last Thursday. Which in itself is fine, but I was not impressed by the organisation of the event, I arrive to find out that there was going to be five bands instead of four, so everything needed to start at 7:30pm to run on time. But when I tried to get the first band on, they hadn’t turned up yet, and was informed that a band was being dropped from the running order. So I sound checked the second band at 7:45pm with a view to start playing at 8pm. But they disappeared and I couldn’t find them until 8:20pm, so now I am already running 20 minutes late. Then I get handed a piece of paper saying that there are five bands, and the last band was due to play at 11pm, when the last band should have been winding up. To cut a long story short, two of the bands decided to take the piss and play longer than I said they could, and the penultimate band, who’s party it was were blatantly taking the piss, and I was fast losing patience. The net result is that I turned all the channels off on the desk, which they hurled abuse at me for, and I responded with some colourful language, let’s say. The final band, who were the best of the night in my opinion, only got to play two songs, which is annoying for me, the people that came to see them, and the band as they lent all their kit to the bands all night, and that’s how they got repaid. I think that I probably made a few more enemies that night; I am not taking that sort of abuse from those gob-shites, but the final band were understanding of the situation. I wish that the Phoenix didn’t allow five bands to play on a single night as it doesn’t allow for enough time to do everything, it’s always nice to have a little leeway on time to account for technical issues, which happens more often that you could possibly imagine, three bands would be great for each night as if the first band went on at 8pm, then they could play a 40 minute set, and have 20 minutes for changovers, but that’s unlikely to happen!