As mentioned in my previous entry, I went to the Phoenix last night to see my good friends in S.L.O.T. play for their album launch party, and the place was rammed, when did they become so popular? and far too much jailbait in the house, guess it doesn’t hurt to look, right? especially when half of them were wearing clothes that didn’t leave much to the imagination, I know all the lads out there know what I mean, especially you Tomas ;) Anyway, that’s not what this entry is about, got a little sidetracked there! If you are a regular reader you will know that the Phoenix had acquired a bigger (and what we all thought to be better) sound desk, but how wrong were we? The answer is incredibly wrong, little niggles have be coming out for weeks as found out by various soundmen, and last night was a complete meltdown. Channels stopping working suddenly, then other channels working when switched off, and sub groups feeding back of their own accord, John the allocated soundman for the night created a new knob, the “Random Unpredictable Quirk” dial, which was cranked up to max for this night. Anyway to cut a long story short, we are going back to our 16 channel sound desk, which doesn’t look as impressive, or have as many features, but it’s reliable, we really don’t want things failing in the middle of a big touring bands set. It’s a real shame really as the desk could have been perfect for our needs if it worked properly. Speaking of sound engineering, I have been confirmed as doing four more gigs in the next two weeks, which is handy as I need the money, but those gigs will be without the 2-channel 31 band EQ, compressor and effects rack, so its back to basics, guess this will be a test of my sound engineering skills, let’s see how good I am, when all the problem frequencies aren’t knocked out, will be interesting. And no I don’t get a nice soft gig to start; I have a hardcore gig to reacquaint myself with the Yamaha desk!