Well, I engineered the Lemanis gig and it went reasonably well apart from the occasional technical difficulties on stage, which wasn’t too bad, at least it wasn’t my equipment that was at fault, it turned out to be a dodgy guitar jack lead in Lemanis’ case, it’s always something incredibly simple. The sound was good all night, although the only heavy band of the night Facing Evolution were insanely loud, but it still sounded really good. The Memes were excellent, well impressed with their Portishead style sound, although more technical issues with keyboards and DI boxes, which turned out to be a channel mix up, not surprising considering I used up all 22 available channels. There are 24 channels on the desk, but for some bizarre reason, the stagebox has 22 inputs and 6 returns, which are not even used in our setup currently. The Various Assortments made a return to the Voodoo Lounge after making their debut at Alternation some months ago before I dropped live music because it wasn’t working. I like this band, they certainly live up to their name, their music is a mix of styles and its hard to put them into any specific box. Lemanis were very good, even with all the screw ups because of the lack of practice, and it was James’ last ever performance with Lemanis, and the first performance I have seen with Nick, the namesake of the band, as it’s his surname the band is named after. But it was ‘Boy/Girl Song’ and Tamsyn that stole the show yet again, but I was happy with my nights work, and all the bands were happy with the sound on and off stage, which is always nice to hear as an engineer. It’s all about having confidence in your own ability and being able to adapt on the fly as the night progresses, and my logical thinking brain helps me achieve that on most occasions! I even resisted the temptation to drink despite many offers of being bought a drink, all I wanted to do was get the gig over and done with and get some food as I hadn’t eaten all day, alcohol on an empty stomach isn’t a very good combination come the morning; so it was Coke all night for me!
England have taken command in the third test at Old Trafford against the West Indies bowling out the Windies for 229 runs in just 52 overs. Earlier in the day Ian Bell fell just short of a test century falling on 97 runs. Harmison, Sidebottom and Panesar added 47 to take England to a respectable total fo 370 all out. It was Monty Panesar and Ryan Sidebottom that did the damage with the ball as well when the Windies collapsed from 216 – 4 to 229 all out in just 44 deliveries, Panesar took 4 – 50 and Sidebottom took 3 – 47. It’s looking very likely that England will take their second successive win over the Windies in convincing fashion, but this is English cricket, anything could happen, at stumps on day two England were 34 – 1 after Andrew Strauss fell LBW for a duck only four balls into his innings, Cook and Vaughan finished the day on 12 and 10 respectively to give England a lead of 175 combined innings score. I reckon that England will aim to create a lead of 400 runs and put the West Indies into bat, England must fancy their chances to bowl out the West Indies again based on the Windies current batting form; it’ll certainly give the team confidence!
Oh poor Paris Hilton… being dragged back to jail kicking and screaming after a judge overturned the Sheriff’s decision to release her on ‘undisclosed’ medical grounds on Thursday. Why this action wasn’t taken to start with baffles me, she committed the crime and then broke her probation order on more than one occasion, so she should have to serve her sentence like any other prisoner. She has been sent to a special secure medical and psychiatric centre for a further 40 days, so her supposed ill health has only made her stay in jail longer, I think you can call that sweet justice. There can’t be one rule for the ordinary person on the street and another for celebrities, let’s face it she hasn’t even earned her fame, she’s famous for being a socialite heiress to the Hilton Empire. I wouldn’t be surprised if she manages to wrangle her way out of her sentence somehow, just do the fucking time woman, it’s 40 days, it’s not 40 years, it’s a another case of spoilt little rich kid!
