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Well finally after all these years of investment I have the best equipment set up ever. 

This year and some of last year I ploughed money into replacing speakers with higher quality ones than ever when I went all out for Electrovoice subs and tops which have the added benefit of being lighter as well as punchier sounding and cleaner then the previous JBLs. Somewhere in amongst these upgrades I bought some Yamaha DXR 15" tops which make a very nice addition to a bigger set up and so are definately not wasted! I just got new replacement circuit boards for the JBLs which has the effect of stopping all the age crackle that I was getting - You could have them at a steady volume but there was no ajusting mid gig! Now smooth and clean like new again. Recycling at it's best, as they sit nicely in a six speaker set up as extra top (treble range).

My most exciting puchase of late is the gigbar 2 from Chauvet. It used to take me 20 minutes to set up the lighting rig and to be honest I'd probably still be using that system now if it wern't for the fact that the special electric mounting bar wasn't seriously worn out from many years of gigging. Trouble was, they've stopped making the damn things and liquid metal (JB coldweld) repairs only hold lighting units up for so long before the weld fails and the units fall off. So the upshot is that I bought this new unit with all the same lighting effects including strobe, ultra violet, Moonflower (floor patterns) , Colourwash (for room colour) AND laser too all in and on the bar in miniture. Permanantly attached and brighter than the previous effects, it all fits into a guitar sized case and can be up and running in five minutes! I This tegether with the lighter speakers and more compact console means set up is much improved to what it was only a year or two ago.

This means I enjoy gigs more than ever now, as there is less hassle getting in and out of venues and less time for staff and customers to wait for me at the end of the gig. Colours are brighter too which gives a different dimension to the performance.

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Last night I didn't have a gig, so I decided to brave Eurovision. This is the first time I've done this since 2009 when I was with my then German girlfriend Becky at her Mother's lovely house in a village near Bremen and it was mandatory viewing.

First of all top marks to the company that provided the staging graphics. I've never seen anything quite so awsome even at a U2 concert. (Credit to U2, this was the Orange tour I'm refering to and that was some years ago). They were simply cutting-edge wonderful. I suspect it might have been G-force, who have come a long way since creating amazing desktop PC music visualisation effects and have formed the backdrop to at least one George Michael tour amongst other artists. I'm only guessing though. I could be wrong.

The juxtoposition of these amazing stage graphics to an almost completely dire set of songs was something to behold. Not one decent song in 26, oh well, apart from our entry. I didn't think it was a masterpiece, but it remains a melodic, well put together song none the less. 

And now I hear today (Sunday) that it came third from the bottom in the voting. The favourite was Russia. Great graphics and great performance around them, but crap song again.

The winner was Ukraine. A well depressing bunch of garbage. The theme was political and personal to the performer, but again contained no decent orchestration, melody or correct use of chords etc. to back up the emotion of it. Result - Rubbish. Brutal? Perhaps. True? Definitely.

In my humble opinion, though I only saw bits of it, The cypriot entry wasn't quite as bad as the others, but scored really quite badly. Austria was melodic, but a bit lame and came 13th.

It seems to me that in order to succeed at Eurovision these days, you have to drop any notion of musical knowledge of using the right chords for the mood, proper musical arangment and any hint of a melody, not to mention actually singing in tune on the night. This despite the only live element being the vocals. - Try and find any instrument with a lead attached to it - Too time consuming sound checking all those artists I guess. Easier to put on their studio track - Top Of The Pops style. Thus a rock band come on and sound as dry as a desert rat's testicles. (For anybody under 30 reading this TOTP was a music show on BBC1 on a Thursday night which was axed on the premise that we'd all prefer watching MTV or music video channels than watching chart acts "perform" their latest offerings to lip sync. Just how wrong can you be? Well I don't get MTV because I hate sky and Rupert "Media fascist" Murdock and I can't stand music videos going round and round on a loop, never relating to any notion of performance; just a fast cut (epileptic caution) montage of unrelated and irelevant film clips pasted together over a song. That's why.  Top of the Pops was a legend that I'm afraid you'll only get to see at Christmas for some bizarre reason.

However, I digress....

So much of music now seems to be like the proverbial "empirer's new clothes". I feel like the minority who can see that the fraudster isn't actually wearing any whilst most apparently can't. Though to be fair, Although I despair at some of the chart acts of today, desperately trying not to write anything with any distinguishable melody (lacking talent or afraid of infringing someone's copywrite - You decide), I'm actually in awe of everything in the current charts compared to everything (bar the UK entry) I had to endure last night. Which brings me to Justin Timberlake:

I wonder what Justin Timberlake thought last night as he too had to sit through all that crap in the green room before coming on with his kick-ass band of top players and equally kick-ass set. I've not liked everything Justin has done by any means but the two numbers last night were top notch. Credit where it's due. Anyway, how did he feel? Smug, I'm guessing. What do you think?

it's hard to think that this is the show that brought us Abba. But forget about Abba for a minute, Justin timberlake Started out what 20 years ago? Look how far ability has fallen in just 20 years. Where is the next Prince, Jimmi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Etc.?

Not to leave you on a downer, Consider this as a last thought: What have all the top selling musician's got in common? Could it be melody? Orchestration? When will record companies get this? Adele, Calvin Harris, Bruno Mars, David Guetta, Galantis, DNC.... They all produce melodic tracks and they are the top sellers of today. How did this get by the Eurovision acts/Jury? Is this a European musical conspiracy to bore us all to death? Is this the real future of remaining in Europe?

I hope we never find out!

Take care and thanks for reading.

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Hi there again. In all my years of doing this job I can't help noticing one thing in particular. Long 5 to 6 hour gigs tend to drag on not just for me, but for the guests too. Sometimes particularly weddings seem to have to go on depending on the venue and set up situation. But if you can keep cool and restrict our performance to 4 hours or better still say 3 hours, what you will get is focused attention!

Time and time again I've done long sprawling 5 to 6 or even longer gigs where the crowd knows I'm there for ever and a day and they don't pay much attention until the last hour or even worse the last half hour!

Then guess what? I've been on my feet for hours and and looking forward to the end vs. The crowd suddenly doesn't want anything of the sort! Sometimes they are able to pay me to go on for extra time and I have to take a deep breath and psych myelf up again, but more often than not the staff at the venue are also anxious to get away and the owner is thinking of the neighbours and his licence restrictions. The bolder and sometimes more drunk members of the party are insisting on one more song after one more song (even after the encore) and I am having to be a kill joy and refuse! Not a role that I relish, being who and what I am..

So here's the other side of the coin: This usually happens when it a dinner dance or wedding and the dinner part runs hopelessly over time. I get a 3 hour window or maybe a 2 hour wondow to get everyone up and dancing their arses off. Attention becomes much more focused on both sides. I have to fill the floor from the get go and the crowd can't spend hours and hours wasting time outside sitting about by the waterfall/walking to the car/hanging out in their bedroom/smoking/having sex in the toilets/fighting/taking drugs/insert your activity here... What they do is stick around and get their request in before it's all over! And the result? Full floor from start to finish. Tonnes more atmosphere, Better sounding compact performance with no time for long introspective musical journeys for me or a small clique of guests ie: There is no time to play those tracks which empty the floor for the sake of one or two people.

I don't know if it will ever happen this way as I'm just one bloke and this system is ingrained now for better or worse. What I am saying is that quality beats the hell out of quantity everytime and you being the booker have the power to change it to just that. Remember that timeless saying in entertainment? "Allways leave them wanting more".

Until next time, all the best,

Mike