Not Good

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Some say bad things come in threes. So here's a post of three bad things.

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The gig was a rather qualified success for the performers, a borderline success for the organisers, and a disaster for me. To see why, here Kapitano's list of things to remember when putting on a concert:

(1) If you advertise a gig as starting at 8pm Saturday and running through to 1am Sunday, do not expect the audience to arrive at 8pm sharp and stay till 1. Most will arrive around 9 and drift away around 11.

(1.1) This means the first act will play to those other bands who've turned up on time, and the last will play to a dozen drunks who want to avoid going home.

(1.2) There will always be at least one band who turn up late. They will not realise that this inconveniences anyone.

(2) If the aim of the gig is to raise funds, charging GBP5 on the door won't work. It will make people stay away - in droves. Charge GBP1 on the door and find other ways to get money out of punters once they're already inside.

(3) When choosing a room, location of venue is important, but don't forget about acoustics. A room that smears any music into an impenetrable soup of reverberation is not good, no matter how well placed in the town it may be.

(3.1) You should check out the sound of the room before you book it. Duh.

(4) A friendly sound engineer is nice. A cute sound engineer is also nice. But an experienced sound engineer is what you actually need.

(4.1) Do not let him place the speakers next to the microphones, as this causes feedback.

(4.2) If possible, place the mixing desk in a position that lets him judge what the audience are hearing, so he can compensate. This is the point of having a mixing desk in the first place.

(4.3) A good sound system is worth the effort. Or rather, a lousy one isn't worth the effort.

(5) There will be delays. There will be delays. There will be delays.

(5.1) Your neat timetable will not match reality. Acts will go on too long, there will be endless faffing about between sets, pointless discussion and vacillation will take up time, and at least one act will feel the need to explain each and every song at great length before playing it.

(5.2) Soundchecks take longer than you expect. If you expect them to take longer than you expect, they will take longer than that.

(5.3) Expect the last act to go on one hour after they're scheduled.

(5.4) Yes, I know you think this gig is different. You think it's well planned and you've taken everything into account. You haven't. There will be delays.

(5.5) If you have five bands booked and no spare time, booking a sixth at the last minute is not a good idea.

(5.6) When a band agree to cut their twenty minute set to ten minutes, be aware that it will actually last half an hour.

(5.6.1) Musicians are egoists and liars - they will "forget" to cut down their set, and play extra songs if they think think the audience is with them and you don't stop them.

(5.7) Musicians cannot accurately judge the mood of the audience from the stage.

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I'd spent the last week putting together a series of backing tracks. They had strong, definite beats and simple, unambiguous tonality - there was no time to make anything fancy.

Played through the big speakers I couldn't hear the beat I was supposed to be synchronising to, or discern the tone I was supposed to be harmonising to. I had six songs, but gave up after three.

Others told me I sounded fine. Exactly why people should think obvious untruths are comforting I don't know. If you're going to take comfort, it's got to be in something at least halfway plausible.

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I have a friend, MK, who I've known for twenty years. For the first nineteen of these, all we did was occasionally perform oral sex on each other when his (heterosexual) lovelife was in trouble. He was always getting dumped, or getting involved with women who messed up his life simply by being so messed up themselves.

We weren't really friends, but he called it friendship so he didn't have to call it sex. He had other men but they never lasted - he always came back to me.

All this time he'd been drifting in and out of drug use. Cannabis, ecstasy and occasionally amphetamines. For the last year he's been desperate to give them all up, get a job and sort his life out. I gave whatever encouragement and advice I could - he said I was the only real friend he had, the only one who understood him.

Now he really has given up all the drugs, and the tobacco, and got a job...and plunged headlong into alcoholism. I've seen it happen before, though not this quickly, when one dependency gets smoothly replaced by another.

And now it seems I've moved seamlessly from being fuckbuddy thinly disguised as only real friend...to honest to goodness only real friend. Suddenly he doesn't want sex - he wants the conversations that were always the excuse for sex.

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For the last six months, mother has been suffering from pain and swelling in her right leg. Diagnoses from various doctors have ranged from arthritis to water on the knee. After a PET scan yesterday, it seems bloodflow to the leg is being progressively cut off by a tumor in the pelvis.

In three months she's scheduled to have an operation to remove the tumor, and in the meantime is under strict instructions to lose three stone in body fat to make the operation easier.

Seven years ago she did just that - lost three stone overnight when a tumor was removed from her stomach. Another fortnight in her system and it would have killed her just by growing larger.

My parents told me these bare details only very grudgingly, as though I were too young to deal with the situation, or being close to death were somehow a shameful secret.

I was making lists of things that would have to be done if she died. Maybe my father was doing the same - he never said.

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