Page 36 - RYAN'S GIG GUIDE JANUARY 2015

RGG January 2015 - p.36
Venues once replete with patrons and pint pots
over flowing to the tunes of your giddy
warbling become almost desolate wastelands
peppered with guards of the optics who seem
more interested in attending to a Tweet than
engaged in the pulling of a pint
Gigging is going to be a hand to mouth affair
with less money available for lavish nights out
on the gables all Metallica T’d up and running
on liquid confidence and forming the crowd
who worship before your mic stand each night
Playing to an empty room is as soul destroying
an experience as any gigging musician may
dread and the reality of a five piece band
rocking the Macclesfield massive in the ensuing
weeks to come is not an impossible one but
certainly an improbable one So why not cut
out the middle man with a van and the hassle
of lugging a full back line to an arse ‘ole pub in
Bridgened; live stream your performance to an
audience sitting less than a monitor or touch
screen’s width away? Oh sure there are
arguments against even trying such a venture;
what if the stream goes down halfway through
the set? What if the servers simply cannot hold
all the traffic your magnificence will attract?
Suppose there’s an unfixable delay in the
broadcast that results in the previous songs
sound playing over the current tracks
performance? Yeah well eggs omelettes
things of that nature Besides when you break
it all down to brass tacks the pitfalls are far less
pointed than the fakir’s back scabs would
suggest
Live streaming via one of the many web based
portals for same is as easy as a couple of clicks
a disposable email account and a piece of
PayPal pricing of your particular fancy away
Don’t want to be limited to the lap top? Then
grab an app that has all the features and
flavour of the Big Boy ‘Puter version set up the
Android in a bracket and brace confection and
mosh your noggin’ to all your greatest hits
before the unseeing glare of your Samsung eye
piece
I’ve been to gigs – intimate invite only events
where such a set up would be possible save for
a wayward elbow or misplaced pint sailing
through the smoke and sweat And via the
medium of being the friend of a drummer I
have been fortunate enough to bear witness to
a rehearsal cast gig Overall it was a success in
So as Christmas buggers back off to the
bargain bin aisles of the January sales
for another year and the financial
hangover of debt awaits to greet us in
the New Year, the live scene suffers an
unholy attack upon its presence in the
form of double sucker punch blow to
the soft spots; in essencemoney is the
problem, not enough of it being the
cause.
ROBERT BAKER
OUT OF THE MIDLANDS