Pre-Christmas with the family

Yeah, it’s been a bit quiet on funkysimon for a fortnight. The first week of that I was busy with the run up to Christmas, but last week I’ve been away mainly at Longleat Center Parks (which is near Bath, if you didn’t know). There we met up with my mum and my eldest brother, who had come over from America bringing his wife and three kids with him. Thus the majority of the week was spent keeping the kids occupied, which is about as easy as herding cats. There was an interesting moment when we showed Dan (the eldest at nearly-seven years old) a nativity scene, and discovered that he didn’t know who the baby was. That’s quite an impressive separation of church and state they’ve got going on over the pond!
For a couple of days of mid-week respite we nipped down to Cornwall to see my Dad, which is where the photo below was taken.

So after a week of haring about, now it’s time to get some serious turkey and mince pie eating done. Merry Christmas or whatever you fancy celebrating!

Last gig of the year

The last Casa del Funk gig of the year, for me at least. Nothing to report, other than that my rock posturing is alive and well: I’ve developed a habit of putting one foot slightly infront of the other and leaning back whilst soloing. For all I know I’m pulling a comedy solo face at the same time. Still, if you’re having fun, why hide it!

Amp repair and a gig

Recently I’ve been less than satisfied with the sound from my Big Amp (a Trace Elliot H50 head), so I thought I’d get it serviced. The Trace brand has been bought by Gibson, however the chaps who used to run it now work for GM Audio, and obviously offer service and repair for their old amps. Sadly they’re down in Essex (innit), so I’d incur extra costs shipping it to them. After a bit of hunting around on the web I found a local company who do amp repair, Panic Music, and dropped the amp off at their place last week, asking for a general service plus a change of output valves for 6L6s (previously the amp used EL34s). The work was completed yesterday, and while it seemed fairly expensive (about £170), I used the amp at a gig last night and it sounds gorgeous again. Apparently the majority of the problem wasn’t the old valves going iffy, rather it was a resistor whose only connection to the circuit board was gravity. Nice. It’s fairly sad, but the second biggest thing for me was that the pilot light on the front (which indicates that the amp is on) is working again. I haven’t seen that little green glow for years!
There was an extra twist to Casa last night; we knew we were using a dep keys player, but at the last minute our bassist couldn’t make it so Steve, who was Casa bassist for years, stepped into the breach, driving over from Birmingham. The years that he and Dave (drummer) have played together really showed, some songs had a serious amount of groove going on, in particular Sir Duke kicked off in a big way. Of course it really helped that the audience were well and truly on for it; Giles often jokes within the first few songs that people probably aren’t drunk enough to be dancing yet, but that we want to see their asses on the dance floor soon. (He’s allowed to say asses, he’s American. The British arse is not the kind of thing to be shaken on a dance floor, and should be content with its stiff upper lip and sense of humour, occasionally being troubled by the idea that it should be more integrated with European Arsch, whereas an American ass is reknowned for its pioneering go-getter spirit. But I digress.) Last night’s audience arrived pre-sozzled, so the dance floor was full from the second song and getting into a good gig frame of mind was easy. Roll on tonight, my last gig for the year!

Hottie Amps

Thought a web enabled fridge was a silly idea? How about a guitar amp in a toaster? There’s something sacrelicious about a picture of a gold top Les plugged into a toaster. (Spotted by our Fenland correspondant.)

I love sound limiters

Ah Christmas, a time beloved of those in covers bands. Actually there are only three Casa gigs this festive season, which started with last night’s gig in King’s College hall. This hall has a sound limiter. For punters who might not be aware of what one of these devices is, a sound limiter is a decibel meter attached to a timer wired into the mains fuse for the room. If the amount of noise goes over a certain volume for a certain amount of time, the limiter pulls the plug on the mains. The one in King’s hall has a light attached to it that shows when there’s too much noise, which led to us (and in particular Joe, who was riding the faders) watching the little orange light, counting the seconds under our breath until madly slapping the master volume down to zero at the last possible moment. It certainly added an extra dimension to our performance! My favourite sound limited gig was one where our then tenor saxophonist “Foghorn” Norgate could trip the limiter just by blowing a low note. After a few attempts at soundchecking we just gave up, fetched a fuck-off huge extension cable, and ran the whole gig from the nearest power outlet not ruled by the Decibel nazis. It was quite entertaining watching the alarm impotently flashing red through most of the gig The funk must go on!