Yes, playing live is a supremely enjoyable experience, whether it´s in front of 20 people in your local pub or - and we have this on great authority - at the local Enormodome on the outside of town.
However, we´re sure you´ll agree that the most tiresome part of any gig in which many of us are likely to take part is the humping of the gear. Think about it: bare minimum for a full electric gig with a band has to be two guitars, a couple of pedals and a combo. Lo and behold, you´ve already run out of hands.
Start upping the ante with a pedal board, a head and two cabs plus four guitars, and load-in can become a right chew on. Add into the mix a drummer who can´t drive (so he rams his kits into the back of your car, cunningly gouging lumps out of your amp in the process) or a singer who doesn´t feel he has to help as “I´ve already got my mic..” and your enthusiasm for playing live can wane pretty quickly.
And that´s not all. If you play at a venue that´s located in a city centre, chances are you won´t be able to find anywhere to park, so you´ll need to hoik everything inside the venue in between increasingly regular appearances of unsympathetic traffic wardens before driving off to leave your van on an ill-lit side-street with a diminishing hope of it still being there on your return. Assuming you can find it again, of course.
Final choker is often a load-in up flights of stairs. Those of you who are yet to experience wrestling with two full Marshall stacks, a 13-piece kit and an Ampeg 8x10 up an external staircase in the rain (hello, Cardiff´s Clwb Ifor Bach and Bristol´s Louisiana: awesome venues, great people, terrible load-outs...too many stairs.), you´ve not tasted what gigging in Blighty can entail.
All this...
...needs to get down there (and back up again)...
...for the simple pleasures of doing this...
The reason for this mediocre preamble is that we´ve found a great video of what it takes to put the most recent Kiss stage into being. Yes, we know that members of a band such as that doesn´t need to worry if they´ve brought sufficient strings, leads and nine-volt batteries to a gig, but check just how big the production is and how big the associated crew must be to get it all set-up.
If it´s not a further motivation to ‘make it´, we don´t know what is.
Visit Blabbermouth.net below, scroll down and then click to enjoy.
Click here...
