So, I thought that I'd tell the story of my gig on Saturday night. No specifics as they don't mean a lot to the story, it could have been any band, any wedding, anywhere.
There was nothing too exciting to say at first, we set up, sound checked, did the first dance, did the first set. All pretty standard at this point. Something fun that happened after that, the groom got up and played my drums for two songs, and to be honest, he was pretty good! We had fun, the audience were with us from this point! All in all, we got to the end of the second set and everyone had a great time! On paper, this was a great gig.
At this point, I think it was about midnight or so? We were due to leave music running until the end of the party (about 00:30) then pack away and drive home. It was in our interest to do this quickly as it's actually a long old way from Anglesey back to Manchester.
But the reason that I felt like writing this story down comes from a noise complaint in the second set...
The wedding was in a teepee next to a hotel in the middle of nowhere in Anglesey, a seemingly ideal venue where it doesn't matter how much noise you make. Power was running from the main hotel to the teepee to power our equipment and all the lights in the tent. As it happened, while our wedding was happening in the teepee, in the hotel a little birthday celebration was going on for someone, doesn't matter who I guess.
While we were playing our second set, a woman (who I didn't clock as part of the wedding party) came to talk to us (mid song as well, that's really irritating.) She asked us to turn the volume down, we did. And this repeated a couple more times. No bother really, we carried on and finished the set, a little disgruntled, but the gig was fun anyway so that was fine.
After this, the end of the night DJ set was going on, we must have played 3, maybe 4 songs until the whole room was cast into darkness. This struck me as odd, my first thought was that surely the power would trip mid set as we were drawing more electricity than at the end of the night for the DJ set? It was a bit of a mystery. As it transpired, the venue had "pulled the plug" on account of the noise being too much.
Naturally we were a little bemused by this, obviously at this point the volume was much less than the full band line up, and the guests were starting to calm down, but this was the situation and we had to deal with it.
At this point, the people in the main hotel had taken to ignoring us as we tried to talk to someone. They had made their point known, could we at least have the lights back on so that we could pack away without falling over and injuring ourselves??? Apparently not.
So we packed away by the flickering iPhone torchlight and set about packing the van, in a slippery muddy field, in the darkness. This whole process took a little while longer as we couldn't see anything. So we ended up leaving later than we had expected to. Annoying for people who had to get up and work again the next day...
After all this rambling, I just wonder why the venue owners couldn't come and speak to us at least, after potentially damaging a load of music gear by killing the power? Or hypothetically letting one of us slip and injure ourselves as we loaded the gear out? Surely as a venue owner, you appreciate that there is going to be noise, and a lively atmosphere at a wedding / party / function / whatever? It baffles me. Naturally the guests were a bit disgruntled as well, because you always look like the bad guy when the music stops suddenly. Thankfully, they were also frustrated at the venue as opposed to taking it out on us.
There you have it, I've been quite lucky with weddings and function gigs so far, but I thought that this story stuck out as a bit unusual and unreasonable. Did we get pissed off? Maybe a little bit, but you remain professional and carry on, even if the venue at which you're working can't do the same. I was happy to get to bed that night. I wouldn't like to have been the person in charge of the trip advisor account the next day...
Al
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