Bad gig!

We finished a gig at the local Jollibee store just a few minutes ago and I have to say it was a struggle the whole time. (For those who don’t know, Jollibee is the Filipino version of McDonald’s). Here’s a list of the things that went wrong:

1) The amplifier that SoundChaser provided was not for acoustic guitars but for electric, giving my acoustic a rather harsh and tinny tone. I think it also had some digital effects because it made my guitar sound a bit out of tune, but by the time I figured that out we were already playing.

2) My DL4 wouldn’t loop! I was doing my intro to Clapton’s “Change The World” but no sound came when I lay down my first track. Since we were already starting the song I couldn’t stop and fiddle with the thing, so I had to make do with a rather boring rendition. No leads, no solos, just plain rhythm. Good thing my singer Ellen has such a great voice it really didn’t matter.

3) Which brings us to actually the first thing that went wrong: we sang minus our other singer Kukie. Jollibee had limited budget so we felt it wasn’t worth singing as a trio because we had to split the money three-way, but on hindsight we really should have performed as a complete group even if it meant settling for a small talent fee each. We shouldn’t have sacrificed our sound just because the pay was small.

4) The people were not into our music! The crowd was mainly composed of Jollibee crew from various stores in Davao City, and they were mostly young people who liked R&B and rap and that kind of thing. Since 220 is basically pop-rock-blues they couldn’t dig it.

The last item was probably the most crucial, and I am now thinking if we have to change our lineup or stick to what we like and just hope enough people like us to keep us in the running. I’m inclined not to because a large part of why we do what we do is because we love the type of music we play. I’ve never liked R&B and rap and I think we’ll be doing ourselves and our audiences a disservice if we include songs in those styles just because some people like them.

Oh well, at least there’s still the gig tomorrow night. That’ll be the debut of Carissa Gempesaw, daughter of the manager of Basti’s Brew where we’ve played several times. Here’s hoping that’ll turn out better…