Lovapalooza

As I had been writing here the past two weeks or so, 220 was slated to perform during the Davao City leg of CloseUp Lovapalooza at Matina Town Square last Saturday, February 11 (the same event was happening at the same time in Manila, Cebu, and Angeles). Notice I said “during,” not “at”: while the event was indeed Lovapalooza, we actually played at what I call the “sideshow” to the main event. There were two stages at MTS: the main one, rigged just for the event, in front of BluGré Coffee, and the “minor” one which was the regular stage at the Taboan. The main stage was where the “national celebrities” like Rivermaya, Rachelle Ann Go, Sheryn Regis, and others whose names escape me now performed. Taboan was for the “locals,” which were 220, IVPlay, and u.no.me.

Anyway, in spite of an early evening downpour there was a huge crowd at MTS, and Taboan itself was filled to the rafters. It was our first time to perform there, so the large turnout made me a little nervous. It didn’t help that the sound check that afternoon didn’t really work out too well: the sound tech couldn’t give me the right mix, and my guitar, which had been plugged directly into the mixer, kept booming when I played some low notes. Finally they gave me an acoustic guitar amp, but it sounded worse so I ended up turning it off and resigning myself to relying on what sound the tech could give me. Fortunately, after sound check I decided to twiddle with the amp, and I discovered that the graphic equalizer switch had been turned off. When I flipped it and tweaked the equalizer, I got a decent sound – still not quite satisfying, but better than what I was getting minutes before.

After dinner at BluGré (the Lovapalooza organizer, Gatchi Gatchalian, is the owner of the café) we went straight to Taboan to make it to the 7 p.m. start. We sat and waited… and waited… and waited. At 7:30 we were becoming restless and so we asked the production people what the holdup was, and we were told that the emcee was still hosting the main event and we had to wait for him to start our side of the show. After countless assurances that we were about to start, we finally made it to the stage at 8:30, an hour-and-a-half later than the set time.

I was already a little frazzled at this point from all the waiting, but we still managed to pull off a good first set. The guitar sound was decent, the microphones were clear, and the people were appreciative. We started off strong with “Change The World” with Ellen on vocals, then “Cool With You” with Kukie. After “True” and just before singing “Shakespeare In Love” I read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and dedicated it to my wife Dadai, who unfortunately had left her seat to talk with the sound guy about improving my sound. She heard me, though.

We had been given 45 minutes for each set so we were surprised when a production assistant flashed us a “one more last song (sic)” sign after the fifth number. So after singing only six songs we headed downstage, and I didn’t know if I would be happy or angry about that. On the one hand, doing only six songs meant less effort on our part; on the other hand, we wanted this Taboan debut to be good because we’re looking at playing there regularly.

The next band was IVPlay, a regular at Taboan, but they, too, were cut short after singing only a few songs. That’s what happens when an event starts late, we told each other. We then gave our last set, but this time my guitar sound degenerated into a thin, trebly mush that felt like it was coming out of a sardine can. We sang about eight songs before we were told to stop, and so all in all we performed for about an hour. In a way that was good because we were paid the same amount for working half the time, but again, we felt we were a little shortchanged because we wanted to give a strong show.

Lessons to be learned? Well, again I see that amplifying an acoustic guitar is more difficult than it seems, especially when the sound tech is used to amplifying mainly electric instruments and when the sound system is geared for electric guitars. I’m now seriously thinking of getting myself an acoustic simulator, probably a Behringer AM100 Acoustic Modeler that I saw at Perfect Pitch the other day. I’ll test it first and post my thoughts on it later.

Another lesson is to be prepared for late starts particularly for special events like Lovapalooza. Delays are perhaps part of the package when you have so many “stars” and “wannabe stars,” and maybe there’s nothing we can do about it. Next time we’ll just relax and wait… and wait… and wait…