with Launchbox at the Gashaus

It was a totally different gig experience yesterday at Gashaus. I sessioned with Launchbox, we played alternative tunes that were new to me drummingwise. I find those songs challenging as the grooves were really unusual, specially the Barbie's Cradle's "Independence Day" and Sugar Hiccup's "Womb." Really enjoyable stuff for drummers.

My Gashaus experience has cleared skepticisms my former and defunct band 'thewoohoos' had as we thought they had the worst soundsystem setup and room acoustic quality. Not at all, they had brand new Marshall amps for all the guitars, 3-piece mic with boomstands, Tama Starclassic Drumkit with Sabian cymbals (basic hihat, two crash and a ride cymbals, plus a splash and a china crash, and dual iron cobra bass kick), a rare gig treat for drummers. Based on the feedback we received from friends who watched, the soundmix was very good at the audience area. The only setback was there was no monitor speakers for the performers. I was literally deaf to the vocalists but the guitars were good enough for me to hear. Besides that, the given set was only limited to 30-mins. Each band was required to clear at least 15nos of $10-each tickets. If you were to invite friends to watch I'm sure they will feel cheated, unless if the other bands performed similar radio-friendly tunes as we did. The rest played grunge and metal (i could be bias as we left with a few more bands to perform, i guess they played heavy ones too). Ok to me as a musician, but I felt our invited friends did not appreciate the other groups.

We performed around 5:30pm, almost halfway through the 'Musicmania 2' as the event title was. Even if we were not 'in' among all the bands based on the genre that we performed, we did received good applause compared to the others as the crowd had a 30-min break from the usual riffy, grungy, heavy stuffs by the rest of the bands.

Here are some pics (youtube vids will be posted soon):

Braunchbox from left to right (above): Saluyot(session guitar), Ivan(bass guitar), Jolly(session vox), Maureen(main vox), Titan(lead guitar), Tutik(me, session drums). I'm so glad to have been invited by them. Knowing them from the first practice through the gig I felt its not difficult to get along with them (Same with the Brosnans and the Meshes). They are always on their ground and needless to make pa-cute to stand out. That's a good thing abt this group. No wonder they have been playing together for years already, gig after gig.


related blog entries:
jiometry
reesespeanutbuttercups
full vids:
womb
soon
my favourite game
partial vids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FatGG2_dvSM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK1RvPbrcck