30-03-09 – You knows it’s stressful / Move bitch, get out the way!

Woah… this has been a hectic week! It entailed

- A frickin’ chaotic gig with Goldie Lookin’ Chain (6/10… would have been more if it wasn’t for the stressful pre-gig happenings…)
- A frickin’ close call gig in Wellington (6/10)
- A greenscreeny YAWA Photoshoot
- Working on a YAWA Video Blog
- Tidying the YAWA mixes
- Making a new boyinaband video
- Rigging my 3D body in uni
- Making a level of my game
- No new animals to feature, so I’ll just post this instead:

My fave lolcat evar.

Hey, Maggot! I’m a rapper too!

Woah, this was stressful. YAWA met up on sunday, ready for a pre-practice photoshoot. We got some ace pictures until Zak recieved a call from the promoter of the GLC gig telling us the venue had closed down, and Goldie Lookin’ Chain didn’t want to play any other venues in the area. WTF.

We had to call all the people we’d sold tickets to and tell them it was off – that it might be rescheduled but that we might not be supporting. It was frustrating as hell. I remember having to convince one person that I wasn’t joking for like 5 minutes (This is the problem when your sense of humour involves telling really harsh jokes to people ><).

So we were bummed. Zak decided to go out to see Liv, and we went out back to relax in the sun with some ice lollies to try and cool down and get on with things. Not 5 minutes after Zak was gone I got a call from him saying that GLC had found a venue they were happy with and it was back on. WTF. We rejoiced, then had to call everyone up AGAIN and tell them it was back on and the new venue details!

So Zak came back and we rehearsed the songs, then set off to Shrewsbury. On the way we started a “thing” where whenever someone says the word “Ludicrous”, everyone has to say “Move bitch, get out the way, get out the way bitch, get out the way”, in reference to the following song by the rapper Ludacris:

We found the new venue – it was the one with the massive blue tour bus outside it. We parked up and began unloading, when I noticed I was walking towards maggot from Goldie Lookin’ Chain (The tall one that was on celebrity big brother xD) We chatted to him and the one that has a lisp (Guns don’t kill people, wappers do!) for a while, and Kieran gave them our EP (Apparently they were listening to it later on and like it, score!) which was ace fun. They are such nice guys, and REALLY funny. Though they got pretty freaked out when one of us mentioned how something was Ludicrous and the rest of us began chanting “Move bitch, get out the way, get out the way bitch, get out the way.” I believe they described it as being surrounded by zombies. Fun times!

We loaded in and as we set up, the sound guy came over to us and explained that he only had an hour and a half to soundcheck GLC so we might not be able to play after all. Let me put this into perspective for you. An hour and a half to soundcheck a CD player and 8 (I think) microphones. I’m pretty sure I could do that in 20 minutes, including a tea break.

Eventually, however, we did get to load onto the stage. We got all our gear set up, and the sound guy then decided to tell us that he didn’t know where his leads were to plug us in to the PA system, nor where the non-wireless mics/stands were. So it was that we were stuck on stage for half an hour in a room packed full of people looking at us with no way of making noise. A little bit frustrating.

We finally got the leads and were able to kick off. We had to cut two songs from our setlist since they took so long finding their gear but it was still an ace show – got a bunch of people moving around, I jumped in the crowd and knocked over a bunch of chavs’ drinks (The funniest part of GLC gigs is chavs actually like them, they don’t get the joke xD), said chavs heckled profusely to which Jamie began conducting them, and best of all a bunch of my awesome friends were there (Apologies for my dire direction-giving skillz to the venue! ><)

(There were some clearer pics but I prefer a blurry atmospheric photo to one with flash that looks like there’s no movement!)

After the show we watched GLC who were hilarious, they had some awesome beats behind the tunes, about half of which I knew from having been pretty into them a few years back. Half man half machine is probably my fave after guns don’t kill people. But yes, great show, the whole room was boiling, and I’ve never seen so many chavs in a gig environment before. Surreal.

We ended up finishing the night chatting to them, as well as some of the people who enjoyed our set and the hardcore YAWA girlz who made it along to the show! All in all, after the stressful first part of the day, from the time we started playing it was great fun. It’d've been higher than a 6/10 if said stress didn’t happen! It’s hard to enjoy a night when you’re that on-edge.

LET THE FLAILING COMMENCE!

The following day was pretty stressful as well, more so for Kieran (poor guy) who had to wake up at 7, go to Kettering for work and drive back up for the gig. That wouldn’t have been *so* bad if his drive to the gig didn’t take 5 HOURS. Seriously. He got stuck in a traffic jam so bad that people were getting out of their cars. Apparently a truck was on fire and they couldn’t put it out.

We took the gear to the venue and set it all up, chatting to our various homeslices and the hardcore YAWA girlz who came to see us for the second time in two days! It’s ace having people that know all the words to your songs coming again and again to see you!

Kieran arrived literally 2 minutes before we went on stage. Was such a close call. The gig was great fun, I actually got a competition going between Kieran and Jamie to see who flailed the most, with the crowd being the judges. Kieran even managed to pole dance during his guitar play-age (YAY for his new wireless!) but during the judging where I got the crowd to make some noise for whoever was most flail-y, Kieran’s amp made some feedback noise so I disqualified him for trying to make his cheer sound louder, making Jamie the winner by default! Ooh… contraversial I have it on video too! Might end up putting it in the YAWA video blog I’ve been working on!

That photo pretty much sums up the atmosphere of the night

Say “Giant Cheese from the future!”

Yay for photoshoots! We got some good shots and some loltastic shots – I’ll put some of the more amusing ones here

YAWA Video Blog!

I’ve been putting my christmas present to good use! Video footage has been taken these past few weekends and I’m compiling to a blog which is purdy loltastic… and a little better edited that Zak’s attempt (Bless him) When the guys joined the band.

I’m hoping to make these blogs a regular thing, maybe monthly. I was also wondering whether I should start doing video blogs to compliment my written ones. Might be a way for people with ADD to keep up with me instead of ploughing through my essays! It’s weird… as a kid I HATED writing essays, but I suppose if it’s about something you’re interested in (If I’m interested in me – does that make me ridiculously self-centered or just confident?) it’s not so bad!

Almost…there…

I put all the mixes together and sent them out to the guys – they all think they’re there except for literally two things (though Zak hasn’t given me his list of faults yet!) so I’ve got those to fix and then the artwork and then the EP IS GONNA BE OUT WOO YAY!

Well looking forward to it.

Making the Boat.

In my “Making the beat” Video tutorial series with boyinaband.com (my electronic music blog) I’ve made the beat for The Lonely Island – I’m on a Boat! Check it out:

It’s already got me a bunch more hits from people searching for it on google, so that was a success!

Uni stuffs

Bleugh. I rigged part of my body before the lecturer told us to clear out of the room as it was closing time (I spent the majority of the day with Ogre doing his Final Year Project – a psychology/level design project to see how fast and what methods people used to navigate a maze level and collect 3 items – I got the fastest time (or 2nd fastest – there was 0.5 of a second in it and he couldn’t remember which way) for collecting said items *obnoxious gamer dance*

The game finally had something done to it too, I made and added in the second level graphics, along with the music for said level. 3 more to go before it’s satisfactory to hand in. I just need to be forced into it ><

Next week on Dave’s Blog…

Looks like I’m taking a break from gigging this week, though the following week or two will be pretty busy! I’m looking forward to it

YAWA didn’t get time to properly sit down and see what we’d all got up to regarding the tasks we set last week, so that’ll be a job for next week too.

The sprint was pretty thoroughly done, except the T-shirt thing. I’ll do that this week. In fact, I’ll do that straight after this blog.

This week will entail:

- Finishing the last two changes to the mixes and calling zak til he tells me what he thinks needs doing.
- Making the T-shirt design
- Finishing the YAWA Video Blog
- Making the Intera-site introduction animation
- Finishing my body-rigging and starting on the animation.
- Making another level for my game.
- Playing a game of Civ IV with scratch so I can get some more work done on my FYP report!

AND THE BLOGLY QUESTION: Do you think I should do a video blog next week in addition to the text blogs? And also, I’ll add a GLC inspired one – who is the nicest famous person you have met?