First commercial gig on Cross!

Well,

THAT was an interesting experience. For one, playing on a ship has it’s own challenges.

See that double door near the front? That was the way in for my gear. Unfortunately the dock was about 6-7 foot higher than the deck of the ship. Which meant everything hade to be lowered down. Not too bad for most flightcases, but the speakers was a bit of a challenge. And the moment you see your laptop bag hang over 1-2 feet of water, it breaks as sweat.

Anyway, we set up in the front, behind a screen that was to be used for a movie presentation about halfway through the night (I was only playing for real for the last two hours) so I couldn’t see d*ck from where I stood, just the back of the screen. Soundcheck (CD) ok, not enough time to toss the few lights I brought with me around, but the LED panel on my DJ stand worked like a charm. Went and changed from jeans to party gear. Accordeonist arrived well in time as did the 2nd sax player. Customer called from the bus, 35-45 minute delay. Time for some fine-tuning.

While setting up my MBP and plugging in the controller and harddisk, I noticed not HD icon appearing on the screen. If I pulled it out, the MBP DID say it was unplugged correctly. But uhm … where is my information? Another sweat breaking moment, sort of (well, more like a few nasty words and what the h*ll is going on?)

At some point I had to take out my spare harddisk (double redundancy guys!) and that came up immediately.

Openened Cross, tossed in a few smooth Jazz classics in autoplay, hit mix and off I went. Til the first song ended and the second one didn’t start. After a bit of trying different things (like rebooting) I had a quick look in the settings. Turned out the audio settings were off. Changed that and everything worked as expected.

Did all my sound engineering things for the chairman’s speech, the movie presentation laptop sound and the amateur cabaret bit. In between things the sax players were doing their thing. That was fun.

When it finally was time to get to work, cleaned out the area with the screen, beamer, bar stools, keyboard, mic stands and mics (bar one for the sax boys). I had started looking for some of my playlists, but since it was my spare harddisk and I hadn’t synced it in two weeks (preparation guys!), not everything was in there. So, closed Cross and switched to Traktor. No true Cross test, all my own fault.

Everybody (and the crowd consisted of about 60 people ages higher than I thought. Mid to late 40s and up to above 70.
After the cabaret (almost an hour) everyone went to the back of the ship to the bar. So, not only an empty dancefloor but I was looking at the backs of people about 30 yards away.

The saxplayer and the organiser both expressed our loud their doubt that I could make a party out of it yet. And I hadn’t even started yet … Oh Ye of little faith.

10 minutes later the crowd on the “dancefloor” had grown to about 10-12 and another 5 minutes and more the 70% was out there. I created a little “dip” so they could have another round of drinks and I could satify some requests. Then back to full steam, ending with “You’ll Never Walk Alone” with EVERYBODY arm in arm singing along 🙂 just as we docked again. Donna Summer’s Last Dance and then disembarkment.

Smiles all around and nodding sax player, saying you did it after all.

With great help from the guys from the ship I had all my gear wrapped up and back in my car in 50 minutes (a new record, this time we had a different dock with a gangway).

All in all a fun night, happy people and handshakes from the chairman, the organiser and a handful of other guests on the way out as they raced to get to the bus home.

Cross in a live situation? I’ll have to let you know next time, my bad!

Greetinx,
C.

thanks m8 and welcome of course.

Greetinx,
C.