The Mekano Set

Right, I've been debating whether to post this or not, weighing up the funny against the not-funny, but I've decided there's enough comic-relief in it to be worth the effort. I know that none of the below is particularly important or even particularly helpful, I'm just including it for the curious, and because I can, and because it's all in-keeping with the 'crazy, misfortunate world' of 'Finn, Milk and Saint' .

And so, Ladies, Gentlemen, children of Dead Forever Earth, I give you, Finn... Milk... Saint... together they are... The Mekano Set. Beset by misfortune, alcohol and medication... if you need music, and you can find them, they will entertain you.

So last friday was another live one, and our first in London as The Mekano Set. Personally I was brimming with sass and fun, right up until we started playing and realized the sound engineers {there were three of them} had forgotten to turn the mics on...

The AllManna evening takes place in Kilburn, in a late 1950's style bar where you can easily picture the cast of Only Fools & Horses {a slightly offensive British Sit-Com centred around two 'working class' {Stereotype Number 64} London brothers}, Philip Larkin {a more than slightly offensive British writer {Stereotype Number 14}}, and Alan Bennett {a slightly lovable British miserablist, writer and performer {See Morrissey}} 'enjoying' a smoke and a pint of mild. Squarey furniture. Everything in beige / coffee coloured check. Kilburn actually reminded me of a quieter Handsworth.

Headliner's 100 Bullets Back cancelled, and Xyla split up, so the night was left to us, Steven Tyman, and Allmanna DJ John.

Everybody agreed that John seems to work really hard to put these nights together. Actually when we got off the tube @ Kilburn he was just round the corner handing out flyers. Star.

Steven Tyman was insane, a sort of Turretian Troubadour, occassionally singing so loud he didn't need the PA at all, stopping songs half-way through to make an observation or irrelevant comment, annoucing every song as 'this is the last song'. Exactly how I like my singer-songwriters.



Garbage are on TOTP now. Shirley looks bored. Or is she just behaving like a grown up? She still looks great but she didn't seem to have 'the sass'. Maybe that's what being on TOTP does to you. She looks bored in the video as well, even in the bits where she's not supposed to. They've gone very heavy-guitar-heavy which is a shame cause there's enough metal around already.

The Allmanna crew were a nice welcoming bunch and it was good to see a couple of old mates turn up. I was feeling really confident and full of fun and energy, but when we were sound checking it was obvious that the three girls doing the sound didn't really know what they were doing.

We went on and into AllWords and they'd obviously turned the mics off @ the mixer, and had forgotten to turn them back on.

A minute passed and they still weren't on. So we had to stop and ask for directions.

They eventually turned Beth's mic back up in the mix, but the monitor that had been nice and loud during the soundcheck remained virtually inaudible {to the extent that we could barely hear the beats and barely make one or two of the set's quick-change / false-ending type things}, and they decided to leave my mic off for most of the set {presumably because, as they'd said earlier, 'please stop him singing'}.

Oddly, after we were done, apparently the soundies told people {apart from us} that the problem was Beth, singing quieter during the set than she did during the soundcheck.

That is of course bizarre, and nonsense, {"the mics were simply not on man!"] and it's also irrelevant, because how would that explain why the monitor was so quiet, or how my mic wasn't on at all.

I can take the cheeky criticism, cause that was an ice-breaker, even if it's inappropriate, but blaming us for you having to work with dodgy equipment, or even your lack of expertise, that's too much.

Just say you fucked up, or the equipment fucked up. Don't blame someone else, least of all someone who's treated you with respect and humour.

Shame. There was a point where we were waiting for them to sort the sound out where we were deciding whether to carry on as normal or just go mental and scream and dirge away in protest. We just soldiered on, and by the last three or four tunes we managed to just get lost in it regardless.

Aparrently it didn't sound bad out-front, but it would have been nice to hear it ourselves too!

I actually think perhaps what we need is to have a mixer / sound-person as a fourth member, someone who knows how we want to sound.

Not using amps or acoustic drums leaves us so much at the mercy of the sound engineer. Vocals go through guitar effects, the guitar doesn't sound anything like a guitar for most of the time, we use samples of sounds like feedback so it wouldn't be an easy task. But anyone can turn a mic on, surely...

The 100 Best albums is on now. Sting has a really great voice. It's a shame he's so fake.

The last two gigs we've done {both @ The Providence in Brighton, two different sound engineers} we've let the house mix the mics and the bass, and that's the best we've sounded so far - and with 4ucking loud monitors and very-loud and very-quiet vocal parts. So it's NOT simply our funny set-up and it's not even because we don't use amps.

We also survived the trip back to Brighton and it's reassuring to know we can make the trip without difficulty. So it hasn't put us off and we're ready for more.

Oh there was a documentary and concert on BBC 4 on friday night about Ivor Cutler! I didn't get to see it, but hopefully it's been taped and I'll get to see it soon. Ivor rules!

Friday I was overcome by a need to sing {a lot of weird things have been happening in the building where I live and I've been trying to keep the noise levels down but I couldn't stay quiet any longer} and so I turned my kitchen into a vocal booth for an afternoon, insulating against mental neighbours by hanging a load of heavy coats over the door and doing the washing up at the same time. I sound particularly bad when I try and be quiet but I can't help myself. Funny, I'm totally care-free when playing stuff in-front of a crowd but when it's just me and the neighbours, or just me and other band members I totally clam up and bottle it.

While we look for some more gigs we're also putting the finishing touches to a couple of tracks. There are one or two things that have some more organic elements which I'm happy about - singalong chorus's and catchy bits but still full of quirks and noise. I'm also working on a couple more anthemic / urgent things that I've had lying around for ages but need the right sound and mix to really come across properly. Lots more tricks up our sleeves.

This song 'To the Dog House' we've been working on for weeks and weeks now has well-over 40 layers of sound and still doesn't sound big enough. I guess it's going to be impossible to do live which is a bit tragic.

Oh we saw Blanket upstairs @ Audio last week and they're starting to sound much more interesting to my ears - lo-fi drum machines rule! Wicked venue or what?

The Mekano Set