| Tea Bag |
| (Tiger Talk Pro) |
| Fri Jul 03 2009 10:20 AM |
| 129.42.208.183 |
The Great Outdoors!
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Played an outside gig on Canada Day. Weather was perfect. We hauled the usual band equipment which was a ton of stuff; then we had a pro sound outfit providing a huge amount of expensive gear for the PA, enclosure, lighting, stage etc. basically 2 truckloads. Now.. you'd think with moving all that stuff that someone would have thought to bring bug spray!
In the third set, 10 minutes before the fireworks went off - the mosquitoes came out with a vengence! I was getting eaten alive as were my bandmates.. and as I'm holding sticks there's nothing you can do.. other than grimace. I must have looked like an anvil dropped on my foot for the last ten minutes! What fun!
| roger strange |
| (Tiger Talk Pro) |
| Sat Jul 04 2009 12:42 AM |
| 208.103.225.202 |
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Re: The Great Outdoors!
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That must have been in the Ottawa Valley somewhere.Here, I got rained on. Same deal, bags of sound production and gear almighty. And yes, because it's the Canadian Maritimes and
it was cloudy and gray all day with the forecasters telling us it would be cloudy with rainy periods you would think they would have adequate over-head covering on the band stand. Nope, not a thought. I guess we all have to relearn every year the same lessons.It just drizzled steadily and we were down the coast by the sea, but it was enough to make us a trio of pretty soggy puppies after five hours.
It also meant that I spent the next five hours at home cleaning up my kit and re-lubing everything in sight.
| Tea Bag |
| (Tiger Talk Pro) |
| Sat Jul 04 2009 06:45 AM |
| 70.51.236.199 |
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Re: The Great Outdoors!
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You got it! We were in the Gower.. it was supposed to pour rain and thunder on us all day and night, but fortunately the weather changed and it was clear and dry. I did bring a giant tarp just in case, but no one thought of bug spray!
Even with the rain it must have been great playing by the ocean. I never get tired of watching waves (or jellyfish) hitting the beach :)
| roger strange |
| (Tiger Talk Pro) |
| Sat Jul 04 2009 12:44 PM |
| 208.103.225.202 |
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Re: The Great Outdoors!
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We were on a jetty usually used to tie up draggers. No idyllic sandy beaches or granite type rock formations nor that dreamer walk by the sea stuff. I got over that "by the sea" thing years ago. Mostly what you do get when playing around the coast-line outside, is salt spray in the air, maybe a pile of sand, some of which is blown into the air vents of your drums and you get a sticky salty film on your kit that you'd better clean off right away or the hardware will pit no matter what type of wax or protection you have on them. Cymbals turn green almost instantly by the way and pedals slow down if you don't keep them well lubricated. Oh yeah, and those jelly fish? they stink very quickly. Also if it's fairly warm you never have troiuble with stick slippage. They get sticky in your hands very quickly. We do a lot of full cleaning our gear down here all the time, even in the city or away from the coast.
The air is constantly laden with a high content of salt.
Myself I try to avoid as many out door gigs as I can around here. Too much clean-up every week with the kit. The automotive trade labelled Nova Scotia as the salt capital of the World decades ago. Rust and corrosion are our constant companions here. That's why I use things like Collinite insulator wax on my kit and hardware. It's designed for high sppeed racing boats and jet aircraft and is used extensively by our Navy. I use Paiste cymbal cleaner and cymbal wax on all my cymbals Paiste or not, because of the climate. At the moment I'm using Zildjian K customs, Constantinoples and Armand vintages, and they are done up with that set of products. I don't mess around with the climate here. It can kill your kit in about two months if you don't take care of it.
| Tea Bag |
| (Tiger Talk Pro) |
| Sat Jul 04 2009 01:24 PM |
| 70.54.50.50 |
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Re: The Great Outdoors!
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Lol..my fascination with the ocean comes to a grinding halt. I guess they were'nt kidding when they came up with the term 'salty dog'!
I had a bad experience with my old Rogers kit that sucuumbed to rust due to playing on a concrete floor and some weird dust particles that were blowing in from the plastics shop next door. A combination of wicking moisture from the floor and weird specs of who knows what.. I'll never let that happen again!
I managed to get rid of most of it with a metal polish for drums.. I think it wwas called 'groove juice' - it worked wonders!
| roger strange |
| (Tiger Talk Pro) |
| Sun Jul 05 2009 03:10 AM |
| 208.103.225.202 |
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Re: The Great Outdoors!
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Basically that's a version of wheel acid used in the automotive trade. It'll eat anything nasty off metal. I believe there is a high instance of carbolic acid in that stuff.Used a lot in both forms in this neck of the woods.