Job Done, Tick......Tick (part 4)

More Live stuff

We must have played plenty of shows with Richard as a 5 piece but I can’t remember much about them.  We certainly rocked at times largely thanks to Paul.  We played another show at the Rock Garden.  The manager offered us support slots with either Pink Military or Echo and the Bunnymen.  Not sure why because I’m pretty sure we all liked Echo but for some reason we chose Pink Military.  Can’t remember much about it other than we had our gear nicked from the back of Paul’s car and Jane Casey being lovely with us and he feeling sorry for us.  Amazingly the gear turned up the same night in a phone box not far from the Rock Garden.  The police confiscated it but we got it back a couple of days later. 

When I met up with Braz last year he recalled a really good show (his thoughts rather than my boast) at the Empire around this time.  He remembered us playing Dockland.  Alas I have no recollection of this show.  

What I can remember though is us having loads of tuning problems live.  We didn’t seem to have much trouble when we were a 3 piece but this changed when we took on the extra guitar.  Bands today have it so easy with their expensive instruments and electric tuners.  We had nothing like that.    Gary, Richard and Ste knew how to tune their guitars and to be fair they did so diligently but because they did not use a reference note it was pot luck whether we were In tune or not.

Then there were problems hearing each other, this was particularly bad for me because we rarely had monitors and because I was behind the PA it was often very difficult to hear my singing.   We now had some loud songs and often due to the limitations of the equipment the sound just all merged into one.   I remember on one occasion Gary and Richard had to share the same amp and another night at The Teessider we didn’t have an electric extension cable or 2 way adaptor plug so we (well not actually us because we didn’t have the technical know how) had to wire 2 electric cables into one plug.  It’s a miracle we didn’t blow the place up.   We just got on with it though, I think we just thought it was us.

It’s a shame I can’t remember more about the shows this version of Tick Tick. played  We were never going to be able to replicate the rocky sound of Guardian Studio and thank Christ in a way,  we didn’t want to become The Tygers of Pan Tang but at the same time we probably didn’t fulfil our potential.  We had some good songs and we were capable of playing them well.  We just didn’t do it often enough.