So you want to put on an out door or marquee event

xual

So you want to put on an out door gig!!!!!! I just helped put on an outdoor gig in carlow. It took months to plan. I'm of the opinion that more small outdoor events should happen and liven up the otherwise dull countryside.

Mini festivals, ond fairs with music you name it, it should be happening. All you need to do this is

Permission, Insurance, stage, stage cover, power, gear, acts.

Sounds like a load of hassle. Well I can tell you if you put your mind to it its not. So for all you enthusiasts out there here is a guide to help you get a gig on.

(1) permission. If your gonna approach the council ( and carlow council are the most begrudging and stone age crowd ever ) You just need to publish a boring document. We chose the town park Did an intro as to why we wanted to do it, the benefit of giving people something to do. A chapter on the location. talk about safety, exit routes, keeping traffic clear, having stewards volunteer to guide and help people. e.t.c. Have an emergency plan so you know what do do if there is a fire or the event needs to be called off. Have a first aider and a first aid kit. Have a fire extinguisher and so on.. If it looks like your not a total air head they will give you the go ahead, providing you talk to the cops and emergency services, and get insurance

(2) INSURANCE!!!!! Easy you can get public liability insurance for 150 snots. Then you need to extend the policy for one day to cover an event. I work for the Carlow youth services so I got them to extend our public liability for one day. We had to indemnify the town council so they couldn't be done for any damage also. It cost 510 snots for the day and that covered us for up to 6.5million worth of damage. not so bad eh!!

(3) Stage, Know anyone with pallets?? Head to your local cash and carry. Give him plenty of notice. As him to skim a few pallets from daily operation and have about 50 or 60 pallets( depending on the stage size ) ready for you on the day of the thing. We got 40 pallets which we stacked 3 high and spaced with 12 inchs between each stack. The were stacked 4X3 columns. we nailed some sheets of plywood on top. SORTED!!. You might need a van or an 8X4 trailer to haul them. I hauled them in my toyota 96 carolla 1.3xli. Not a Fockin bother on the car, a double axel 8x4 trailer has its own brakes too which kick in as you slow so don't worry about losing control. Watch the reversing if you are new to trailers.

(4) Stage cover. We bought two 4X3 meter gazebos from argos and modified them a bit into one. It was flimsy but we were graced with no wind on the day. You should check out some marquees. You can hire a 6X4 meter marquee and bolt it down onto your stage. you can buy a 6X 4 meter marquee for times and a half the rental. http://www.omearacamping.com/?gclid=CPOStsmxu40CFRo9EAodM1T6Ew this lad has some niftey 6x4 and 8x4 marquees. 8x4 leaves a nice bit on the side for the sound mixer guy.

(5) Power... everyone gets a pain in the arse here. cause the guys who hire generators don't have house hold appliance sockets in mind, and therefore no advise to offer you. 3 pin houshold sockets are what you will want to plug your Guitar amps and PA's into. Check this out. The yellow sockets on a generator are 110-115volt, so its no good for you. the blue sockets are 220-240 volt. thats your boys. The big blue round plug is a 32 amp socket. the smaller one is a 16 amp socket. You need to buy a '16amp to 4 gang 13 amp fly leed' its 50 quid.. shops won't hire them cause they don't do that in ireland. Buy em here http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MOBILE-MAINS-UNIT-HOOK-UP-RCD-LEAD-CAMPING-EQUIPMENT_W0QQitemZ200129947235QQihZ010QQcategoryZ90870QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Now what you need to hire is a generator that has a 16 amp 220-240v socket on it and you are laughing.

Okay Power consumption,,, 13amps is the standard fuse used on a household plug. and 5amp fuses are on most guitar/bass/power amplifiers. 13 amps x 230 volts = 2990 watts approx of power. this means that if you plug an extension cord into one of the sockets at the end of the adapter in the ebay link there, and the extension cord has 4 sockets on the end. If you plug more than 2990 watts of guitar and bass and power amps in you will blow the fuse in the plug of your extension cord. So add up the watts from all your guitar amps, bass amps, PA's, effects boards/pedals/dexks and so on. And distribute them across the plugs so you don't try to draw too much power. PM me if you unclear about this. But its easily done. Remember you have 5 sockets @ 13amps each on the end of that adapter in the ebay link. So thats 2990 MAX power from each one. I suggest PA in one GUITARS in another and BASS in the other one. Thats leaves two free and no problems.

the generator needs to be able to deliver the power too. So check the Kw rating. kW stands for Kilo watts thats thousands of watts.. so a 100 watt guitar amp is .1 Kilowatts.. a 12kilowatt generator should be more than enough for an 8 kilowatts setup. keep the generator stronger than you need. Make sure the generator can run all day, some can only be run for a few hours before over heating.

We used a 40kva diesel generator that was loads. it had a 32amp large blue plug. We converted that into one 13amp socket and managet to run everything off that with out blowing it. AMAZING EH!!!

(6) hire or rent good gear with great speakers so you sound deadly

(7) Get some goot bands or DJ's in so you have a savage day.


There holy SH!te you just did an outdoor gig.

If your getting people to help as stewards my advice is to contact your local youth services, and get some youth workers in. they usually work with the problem kids and know who the trouble makers are. So they're handy at making sure trouble doesn't even start in the first place. Our gig was free to the public of the town so we had a very mixed crowd. But we knew the local hard asses and they were very well behaved I must say.

So now.. No more mystery about doing a concert. Its very easy and can be done like a piece of piss. I didn't cover lighting cause ours was all day. If you want lighting,, lighting runs of 110 volts. thats the yellow plugs on the generator. and 16 and 32amp blue plugs. They don't use the house hold appliance plugs ( these are big stage lights now ). They also horse power so you might need a 200KVA generator to do it. They are expensive.

Good luck I hope to hear of loads of little events popping up over the next year or so :-)

Savman

Fair play to ye bud. Sticky this please.

crosstownk

Savman wrote:

Fair play to ye bud. Sticky this please.

Agreed.

yevveh

Aye, great advice. There should be more helpful souls like yourself around

miju

Savman wrote:

Fair play to ye bud. Sticky this please.

yes boss

xual

Well I hope anyone who wants to do it is helped by this. Was in italy a while back and they had a gig every night in the local park. In a full on timber gazebo and all.
So I think its time we got Councils to have a drop of the hat setup.. where by you can book a stage or something and play for the day. If the weather is too bad you can get some cash back. Or maybe you only loose a small booking deposit.

But its not that hard to run a gig. And its good for younger bands because their fans don't have to horse down to a pub and get fake ID to see them. Although I remember doing that and it was totally cavage :-)

Please feel free to PM me if you need any advise. I'm more than happy to take a phone call and help a few shams out with a decent cause

James_sb

Was certainly a bit of work.. even just writing that! Nice one..

Here's some of the results so people can have a look see.. www.bebo.com/carlowlarkinpark

xual

Note you can see how crappy our gazebos were but thats because we really had no money to do it with. but you can do better for a few bob more

Run_to_da_hills

Check the output in any hired stage generator first with a qualified electrician. I burnt out a transformer in a PA amplifier after the voltage was incorrectly set. Many plant hire companies will not rent out generators to be used for stage use because of the liability attached. This well known British plant hire company denied responsibility because they said they were not informed of its use.

NeMiSiS

Where in Carlow was this gig ?
Was it the "Lark in D Park" ? ..

TK

Savman

NeMiSiS wrote:

Where in Carlow was this gig ?
Was it the "Lark in D Park" ? ..

James_sb wrote:

Here's some of the results so people can have a look see.. www.bebo.com/carlowlarkinpark

That's what I love about ya, your attention to detail

NeMiSiS

I played at it ..sorry just scrolled straight to the end..!
Was a good day, I enjoyed it.. outdoor gigs are great fun..
TK