Last Saturday night would’ve been the 6th Gig@Sheffield since its reinstitution in 2006. As many know, the dissipated number of people I know in Sheffield who are into playing music has led to its death in 2009. 2010 saw the Glam Gig in Cardiff organised by the Treforest lads. There was talk of one this year but I’d rather have genuine people in Sheffield itself wanting to do it as opposed to those “bila nak buat gig” types that actually wanna go and just watch. On the other hand, as far as I am concerned, this gig of gig-organising is such that I can say “been there, done that, and got a few tees”. I’ll be happy if someone wants to do it next year. It’ll be nice to sit back and watch the show without the headache and raised blood pressure for once.

Since some of my friends who performed at the Cardiff gig last year were in town for the weekend, we thought it’ll be a waste not to have a jam at my place. Besides, the buangruangroom needed to come alive again since the repairs I had done a couple of summers ago. Unfortunately, the Fender tweed did the dirty again and looks like I’ve no excuse to not get it sorted.

Thankfully, the Orange AD5 came to the rescue and as I surmised, it did the job very well cutting through the mix, despite its diminutive appearance, connected to Peyek’s strat via the Little Big Muff π and the Memory Boy (click here to listen to that sweet guitar tone). Tunes by Pink Floyd were the mainstay of the evening’s jam as Peyek and I had fervently waited this long to play “Money” and re-do “Comfortably Numb”. Bibir did a fine job learning the basslines for both tune whilst Fadh picked up the song structures in no time. We played on through the evening until close to midnight, with the sole White Stripes cover being the highlight for me.

I have to admit that my guitar playing is pretty much in the doldrums for a while, especially I tend to opt for the ‘easier’ drumkit (no chords/riff to learn!). Recently, I have picked up the six-string although it was more for tinkering some basic sounds on the trusty ol’ GT-3 (I think it’s like more than ten years old now), especially after seeing guys like AG and Ijoo using their GT-10 and GT-8 live, respectively. I have adopted a new approach (new to me. heh.) by building up the sound from the pseudo-true bypass (aka the same tone/level as the tuner) with the GT-3 hooked up to the AD-5. I have to say it does sound way better but I never got around to test it at last Saturday’s shindig.

I like it when I get to do new things on my old stuff. At least I know things never go to waste!