My Friend Ian, A Party and a Zoom H4

Ian Bland Live At BackwaysLast weekend Jools and I went to the 30th “Festival Of The Sun”, a party held annually by Rob and Doreen. My Friend Ian (yes that’s My Friend Ian of MFI fame) played as usual with his band as he has since the first party. But unusually he also did a couple of acoustic tracks. just voice and guitar so here is a great live version of“Kilcunda Wind” [audio:kilkundawind.mp3]

and also for your listening pleasure, here is “Crashing Into Walls“, [audio:Crashing.mp3] again just Ian on guitar and vocals. I really did well that night I got two of my favourite tracks live (you can checkout the CD at http://ianbland.com.au/)

Jack Rabbit and The Pubic Hares

Next up was the band “Jack Rabbit and The Pubic Hares“, this where MFI rushes into the nearest telephone booth and changes into his Jack persona complete with costumes (hopefully Jools will put some photo’s up at Joolsweb sometime).

There are three tracks here I recorded at the party, first up is a medley of Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band tunes that the band did when it first started up.

Bonzos Medley [audio:01_BonzosMedley.mp3]

It’s a bit rough and loose in places but considering these songs haven’t seen the light of day for going on 30 years(back when I was a member), it is understandable.

Here are a couple of more recent tracks,

Middle Class White Boy[audio:04_WhiteBoy.mp3] more funk guitar riffs than you would believe it was possible to be put in one song. Alan Lawson is the guitarist here. Damn he’s good.
and

Toy Boy [audio:05_ToyBoy.mp3] I will leave you to wonder about this one. I always do.

To Rob and Doreen: Thank you as always for a wonderful evening and I look forward to another 30 years of party.

Boring Tech Stuff:

The Zoom H4 recorded in Stereo @ 44.1kHz/16 bit. There was a bracket in the ceiling so I used a Gorilla Pod to fly it above the punters heads. It was 3 metres back from the stage and slightly stage right. I angled the Zoom at about a 30 degrees down to more or less point at Ian and as usual crossed my fingers. The gain settings for the mics were on M and this proved to be totally inadequate, the first bracket was a washout. I changed to the L setting and turned on the limiter for the Second bracket. Never trust a sound check… or the guitarist. I should know better. I used to be one.

The recording was edited in Sound Forge and all I did was cut out below 30Hz (bass lift from the proximity of the ceiling) and add 3db at 1.5kHz to help the MP3 along.

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