Diamond Dolls…

One of my best friend’s has blagged his way onto the current ‘Marina and the Diamonds‘ UK and European tour as a tour assistant and merchandise seller. 

He got his break int ‘industry’ when our mates from school ’The View‘ caught fire, kick-starting a whole economy in Dundee for a new generation of young guys interested in music, and he got on their early tours doing a little bit of everything involved in running live music. 

I’ll not give you the full story about that just now though, because it’s a whole story all by itself, so I’ll shelve it for another post.

Anyway, I caught up with my mate at the weekend at Marina’s show in the QMU and spent the day sorting t-shirts with him, taking in what makes up a UK/European scale tour on any given day and quizzing him about how they run things, from schedules to how they arrange the music (turns out there’s a Musical Director on the tour who together with the artist arrange the show).

I really enjoyed it, it was a pretty chilled out atmosphere with lots of people just getting on with their individual roles, making sure that everything was set for the show to go off without a hitch.

I got to see Marina and her support ‘Spark‘ in soundcheck too (they’re both excellent singers) and got into the show for free.

I was really impressed with the show, Marina’s a great performer and the crowd (which was much younger than I’d thought it would be) got really into it.

I thought the sound that Spark were getting from one singer, bass and drums, with everything else (synth, backing vocals etc) coming through a macbook backing track was amazing. 

It’s made me think that the Live sound I want to get isn’t a million miles (or lots of session musicians) away.  Maybe just a £900 macbook away.  Cough. 

I also got to meet some of the guys from King Tut‘s who were at the show and they were spot on.  Fingers crossed I’ll be troubling them for a show sometime in the not too distant!