Well, here's how it went down. I was originally told that there were some backing tracks and I could chose whether I wanted to play bass or guitar and the backing would exclude the instrument I chose to play. So I went with bass. When I got to the gig the band consisted of lead vocals, octopad, and a trumpet player and me. But was then told there is bass on the tracks so the bass out front would only be from the tracks and I can play bass on stage through my rig if I want to or just mime to the tracks. So the trumpet player played along with the brass section on the tracks and percussionist played along with the drum track plus did backing vox.
Now for the chaos!!.
Through the first half the sound engineer turned down the bass in the FOH mix so it ended up that what I was playing through my rig was the only bass in the room and as I had a 1x12 in a large room with about 300 people that wasn't gonna lay down any meat for reggae. When he was confronted in the break, he said he thought we didn't want bass in the PA because we had a bass rig on stage....DOH!!!!
Second half we got through two songs where he had the bass up in the FOH mix, the the electric went off in the whole building, lights and sockets. I've had happen on a number of gigs over the year so as usual I turn off the master switch for my rig. When the power came back on, i turned on the power switch and my power amp didn't come on. Whilst I was trying to check what the reason was, the backing started playing so I had to go back to playing but since I had no sound, and my bass wasn't connected to the PA I had to mime along with the tracks. Never had to do that before except on a video shoot.
Yes I did get paid, but it didn't feel good to be honest and felt like I was conning the punters. Unlikely i'd do that again. That said the band leader is a real nice guy and i've done quite a few last minute gigs with him over the years.
