STREET GIG - TURNING FROM SOLID TO LIQUID

Mathieu Abeille is from Avignon. He's dressed in this mad grey smoking lounge jacket, like Jarvis Cocker, but not as geeky. Or thin. And more French.

He's playing my guitar. I know these words, but my brain is failing to compute the song. Then it clicks, it's 'Disorder' by Joy Division. But with happy chords.

But it's still not quite computing that a French man is playing Joy Division album tracks in an attempt to entertain people. I mean, it's entertaining me but what about the people?! And Joy Division with happy chords. Enjoyably strange!

I start playing a happy 'Transmission' to get him back, but luckily, we both forget the words. And anyway, Jay from Kentucky is wanting 'Sweet Thing'. Yes, a Waterboys song, and it's the best thing I play all night.

She Stole My Tenner Frankie seems to be going out with Gareth, a Scouser. In my experience, hassling people for cash and cigarettes, then swearing at them, just makes them walk off. Maybe he hasn't learnt that yet. Maybe he never will.

Frankie's got a really sweet voice, but the whole package of Girl Frankie, Scouse Gareth and Tanya sat behind me is losing me money hand over fist, so I give it up for the evening.

Still I've tested the new amplifier, and it seems ok so far (touches wooden part of gigbox). A bit of low rumble, so probably needs a high pass capacitor on the input.

And the battery seems to be lasting longer now. The gigbox has been eating batteries since I put that preamp in.

I figure maybe a load of amps have been flowing straight through the chip the whole time. Finally, when I put my biggest battery in, fully charged, the thing has turned from solid to liquid.

Maybe a whole new system isn't such a bad idea. It would just have been good if it hadn't gone belly up on a Saturday night. Any night but Saturday.

I miss the graphic EQ, but the sound is nice, quite a bit clearer than before. Less harsh, less brittle. Maybe lacking a bit of bite, but let's see.