Able and Wireless!

Here's a yarn for y'all. A true story too. Me and my band of merry ukulele maestros were playing a wedding yesterday way down in County Wicklow, a good couple of hours drive from our home here in Baile Átha Cliath. We arrived at the venue an hour before we were due to play, unloaded the gear, started setting up the PA and realised - aaaaagghhh - we'd left all the the leads and cables at home!  A simple algorithm: No leads and no cables equals no connection to the speakers equals no sound coming out of the speakers equals no gig equals blind panic equals rapid and random apportioning of blame equals the liberal use of unnecessarily strong language equals resorting to physical violence equals public mortification equals finding appropriate place to hide for rest of life. Equals the humblest ever pie any person will ever eat!

There we were, five hollow-brained musical eunuchs, dressed like spivs, just about to ruin the biggest day in two young people's lives with no way of changing anything and with nothing to offer by way of an excuse. Nada. Zilch. Sweet foot ball!  Lord, I have to say it was the closest I've come to utter panic in a long, long while ...

Then, a bum note from an out-of-tune soprano ukulele sounded the Eureka! moment! It lingered on the air long enough for us to realise that the place we were standing, the place that we were assigned to perform in, had the natural acoustics of a Royal Festival Hall or a Red Rocks Amphitheatre and all it needed was a little boost from a pair of PC speakers, which we occasionally use for monitors at louder gigs, to get the show on the road. So we tried it and it worked and we got started and we played our hearts out and it went down a storm! And the bride and groom were beaming as we finished! And the job was a million cubes of Oxo! Aaah!

So there. I am now convinced there is a God and I am born again!

Us, recently and without cables!