BAND: Everything But the Girl
VENUE: The Electric Ballroom, Camden, London
DATE: February 5, 1985
PA: SSE Hire

On Sundays the Electric Ballroom takes a day of rest from the rigours of contemporary music to open its doors to the stalls of local traders and less-than-mainstream fashion designers. This one-day indoor market was at one time considered Punk, and it's still a great place to come in search of unusual raiment and wares of all kinds. During these events an ever-changing collective of musicians comes together in the bar to form a busking band, their only payment being a liberal supply of beer.

Once A Week

As far as major bands go, the Ballroom averages about one a week, with discos filling Friday and Saturday nights. The place is split into upstairs and downstairs: one disco up, another down. Upstairs there is a completely separate room/bar plus a windowed balcony with bar from which the downstairs stage can be viewed and more or less heard; through a glass darkly, as it were. So when a major band is playing, such as Everything But The Girl, both levels are opened, giving a total capacity of 1100: 850 down, 250 up. This then is a fairly small venue and isn't likely to attract any big names. Although it does have its good points in that it's great to be able to retire with beverages to the upstairs balcony bar and sit down at one of the many tables to talk, or from whence to regard the swarming activities of the many headed below.

Apart from the three drink-type bars, the downstairs bar area, in which the buskers busk, also sells a good range of snacks such as burgers, quiche and sandwiches, etc.

The stage is of a moderate size (45'W by 26'D by 14' stage to ceiling by 4'H) with a couple of fixed bars for flying, but the access is possibly the best in London, straight in off the street. It isn't really big enough to take a reasonable size PA without messing unacceptably with audience's sight-lines, and so the system is generally either put on tables or on the floor in front of the stage. This night the latter option was taken.

The decor is hard to describe and actually somewhat irrelevant. It definitely isn't fussy and doesn't waste any time trying to be plush, but there are enough ultra-violet lights, mirror balls and revolving spot clusters to bring the average beer-sodden discoer to a peak of getting down-ness.

Talk Talk System

The system was originally built back in 1981 for the Talk Talk tour and although it is still in active service it's now SSE's number two rig taking second place to the main system which is currently out on tour with Nik Kershaw.

It's a simple three-way 6kw system using composite Mid/HF cabs with 18" and 15" W bins. Per side:

Bass:
two JBL 1x18 W bin
one JBL 2x15 W bin

Mid/Hi: three cabs each containing:
2x12 ATC PA75 standards
1x JBL 2441 with 2390 crinkle plate
4x Fane 5022 bullets

It is my information that with the dollar/pound exchange rate the way it is, American products such as JBL are becoming cost prohibitive. Even if you wanted to spend the money, supplies are apparently getting short because with the commensurately smaller profit margins, the American company is less keen to export into Blighty. Hence the Fanes become a generally more viable alternative.

The system was driven via a pair of Allington Audio 27-band graphics and an Allington EX232 three-way crossover, by a combination of RSD MOSFET1000s for mids and his with SSE's own FAN amps for bass.

The FOH desk was the tried and trusted TAC Scorpion 32:8:2 configured in four stereo groups: 1&2 Drums
3&4 Backline
5&6 Vocals
7&8 Effects

The effects rack was small but well stocked with an Eventide H910 Harmonizer set on 0.99 exclusively for Tracey's vocal which, as one of the main features of the band, needs thickening up and pushing forward a little. A Yamaha R1000 digital reverb, which has now become something of a PA/budget studio workhorse, was used almost exclusively on snare on setting two, and occasionally on the bass drum on setting four for special effect. In this case the effect was quite huge — something akin to a latter day 1812 Overture with stage maroons, like distant cannons, roaring away at set intervals. A Roland SDE2000 DDL and SRE 555 Chorus/Tape Echo were both used exclusively on lead vocal, whether Ben or Tracey, with the 555 being preferred by engineer Richard Peach on longer delays for the softer transfer characteristic of tape. The bass guitar was under an 8:1 compression from a UREI and the bass drum and top snare mike shared a Drawmer dual gate.

The foldback desk was an elderly TAC M Series 32:8 driving nine SSE two-way wedges via six Pro-Audio PA27 27-band graphics, plus a pair of SSE three-way side-fills which were basically compacted forms of the FOH system. Again, Allington E232 crossovers were used with a combination of Unisync 200 (bass and mid) and Yamaha P2050 (Hi) power amps for the wedges, and Yamaha P2200 and 2050's for the side fills.

On stage June Miles-Kingston played a kit of some considerable maturity, popular with Jazz drummers and made by the American company Slingerland. The main snare was a Yamaha although she also used a desnared Ludwig snare for one track. Mikes were applied as follows:

Bass Drum: Sennheiser 421
Main Snare: 2x Shure SM57's, miked top and bottom
Hi Hat: AKG 202
Two RackToms: 2x Sennheiser 421's
O/H 2x AKG C451's
Special Snare: Shure SM57

Phil Moxham played a Wal Pro Fretless and a Fender Jazz bass through an Acoustic 370 head driving an Ampeg SVT 8x10 cabinet. In addition to an SSE passive DI box the cabinet was miked up with an AKG D12.

Neil Scott played a Fender Jazzmaster, with a 1962 Gretsch Anniversary as a spare, via a Boss Chorus and a Tokai Compressor into a Fender Twin Reverb.

The two remaining on-stage personnel are the actual band themselves: Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn. Tracey shares lead vocals with Ben who also plays a 1962 Gibson Birdland, a Rickenbacker 360 and a Manson 12-string acoustic with a Barcus Berry pickup (which in the event didn't work, so they had to use a mike). Ben's pedals included Chorus, Delay and Compression/Sustain all by Boss, and he was amplified by a Roland JC120 combo. Both Ben and guitarist Neil also take turns to play a Korg CX3 which is used primarily for its convenient and generally plausible impression of a Hammond C3.

When Wimpy's Really Okay

For me the band's music is a breath of fresh air. All the songs are melodically and harmonically rich with gracefully structured progressions. Ben has strong Jazz influences and although he shies pleasantly away from overt complexity, he laughingly 'openly admits' to playing, possibly unfashionable, wimpy major sevenths and ninths. We're talking texture here, and plenty of Boss chorus to fill out the guitar parts. The Punk label seems less than pertinent.

Though, by her own standards, inexperienced, Tracey has a full, lush voice. Its slight lack of volume doesn't make it as well suited to the road as to the studio, but the mix is very much in the Rock-cabaret vein, with the rest of the band's balance being assembled around her voice to ensure its presence. The Harmoniser, and doubtless the Eq, gave it a suitably breathy, though occasionally rather sibilant, sound which generally cut through well. Ben, on the other hand, has a particularly robust and volumous voice that never failed to bring itself impressively to the front of the arrangement.

The place was totally packed out. If the official limit was 1100, I reckon the attendance must have been well over the top. This did positive things to the acoustics, and indeed the sound was generally fine, although with arrangements such as these it's really only the vocals that put any great demand on the system, and they came over well. The same packedness had a less salubrious effect on the scrutability of my blindly written mid-performance notes, and so I find myself uncomfortably lacking in the keenly observed vignettes department: Everything but the one-liners.