The rules of Shithead

(I can hear the filters going nuts over the title for this post)

I mentioned the game Sh!tHead in my previous post. Sadly for parents everwhere this is a real game. I forget exactly who taught me this game (it was during my A levels) but thanks. It is a game that I’ve played across the country and quite a few people seem to know it.

And every time I start playing it again, I have to teach somebody new what the rules are. Or I’ll find a variant. (most people have their own house rules). Have a web search for Shithead – there are many variants out there.

Hares House Rules for Sh*thead (I’ll start being nice to the parental filters again)

What you need: A deck of cards. Unmarked. And minus the jokers and rules cards (to start with at least).

Something flat to play on. A table normally but pet gimps or wild tortoises will do in a pinch.

Some friends. If you don’t have any friends, go out onto the street and yell that you need people to learn a new card game with. Works everytime. A single deck can comfortably allow for 2 to 5 players.

The Object:

To not be the last person to get rid of all your cards. Otherwise, you win the dubious honour of being the Gitface. The distinction of trying not to lose rather than trying to win is one that does need to be iterated.

How to deal the cards:

Shuffle the deck. Really well. Imagine that one of the players is a card magician and you need to really mess them up. Shuffle that well.

First deal each player in turn three cards which are placed face down on the table. These are the ‘blind cards’. These can not be played until the ‘top cards’ (see below) of a players deal have been played and are played one at a time. The player is not allowed to look at them at any point before picking one to play (glass tables are not recommended for this game)

Then each blind card is covered by a card which is placed face up. These are the ‘top cards’. These cards can only be played after the rest of the players hand has been cleared and can only be played one at a time (unless they have cards of the same value). These cards remain on top of the blind cards until they are played and remain face up.

Finally each player is dealt a hand of three cards (called the ‘held cards’) which they keep in their hands (or holding implements) and probably shouldn’t show the other players. The remainder of the deck is left as a stack in the middle of the gaming area. While cards remain in the stack, a player can not have less than three cards in their hand. Space is needed for cards in play (the pile) and for discarded cards (discard hump).

Players are free to swop the top cards for held cards, as long as play has not began. The top cards must remain face-up so a player can put better cards there at the cost of observant rivals having seen held cards.

How to play:

The player with the lowest non-special card starts play. Black cards are nominally a lower value than red (opposite to bridge rankings in fact). The player to their left then plays any card from their hand of equal or greater value, or a special card (rules later). They may play more than one card at once if the cards are of equal value. Cards are worth the normal amount (ie number cards then Jack, Queen, King and Ace). Aces are always high. Play continues around the table until a player is unable to play a card. They must pick up all the cards in the pile and play continues from the next player, who can play any card in their hand. As players place cards, they must continue to pick up a corresponding number of cards from the stack to maintain a hand of three. Players who have more than three cards do not have to pick up from the stack after placing cards, until they hold less than three cards again. If four cards of the same value are played sequentially (by one or more players), the four of a kind burns the cards in play and the pile is removed to the discard hump. The player whom placed the last of the four of a kind can then choose any card to restart play and the games continues as before. Players can choose to pick up the pile rather than play a card – it can be advantageous if the pile has a number of good cards.

Once the stack has been cleared and a player has cleared their held cards then they may choose one of the top cards to play. If one or more of the top cards is of the same value as the last card played from the held cards, they can also be played at the same time. If none of the top cards can be placed legitimately on the pile then the player must pick up the pile and one of the top cards, which form held cards. All the held cards must be played before the player can go back to playing the top cards.

Once the top cards have been played, the player must next choose a single blind card to play on their turn. If the card can be played, play continues. If the card can not be played then the player picks up and must clear the held cards before choosing a blind card again.

Once a player has cleared all their cards, they are out. Once only player is left with cards, they are Sh ‘ ed. There is normally a penalty for this – the nicest is having them shuffle and deal the cards for the next round.

No, better shuffling than that.

Special cards:

There are a number of variants but three cards always are worth more than the value on the card -

2 – Restarts the pile. It can be played on any card. The pile is not discarded but remains under the 2. It has a value of two so any card can be played upon it.

7 – This requires the next player to place a card of equal or lower value or pick up the pile. The 7 can only played on a empty pile or of cards of a equal or lower value.

10 – This can be played on any card (excepting a 7) including the royal cards. It immediately burns the pile and allows the player to play another card.

Please note – as 10 is probably the best card in the deck, it makes sense to have a card that can counter it even in the basic game. With more special cards, this becomes less of an issue. I do know of quite a few people who play that a 10 goes on anything – this is your choice but, to me, it makes the 10 too powerful.

Once you have a good grasp of the basic rules, there are many options to expand the game. These are our House rules once people are up to speed with the basics (about the fourth game normally). The other main special cards are:

3 – This can be played at any time. The 3 is not played on the pile but is shown to all the players. This forces the next person to pick up the pile unless they show a 3 from their held cards. This continues until a player does not have a 3. If there is no pile, then that player misses a go. All 3s’ played are put into the discard pile and play continues to the next player after the person who picked up.

8 – Causes the next player to miss a go. Can only played as a valid card (so can not be placed on a 7 or anything of greater value

Jack – Can be played on any card, including a 7! It is both transparent (meaning the next player has to play on the value of the previous card) and reverses play. Normally this means the previous player has to play on their own card. The card has a cumulative effect so two jacks played at once won’t reverse play – instead the next player has to play on the card value under the Jack.

Jokers – Not normally used but these can be added to the deal at the beginning (you did shuffle, right?). If a player has a Joker, this can be used as any other card. If a player has to pick up the pile including a Joker, they can choose to change the value of the Joker.

Other special rules:

Doubling up: Players can stack cards of same values on the top cards (for example if they had 10, J, K and 3,8,K they could add the K to the top cards). They would have to then pick up another card to maintain three held cards. Players can double up as many times as they like as long with cards of a same value and can swop cards between held and top as required to do this. For each card added to the top cards, the player must pick up another card from the stack. Once they can no longer double up, they must choose three cards only to use as top cards. The remainder are left as held cards. Doubling up can only take place after the deal but before the first card is played.

Suite Runs – if a player has cards that run in suite, then they can choose to play a run. This run can swop suites at cards of equal value. The bottom card of a suite run must be able to be played on it’s own as a legit card and all special cards keep their rules. A run of 4H, 5H, 6H,6C,7C, is legal for example and a run with a 10 or four of a kind together will burn the pile (including the suite run). This is useful to clear large held hands very quickly.

Multiple packs – For playing with more than 5 people, this is a must. All rules hold as for a single pack game – the main thing to note is that it is still four of a kind (or more) to burn the pile. It is thus possible to burn the deck with four of a kind and still have cards of that value in play. Obviously, players can choose to instigate larger quantities required to burn the pile.

Follow the leader – the first person to win the first round can choose a gesture or action, which they show to the rest of the players. At any point in the next round (or not at all), the leader can choose to make the gesture (normally something discreet like holding a finger against a wrist). The last person to notice and make the gesture also must pick up the pile. Play continues from the legit player next to that person. The leader changes each round to the person who clears their hand first.

Different size hand: Three of blind, top and held are the normal numbers but these can be scaled up or down if desired. Anything larger than five of each does get a little unwieldy (and tricky to do without a second deck)

Feel free to use any of the other variants that you may stumble across or come up with your own. It seems to make for a fairer (and more fun) game if every special card and rule has an up and down side but feel free to alter the special rules at your leisure. Remember, your house = your rules!

I’d shuffle it again, by the way.

Of Flamingo and cake

It was some point in July when my best man said unto me:

“Yon tome of wisdom (The Sun!) hath within their hallowed pages an offer of sanctuary for some small token of gold. Yea, and it doth allow for persons numbering less than the days in a Christian week to partake in the sleeping of a van of cara for a period not less than 3 nights upon Wight’s Isle”

(see kids, reading the Sun is bad for you!)

In any case, once he got his teeth back in we decided that taking ourselves and our better halves for a few days in the Isle of Wight seemed like a pretty good idea (better than working certainly). The cost of the caravan and the ferry was under triple figures – what could possibly go wrong?

Leg, meet MEWP.

. . .

Fortunately, I had the sense to break my leg a good few months in advance of the weekend away so I was at least moving around at that point. We travelled down the day before to their flat in Southampton and crashed on an air mattress.

This in itself is something of an experience – getting on requires a little teamwork or your partner finds themselves flipped face first into the sofa. The morning after can also be interesting – she gets up and I find myself lying on the floor, still under covers and on top of the mattress but I can definitely feel the floor with my shoulder-blades. It’s not conducive to having a lie-in.

Come to think of it, that may have been the point.

We arrive at the ferry with good time and, with me waving my crutches, get to pull up in the disabled lane.

As an aside, they start to load the ferry about 30 mins or so before the scheduled departure time. Me and my best man were on strict orders not the leave the car to avoid a repeat of the ‘just one more game at the arcades, oh the ferry …” incident.

We park up right by the lift on the upper car deck (thus proving a man with a broken femur is not entirely useless) and spend the next hour or so rocking gently.

The ferry was moving also.

Right at the end of the journey, my best man’s better half discovered what her brain age was thanks to my Nintendo DS. Politeness forbades me revealing the actual age (bribes to the normal address) but it wasn’t too far from the combined ages of the four of us travelling …

We arrive in East Cowes and knowing that we couldn’t check-in to our ‘van til the afternoon we figured we’d drive to Sandown, find the caravan pack we were staying at then take it from there. The first challenge was a member of the flat cap driving brigade. He had left his flat cap at home though and thus was allowed to reach speeds of nearly 30 miles an hour. If going downhill.

We passed them at the first roundabout you reach after several minutes drive. It should only take several minutes to get across the island but the gentleman in front of us was driving slowly to admire the hedgerows on the road from East Cowes. We passed them at the roundabout only because we though they were headed to Ryde and changed their mind as they traversed the roundabout (we should have also taken note about their reluctance to go to Ryde – more on that later).

We did get stuck behind a bus immediately after but that was okay as the bus could reach 30mph in a 30 zone. It was only several minutes later that we reached Sandown and we decided to start the holiday in style.

By parking on the beach front and getting an ice cream. Being considerate of my body I declined (no 99Flakes). To burn off that heavy food we thought of walking along the pier.

It was shut.

Luckily, the amusements at the land end weren’t, so we wandered in to help remove some of the weight we were carrying. Darn £1 coins.

Any hopes of any dietary loss took an early blow when we saw the sign marked ‘Cream Teas’. It did help to remove the metal weight in the pockets but I’ve never had cream that was actually runny on a scone before.

I do remember walking past one of those giant claw machines with a bunch of Disney characters underneath. A gentleman (I’m really trying to resist the urge to remark that he seemed to be missing some Burberry pattern on – oops) failed to rescue Thumper for his girlfriend. A few minutes later, I saw my best mans partner walking along with a big grin on her face and a liberated Thumper. The gentleman was last seen attempting to snag a Tweenie …

Returning to the car, we headed to the caravan park to check in.

Just to clarify a point, the caravan we stayed in had two separate bedrooms, a shower room with toilet (and not a chemical toilet either), a lounge (with spare double bed) and a gallery kitchen complete with fridge, mains gas hob, oven and sink with running water. That’s running water on demand from taps not a leaky roof, by the way. Even if we had paid full prices, the extra kitchen and lounge made it a far more attractive prospect than an equivalently priced hotel. Of course, I couldn’t actually extend my crutches to each side unless windows on both sides were open but even so. The other problem was a lack of electrical power – even a hair dryer would blow the fuse to the caravan. There were communal washing facilities available in addition to our own shower pod so that wasn’t going to be too much of problem …

My wife was starting to wonder about the oncoming lack of bagels (we only had 4 left). Luckily, Sainsbury’s website had assured us that there was a store in Sandown and we set off to get several packs of bagels (and some food for the rest of us).

It wasn’t even several minutes later that we had located a Somerfield, an Esso, the zoo, another amusements and a couple of men using a chainsaw to chop down a log with less safety gear than the number of runs I took over summer. But no Sainsbury’s.

We gave up looking for bagels (the chocolate fix was approaching by now) and bought breakfast (for the rest of the weekend), snacks and even some fruit from a grocers’ (I debated the best place to put the apostrophe there). Thus enthused by our good deed we returned to the caravan and had cake.

Not feeling like cooking and knowing that there was a pub just a couple of minutes hop away, we decided to eat out. I really am going to have to try to remember the name of the pub as they did great food – good enough that we all kinda decided that we would have to come along the next night to check it was as good as the meal we had just had. A dancing coke can kept us entertained during the meal – a coke can that actually had contained coke which my wife had drunk from. It was dancing in time to the music and no magnets under the table. We did ponder the strength of the beer at this point but it didn’t seem like it had been spiked. We bought another round to check. Having noticed a games room on the way in, we meandered back out and stared aghast at a House of the Dead 2 cabinet with no guns. We were so shocked that we had to have several games of pool to feel better, while the ladies discovered a knack for Cluedo on the quiz machine.

We departed later on that night (actually before last orders) and returned to the caravan. It was about now that we introduced my best man’s partner to the joys of Sh*tHead.

It’s a card game that I’ll post the rules to some other time. As I generally won, it gained the nickname of ‘GitFace’ – his insult de jour.

We also decided that Fonejacker is ‘car crash TV’, you know you shouldn’t watch but you just can’t stop yourself. This is not a recommendation.

Saturday morning dawned bright and we set off on the only trip we planned – a visit to the zoo. I’m not certain that any of us would normally be awake (or comatose) before 10am on a Saturday but we were there early enough to see some of the animals being fed.

These two porcupines were able to open that box full of banana’s, bread and turnips (for breakfast?)

The tigers would have you believe that they were alert that early in the morning

But this is what most of them were doing

I forget what we needed but for some reason we returned to Sandown afterwards (oh wait I remember) for breakfast. Smiling sweetly at the waitress’s (and waving my crutches) we managed to convince them to serve full fried breakfasts a good 30 minutes and more after breakfast was officially over (take note McDonalds!)

Once the bloated feeling began to subside and we decided against dessert we decided to take a trip to Shanklin. We paused to get some cash from Sandown and paused again when my darling wife found our next home.

It needed a little pruning but it was the wall to the left (not in the shots) falling away that warned us that is may be a little too big a project. Besides, where would the skip go?

Several minutes later, we arrived at Shanklin and managed to park right outside an ice-cream shop. To make up for the lack of 99 Flakes yesterday, this shop not only had a copious quantity but even added a sauce to it. Not horseradish or brown but strawberry, or raspberry, or mint, or …

Mmm, ice-cream…….

I’d already noticed that morning that the pod which the shower was in would have been an interesting exercise in contortion if I hadn’t regained some flexibility in my leg. Ice cream cones come into the category of cereal and tea as things that someone with two crutches can not carry.

Tired from the ice-creams we decided to visit Shanklin arcades. We were unable to rescue Dumbo from the claw machine but I was able to waggle an Uzi at House of the Dead 4 (man they just churn that thing out) and discovered a knack for getting repeat money shots on a particular fruit machine – Cops N Robbers.

It was only mid afternoon at this point so we jumped (or hopped) back in the car and carried on driving south. Several minutes was all it to run out of south at Ventnor and we continued west to Black Chine.

Once upon a time this was a thriving attraction on top of the cliffs – now it’s less of an attraction mostly at the bottom of the cliffs. The Stay-Puff Marshmellow Man sized pirate astride the entrance was definitely giving the receding cliff line behind him a worried look. Not wanting to pay to see erosion, we browsed the fossil shop (Laa Laa was being eaten by a T-rex skull) and returned to Sandown. Several more minutes passed.

To pass the time before headed to the pub for supper, we got some chips in Sandown, wrangled some old bread from the chippy (thanks again!) and went to the duck pond just down from the zoo. The swans and ducks were glad to see us, the moorhens would have been if they weren’t bullied by the ducks and even the rat did reasonably well.

It was still reasonably light (and we had those chips to burn off) so we popped into a nearby amusements. The Simpsons four-player game was still moderately fun with four players, the Resident Evil Survivor game was a travesty and I still had the knack of repeat cash shots on Cops N Robbers

Finally time for supper and it was as good as the previous night. People were using our games room tonight (the cheek of it!) so we headed back to the caravan for a little more GitFace. As we passed into the caravan park, we saw the lights of the park’s games room flashing lonely away. It had a pool table and the Cluedo machine.

In case you are wondering, playing pool is something that can be done with a broken leg. Using crutches as cues doesn’t give the accuracy of a proper cue however (though with the lack of chalk, it was a close run thing …)

It had been a busy day so we only had a few hands of cards before squeezing into our bedrooms.

As a treat on Sunday morning, we made a bunch of bacon sandwiches. There is something to be said for having a kitchen available when you want it. My wife and me also decided to brave the communal shower block in an attempt to wash our hair.

The block adjoined the laundry and was all roofed so we felt reasonably confident. We went in. Past the mirror area with sockets that were actually rated at 13A! Past the first door (toilet), past the second door (bath – we weren’t feeling that communal), ah the third door hid a shower. With mould. And Midges flying around …

Okay door number four. Good, no mould. And nothing flying around. Mainly because the midges were poised on the tiles around the cubicle. “Hmm, why do they look poised? Oh, my mistake, they aren’t midges” say I. “Yes?” says she hopefully. “Yep, them’s mosquito’s.”

Pause

She looks at me. “So we are going to try to wash our hair in the shower at the caravan, then?”

“Oh yes”

We did come back (fortified with bacon butties) to dry our hair. Someone had braved the shower in our absence. I hope they brought Anthisan.

Up, washed and fed, we decided to head north to Ryde. “It’ll only take several minutes” said we.

Indeed, after several minutes, we’d passed a sign saying Welcome to Ryde and noticed a turning to the esplanade. Duly, we turned. The first minute was fine. We reached a crossroads. Before us was the flamingo park. We knew that to continue the way signposted we had to go right. A country road winding past a pub called the Wishing Well into a valley. Fine. Going back up a hill and turning south. Okay. Continuing south. With the sea now on the wrong side. Um. Turning east. Ah. Something’s awry.

We saw the Oasis shop at this point and pulled in to be diverted by a great selection of furniture and art from Bali artists. They are online and do deliver to the mainland and it is worth a look. Declining the bamboo painting, the sleigh-style bed and the ornate drink cabinet and laden with only a couple of dream-catchers, we left Oasis, followed the road for a minute and turned back onto the road to Ryde.

Past the Welcome the Ryde sign (again) we ignored the sign to the esplanade and continued straight on. Turn right for Seaview (and flamingo park). Ignoring the park, we headed for Seaview. What I didn’t know then was that Seaview was actually the name of a town. Have a guess what the main attraction is? Nope, it’s not the flamingo park (that’s the second).

We drove along the beach road, turned into the main street, turned back onto the beach road and had visited the almost the entirety of Seaview. Driving back and not turning right, we followed the road past a sign we all swear said ‘Archery for the Blind’. Somewhat distracted, it was a moment before we saw the sign to the Flamingo Park. On our left. A country road winding past a pub called the Wishing Well into a valley. At this point we stopped and used the Wishing Well car park to turn around. With the Flamingo park now on our right we headed back and managed to reach the sea front at Ryde.

Everywhere on the Isle of Wight is several minutes from anywhere else. Except Ryde. No wonder Parkhurst Prison is there. Anyone escaping would never be able to found the way out of the locale.

As a celebration for escaping, we stopped for a Wimpy. And a gawp at the sea forts (only a few £million to you).

Unable to afford said forts (though not able not to wonder how hard it would be to string up a washing line between two of the forts without the Portsmouth-Cherbourg ferry snapping the line and stealing our smalls) we parked up near the hovercrafts and went to an amusements. This did a nice line in retro amusements but was the worse yet for lights missing on the fruit machines (hard to pick a trail if only one light in four actually works). We moved over to the bowling rink. Now this was the worse for light bulbs not working on the fruit machines.

On the way back, the air was filled with the guttural roar of a motorbike gang. Tearing up the road, they pulled into the empty (ish) parking lot of the next door ice rink. Now, a group of 20+ men in leathers on bikes would normally raise a mite of concern. It appears though that proper motorbikes aren’t allowed. Instead each and everyone was riding what appeared to be a Mini-moto bike (google ‘em) – all 49cc of power.

I suspect I could travel faster than them. With my crutches. Probably not the flat cap guy from earlier though.

Distracted from our disappointment at the amusements and bouyed by our distant view of something approaching culture (the seaforts – not the mini-bikes) we decided to do something a bit more traditional. Stopping at tourist information, we asked the best place for a cream tea.

Several minutes later, we arrived at Godshill (we were a little worried that we’d see a sign for the Flamingo Park but we had definitely escaped). Picking a cafe for a cream tea was a little like picking a tea room at random. We went for the Hollies.

At this point, just picture the look on Homer Simpson when he is on a donut thought.

We picked 4 cream teas (with cream that didn’t run all over our scones this time)

Excuse me a minute, I’m drooling with the memory.

Reluctantly we left afterwards. It’s possible that we left with takeaway cake (just in case, you realise). The lemon cake is very good.

There was just enough round for a little more culture around the cakes so we picked up the obligatory tea towel to give to family. We also stopped at the factory shop and found a few more items that may have rated higher on the pricing scale than a tea towel with a silly map.

It was about this point that we realised that we hadn’t properly stopped at an amusements today. Returning to Sandown pier we put that to rights. It was a pity that the Pink Panther machine refused to give me a payout (though it liked my wife), Cops n Robbers had to be shook to find the winnings and Aliens: Extinction was one of those curious arcade games that require you to shoot the bejeezus out of anything scaly then lets you run out of ammo. Nice.

Cultured out, we returned to the caravan and then to the pub for an early supper (still not managing to entirely devour the generous portions supplied). Then it was back to the caravan for a last bit of culture – Jennifer Garner in a red basque.

Actually, it’s probably not worth watching the film Elektra. Just watch the trailer.

I think there was a round of cards.

Monday morning was sunny again and it was time to depart our temporary home.

Whoever was in after us, we want back the Minstrels we left.

Heading down to Ventnor, we passed Black Chine and continued up the coast to the pearl shop. This took several more minutes.

My wife, who does not like pearls, nevertheless managed to find a necklace and bracelet set that she liked. And then she, and my best man, did the lucky dip version of fishing for pearls. My credit card was groaning slightly by now. It escaped use in the gold and silver shop, fortunately.

We headed back to Newport and realised when we got there that it was still going to be some time before we could board the ferry. As it was approaching lunchtime we decided to make a slight detour for some food. At the Hollies.

mmmmmmm ….

The sultana cake and the chocolate cake is also good

We arrived at East Cowes over an hour before we were due to board so with a quick talk to the ferry guys (and a wave of the crutches) we were able to get on the earlier ferry. We had mistakenly packed the DS in the car but there were a couple of fruit machines to keep us amused.

Arriving back in Southampton and pausing only to stop at Tesco, we returned to their flat to find we had a few hours to kill.

Finally, we managed to get the Xbox 360 powered up and had a damn good game of Halo 3. More thoughts similar to mine at this blog post

The train back to London cost £1 each (really)(really really – check out Megabus.com) and we finally returned home tired, overfed, a little broke (missing those darn £1 coins now) but having had a great holiday.

Just what does brand loyalty get you these days?

Wandering (hobbling) past an Orange shop in August, I saw a poster saying that new monthly customers would get a DS Lite thrown in gratis.

As I am out of my contract at the moment, that seemed a perfectly good reason to alter course and have a look at the phones available. Alas, as an existing customer I was not entitled to receive such a gift.

Why not?

I talked to the lady in the shop at the time, I’ve tried emailing Orange to see why new connections got this deal (and had no response), I tried calling Orange today and was told by the supervisor that it was for new connections only.

This is despite advertisments online and on posters, on the Orange website and a recorded announcement on the phone lines all saying that existing customers can have the same deals as new customers (an area that Orange has been fairly awful in – and having been with them since I first got a mobile 9 years ago, I do speak with some experience here).

Just why do the sellers at Orange believe that I will continue to be loyal to them if I can take my number to a new network, get a better tariff and get a Nintendo Wii in the deal (there aren’t any DS lite deals currently)? Switching brands may have been a hassle even 5 years ago but with cross network minutes and number porting, there is no reason not to.
Answers on a postcard but it’s likely that the only orange on next months bill will be if I drop some fruit on it.

I will admit that I will miss the Orange wednesdays – but then She Who Must Be Obeyed is on Orange, and we rarely have a wednesday afternoon or evening free together in any case.

Pushing the audience back onto their seats

The audience pile into the auditorium – there isn’t a spare seat. The pre-show buzz is the normal level of 1500 people talking at once and with the iron, only the auditorium itself and their neighbours provide something to look at.

With no warning the lights go out – there are cries of “ohh”and no worry as people can see the maintained lights. The talking continues, as the darkness continues. It is several seconds later and people are just pausing to wonder if the lights snapping off was intended …

WHAM!

A full bar of Pars hits full intensity as a metallic bass thump presses them back in their seats (almost literally). The rhythmic thump continues then out of the foggy brightness, seven men stride from invisibility to come to an abrupt halt on the plaster line.

This is the opening to Uprising, one of two pieces the dancer and choreographer Hofesh Shechter performed last week and the fourth time I’ve sat at the sound desk for this piece. It still has the impact that it had the first time. The second piece, In Your Rooms, is possibly more open but is no less intense.

Like Uprising, it has a CD backing but it also has a string quintet and three percussionists really giving their instruments something of a workout. 12 dancers below the high platform from which the musicians float above the action deliver a high energy piece that shows just what contemporary dance has to appeal to the audience.

And an audience that includes at least part of a standing ovation like what they’ve witnessed.

[Shop Talk]

Uprising is all on CD, the only thing of technical note is that the player is in the LX box, as the lighting op uses the timecode for some of the cues.  Lighting this piece is a whole buncha generics – no MLs or scrollers here. Lots of PAR64s (a bar of 24 to open the piece), lots of side light and a fair number of random seeming downlight spots.

In Your Rooms has the same shadowy lighting, going for catching the body with a single projected phrase on the upstage gauze that separates the musicians on their 3m high platform  to the stage floor.

Sound wise, the backing CD is as loud as Uprising but has a much larger variety of sounds. The quintet (using 2 violas and only 1 violin – mostly) use DPA 4060 clipped to the strings. The percusssionists use a selection of mics – for us; KM184 on cymbals; Sennheiser 504 and SM57 on toms and bass; a B52 on an uptight bass drum; SM98s on the frame drums, an SM81 for shaker toys and an AKG C419 on a pandero (so no real surprises)

Almost everything was effected with an SPX990 set to a concert hall reverb and run through our Midas. No other outboard other than the graphics over the main outputs (which really didn’t do much). An Alesis HD24 was used to archive the inputs using the direct outs – not an ideal solution but it did the job for what was needed. As a side note, this was the first time I have used one of these and it pretty much tells you everything you need to know to start recording. As a side note, we had purchased a PATA HDD for use and loading the caddy to hold it in the machine was very simple – the only gotcha was that the jumper on the HDD was set to receive to cable select: it wasn’t until it was set as the master that the HD24 was able to use it.

The PA was our normal EAW rig, supplemented by four Meyer UPM as front fills (mainly cos our in-house system was being blocked by the forestage).

The band had two monitor feeds going into headphone amps with separate controls for each player to adjust the overall level (not quite a Formula sound rig but discreet and we had the time to set up mixes that worked)

I did experiment with using pre-fade aux sends on the large drums going to dbx166A and returning to separate channels (didn’t really want to be using the inserts and the direct outs on the same channels) but we got the sound wanted from the uncompressed sound.

[/shop talk]

The show was well-received and I did receive some compliments on the sound – mainly due to a well thought out sound-track and musical accompanient in my book but people saying good things is always appreciated. I did push this one as close to the NAWR as I dared and I do think that these pieces benefit from not being coy – it’s a good way to test the integrity of the building in any case