Christmas Parties

We were delighted to be able to provide live music for a Christmas party in December. 2022 has been a relatively busy year for the Toast boys that has seen us play a Glastonbury themed garden party, beer festivals, birthday parties, weddings and music festivals. We never quite know what awaits us when we arrive at a venue for a gig and making it work, whatever we face is something we’re getting quite good at. Not enough plug sockets? No problem. Need us to set up in an area 2 metres square behind some plant pots? Easy. Want us to diffuse a punch up with consummate diplomacy? Piece of cake.

We were invited to play a Christmas party in Swinton this December at the local Masonic lodge. I arrived, as per usual, with a car packed to the rafters with gear only to discover the function room was up two flights of stairs. Yay! The DJ for the evening was already set up, in the middle of the room, making positioning the band a little tricky. No worries, we managed to squeeze ourselves into a corner and started plugging stuff in.

Opportunities for rehearsal in the run up to this gig had been limited because one of our number had committed to another festive project and was “deep in panto”. I decided not ask too many questions, leaving intact the hope that Panto is not a clown he keeps chained up in his basement.

For this reason we’d hope to run through some of the Christmas numbers we’d learnt during the soundcheck but our audience arrived before we had the chance. Not wanting to spoil the surprise we decided to do Dreaming of You instead. Happy that all was well we retired to the bar.

The first set was scheduled to start at 8:15 and we were just about to launch into the first number when the power cut out. Something was overloading the fuse board. We tried a few configurations and eventually convinced the DJ to turn off all his gear so we could at least perform the first set. We discovered during the interval that it was a set of his lights that were drawing too much current and causing the issue.

The rest of the night went off with out a hitch and the Christmas songs went down very well. What a great way to end a great year.