I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but there are two things I think I did right: getting me a used Korg X50 and a new lightweight stand for gigging. Keyboardists often have to carry a lot of weight on them, especially when it comes to older instruments. I used to own Yamaha DX7. It weighted 31.2lbs/14.2 kg. Not quite the thing you’d love to carry, and particularly when you have to run to get into a soon-to-departure bus in mid-Winter.

Another of my keyboards was Korg 01/W FD. Its weight was 30.6 lbs/13.9 kg. That’s w/o bag, cords, sustain pedal, etc. Not exactly a gigging device either, although I occasionally played it.

I had a lighter alternative in the form of rack box Korg Wavestation SR, but my stupid mistake made a lightweight MIDI keyboard inoperable, so the box was largely out of equation.

And when I had to escape, I took no instruments with me.

Months later my wife, a saint, plain and simple, mailed me a bunch of my instruments ahead of joining me in Batumi herself. The package contained the lightweight Korg X50 keyboard and the keyboard stand, among many other things. In fact by that time I have constructed an ambient album with no musical keyboard whatsoever, but that is not quite the experience I’d like to repeat.

Over the last summer I worked for a short while with a young crooneress here. Ironically, the two level keyboard stand I’ve got me 15+ years ago, weighted almost as much as the keyboard itself. Quite intentionally I’ve bought a sturdy one back in a day, since it was supposed to hold two heavyweight devices when playing live (DX7 was one of them). But jogging around with it… not exactly a pleasure.

So I’ve picked a new stand, and it proved to be amazingly, amazingly lightweight (aluminium? no idea what else). Hopefully I won’t have to use it as a self-defense weapon, though :)

…The last gig was kinda alright, although there were quite a few screwups from each performer (with the exception of the drummer). The pub we played in has got no nothing even remotely reminiscent of the stage, so as we performed people walked around – and danced too. Unfortunately some pretty drunk guy dropped our singer’s microphone stand mid-song; he immediately placed it back upwards and apologized, but it’s always annoying when something like this happens. A professional hazard, on the other hand it is.

…If/when you do right, every gig is a celebration. At least it should look like the one for the audience. It’s nice if it feels like the one for the performers – a better rapport with the audience is invoked then.

But when it’s all through and you stroll home accross the entire city… All the problems you have set aside for these two or three hours roll back upon you with their crushing weight. Who cares, though.

Sombra Del Mar will next perform on Jan. 10, elsewhere. I’m yet to discover the place.