Thanks for the story.

Years ago I was doing live sound for a cover band. Everyone was happy with the sound and all was good until they introduced a “lead guitar” player into the band.

This guy was a typical show pony. He had a cordless system and he was constantly coming down off the stage to dance right at peoples tables, playing dicky lead on his knees and such. I don’t know if he ever realized just how silly he looked or that a lot of these people were embarrassed when he approached them.

Anyway. The problem I had was that he constantly kept turning his volume up on stage. This was making it increasingly difficult to mix both foldback and FOH. The other members would start looking at me to let me know they couldn’t hear themselves and I was constantly having to spend too much time adjusting his channel. In the end the other band members started asking him to turn it down but he still kept turning it up. By the second gig with this guy i’d had enough…

I completely turned his channel off

When he got down off stage (again) he noticed straight away and stormed over to me, giving me a blasting in the middle of the set.
After the gig I explained what happened to the other band members and told them I wouldn’t be doing another gig for them as long as he was playing. The next week I got a call to say they had kicked him out.

God it was good though to see this idiot acting like a wanna-be-rockstar with no FOH.

Many of my best friends are musicians of some sort and although mostly professional, they can sometimes fall into these “traps”.

At the same time, I am a live sound-tech, recording engineer and produce some of my friend’s material so I tend to know a little about how it is to be on both sides of the glass. I absolutely despise and loathe the sound-techs that think it is okay to drink during gigs, or just sit around indifferent of how bad the band is sounding live.

So in a way, I agree with everything you said. But that doesn’t mean the things I said weren’t true, some of the time, for some of the artists.

For unusual history, instrumentation and arrangement I recommend Beach Boys – Good Vibrations.

Danke schön.

writing music and sound, one is like painter, many with their unique sense of definition and mix of colours. we produce and perform emotion, and it is only possible if it becomes a team effort. and if the guitar were to be mixed into accoustic spaces an enngeneer finds scholasitcally ridiculous, simply look into pop history and see what unusual and often really weird accoustic setups made the charts…

and finally, i believe that not only the engeneers are of the serving kind, but also the artists. unfortunately many artists seem to forget that they are serving as well and that the cheers of a crowd are a sum of individual cheers. imagine if, everytime you walk into a bakery there was applasue, because the shortbread there is so yummy. we are all serving each other in our unique ways. but also – only very few are mature enough not to fall for the illusion of huge acclaim.
david

ps. sorry if the article seems to be a bit jumpy – english is not my mother tongue and i am not yet used to writing – so my trail of thoughts might bi a bit choppy at times..

Stay tuned for a similar article about creativity in the studio.

Björgvin.

Great article!