Played a small event today, should have been on at 2:30 till 3pm. Everything falling behind as engineer and I use term lightly was frankly not up to job, add to that band on before us, who were also supposed to 30mins did 50mins, to the point I asked them are you getting off or what,
His reply was " we just do our set mate everyone is late, so you will be! " I told sound engineer to pull the plug on them, but he was afraid of repercussions.
So event finishes at 4pm we go on at 3:35, place is starting to get really cold and people leaving, so complete waste of fucking time. Had words with engineer as sound was bad, we are probably the easiest band to deal with, as we like low volume and a standard monitor mix of only vocals and acoustic, he was completely overwhelmed and out of his depth.
Rather than checking out front sound, he was checking levels using headphones, so much so that I put guitar down while band was playing, took him out front and asked is that sound a decent mix? Vocals were louder on stage than out front, acoustic guitar was way too loud and distorting despite using a good quality DI box which we use regularly , and also he could not get a low enough level out of bass amp, using the DI out pre eq on a GK bass amp. Possibly my worst experience with a sound engineer. Talked to him afterwards, and he said he had only really done church band before.
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(formerly miserneil)
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(formerly miserneil)
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I've played in church bands a lot and there's three types of sound people 1 competent (rare) 2 barely competent but aware of it and only doing it cos nobody else will (more common) 3 absolutely useless and completely unaware of it.
The sound guy in the original post sounds like a 2. I can work with these people in a situation like this but there's a trick, always goes on early in the running order.
Last multi band thing I did was for free, out of town and I brought family and friends. The stage manager wanted us to go on an hour early. My rent a fans were not there so I politely declined. So pissed up band went on went over time, and my set got cut by 10 mins as the headliner had another gig.
In hindsight I wouldn't have bothered taking anyone, taken the earlier slot and just played to the locals.