Teen Band Honeymoon Ends

Posted on Jan 03, 2010 03:17 pm
Doug Babbitt
Sound as good as you play
Member Since: Dec 23, 2008

For the record, I'd still rather do live sound for inexperienced young musicians at no charge than get paid for bar gigs that run into the wee hours. On the other hand, I learned last night that it won't always be pleasant.

First, I'll confess that I was not at might best. For some inexplicable reason I wasn't able to fall asleep the might before, so I was running on empty. Second, the venue was about an hour away and we were getting heavy snows and high winds. I knew I wouldn't be home till past midnight and I was supposed to be working on a high profile ski race starting at 6:00 this morning. For those not involved in ski racing, new snow is a bad thing; you need to scrape it off to get down to a surface that normal people call ice.

Did I mention that they thought they didn't need a PA till the afternoon of the show?

So I was there for the kids .... especially my son.

So we arrive at 5:00 for a 6:00 show. The guy with the keys gets there at 6:30. It's going to be a long one.

We usually have 3 bands in these shows, but 5 show up for this one. Plus this kid who wants me to cue up tracks on his iPod so he can scream along. It's going to be a very long one.

Everyone pitches in and we're ready to rock at 7:00. I'm just doing vocals and kick in the PA.

My son's deathcore band is the only one that I've worked with before, so they go first, with no soundcheck. I get the levels ok within 10 seconds, adjust the GEQs for the rest of the first song, and we're good to go. The guitars, bass, and drums are loud, but well-balanced. Overall, it sounds correct for the genre.

Apparently there was no plan for who would play next, so we waste 30 minutes before the next guys are ready. They're a pop-oriented punk band. The vocalist was excellent, including mic technique, and the instruments worked nicely together at a reasonable level.

Next comes iPod boy. With zero time to soundcheck, it takes me a few seconds to get the level correct on the iPod, during which he's hollering to turn it up. Next he starts talking softly to the audience and thinks his mic isn't loud enough (more hollering). I put as much input gain on the mic as I can, but quicklly I'm out of gbf. He abruptly shifts from talking to screaming .... good thing I set the limiter. I don't play his tracks the way he wants (hollering). The audience sympathizes with me. They are good judges of character.

The next band (hardcore) asks to move one of 3 stage monitors back to the drummer. No problem. They're bass amp is blown, so we go direct. It sounds ok, I think, but I'm out of gas. Nobody complains.

Band #4 (hardcore) may have been ok, but the lead singer yelled at me to turn up the vocals before every song. They were over the top loud on stage and I refused to turn up any more. I don't have a meter, but it was right at my pain threshold (I was wearing plugs, but pulled them occassionally). Again, we were at the limits of gbf.

I should have talked to band #4 after their set about the vocals. It turns out they wanted more in the monitors. This is because they had only 1 monitor. My son came to me after he broke down the monitors. The kid who moved one monitor back to the drummer had unplugged the thru cable that fed the mix to the other 2 monitors (I was using 3 powered Mackie SRM350s). So there was a real problem.

Band #5 did an even worse job of communicating with me. The lead vocalists sent his gf to talk to me. She couldn't yell loud enough for me to hear her, so she wrote a note "Can you turn him up?" I wrote back, "Yes, I can, but I won't. You'll hear him if the other guys turn down." I was driving the PA as hard for just his vocal as I drove it for 3 vocals, the kick and a bass.

As always, it ended. Lots of the kids thanked me. A few apologized for their fellow musicians' rudeness. My 14-year old showed more empathy for me than I've ever sensed before (silver lining).

I begged out of the ski race this morning .... slept till noon.

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