Drunken sound guy = recipe for disaster!

spectorbass83 · #1 11-01-2006, 08:14 AM

Last night my band played a Halloween show at this local watering hole. Quite possibly our worst show to date...

When we are setting up I tell the sound guy we need 3 vocal mics in total....he ended up asking me 3 more times in the course of 5 minutes how many vocal mics we asked for because he was too intoxicated to remember anything. We ended up having only one vocal mic for the lead singer only..great! No back up vocals! Sweet!

As we start playing we notice there are no vocals coming through the monitors, we ask the sound guy to turn them up...he shows up 5 minutes later and tries making some aimless adjustments on his mixer - which was conveniently located stage left, directly beside my guitar player...so now we got this drunken idiot crawling around on stage fiddling with all the knobs on his mixer which only made things worse...

The monitors started to feed back so much! For half of our show all I could hear was feedback...non-stop feedback.

We started getting complaints from audience members about vocals - they said they couldn't hear them. We asked the trusty sound guy to turn them up, which pissed him off and he started telling our singer that she needs to sing louder into the mic! What a douchebag! Yeah okay, she could do that and wreck her voice OR you could just turn up the vocals!

I have never come in contact with a sound guy that was as bad as this guy - he did not know what he was doing. Because of him my band sounded like $hit

/rant

SirCanealot · #2 11-01-2006, 08:30 AM

Ouch, that's pretty harsh, man. Should have spoon fed him instant coffee :P

would've perked him up a bit... eventually

Folmeister · #3 11-01-2006, 08:58 AM

Get his name from the venue and then send him a bill for the gig. Make sure you emphasize his incompetence in various and sundry ways.

invader3k · #4 11-01-2006, 10:45 AM

That's actually a very good and fair idea, Folmeister.

I'm kind of surprised someone from the band didn't just take over the sound board at some point. It sounds like the sound guy would've been too inebriated to put up much of a fight...but I know you can't always step off stage in the middle of a gig.

This reminds me of my favorite "Far Side" cartoon of all time...the one that's captioned something like "Larry's last night as the band's soundman" and shows this guy turning up a knob labeled "SUCK" on this huge mixer...

Vandelay · #5 11-01-2006, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by invader3k

This reminds me of my favorite "Far Side" cartoon of all time...the one that's captioned something like "Larry's last night as the band's soundman" and shows this guy turning up a knob labeled "SUCK" on this huge mixer...

Ha, I was just about to post that -- you beat me to it.

Here you go:

Spoiled Grape · #6 11-01-2006, 10:54 AM

Sounds harsh. Goodluck with the bill. At the very least, write a letter or call the venue and inform them of what happened, and how you would like to play their venue again, but with a different, sober soundguy.

I haven't had an experience *THAT* bad, but we did have a soundguy who played Counter-Strike on his laptop the entire show instead of soundchecking or anything.

spectorbass83 · #7 11-01-2006, 10:54 AM

LOL
I love it!

invader3k · #8 11-01-2006, 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spoiled Grape

Sounds harsh. Goodluck with the bill. At the very least, write a letter or call the venue and inform them of what happened, and how you would like to play their venue again, but with a different, sober soundguy.

I haven't had an experience *THAT* bad, but we did have a soundguy who played Counter-Strike on his laptop the entire show instead of soundchecking or anything.

That's my big pet peeve. We've done a couple shows where the "sound technician" would basically mic everything, turn the PA on, and then disappear. That has happened more to us at "festivals" and such, then live venues.