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Monday, April 28, 2008

Sabotage In The Music Industry... (Part 2)

[....Read Part 1] The guys got through it and to the untrained ear it would have sounded ok. Obviously after that gig we had a few questions for our sound guy. After all, it was only the two bands on that evening (the opening band and the one I manage), and they had sound checked at 3pm that afternoon for at least two hours. So, understandably, we wanted some answers.

He told us that the "PA was out of phase" and that was the cause of all the sound problems. The question I have - but unfortunately never asked him was why the hell did the opening band sound good then? No problems with the phasing then!

The band and I regrouped and had a chat about it as we had a local festival coming up here in our city. It was a festival that I was organising myself, along with our sound guy. We had chosen 4 other bands to take part - the headlining band being very well-known within New Zealand, and the band I manage opening for them. I was pretty happy with that and it was going to be great exposure for them.

The event turned out to be a huge success with an audience of approx 3,000. The whole event was going really well, the bands all sounded fine so I was glad that the PA was fine this time and there were no problems. The third band comes off and the band I manage set their gear up and hit the stage. Only... there were no vocals!!! The backing tracks were playing, the drums, bass, guitar (only just) but no damn vocals!! I looked up at our "sound guy" who was twiddling his thumbs... but halfway through the first song he managed to "fix" it.

Their sound this time was ok... at least the singer could hear himself this time and was able to hit the notes. But the sound, as far as we were concerned, was nowhere near quality - you hear the headline act come on after (they used their own sound man of course) and their sound was perfect. Absolutely different from any other band that had been on! Since then... we have sacked the sound guy and the guys do the sound themselves. They had a recent gig where they did that and there were no problems at all - in fact, the sound was awesome.. not the muddy/drum/bass at previous gigs.

Anyway, we learnt a lot from all this drama - so just remember, only work with people you trust... always!

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "Success is not how quick you reach the top, it's how fast you bounce back when you hit the bottom"

2 comments:

Abdel Kadz said...

Reading this post, both parts, makes me wonder if your sound guy was sabotaging the performance. If he was, I wonder what he'll get from doing so. A few performances with the same problems, I think he should have learned from his mistakes and tried his best to make the band's performance glitch-free. Learning that your band didn't have the same concerns after, sacking the sound guy was the most appropriate thing to do. B-)

Rokchic said...

Thanks for your comment Kadz. Over the next couple of posts, you'll probably see exactly why I believe it was sabotage.

But the whole situation really showed me that you have to protect the circle of who you work with.

Watch how the drama unfolds over the next few posts... :)