On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 12:16:37 +0000, Shawn wrote:

Did a show last night at a very swanky club in Denver. They had the house
music cranked insanely loud with that nasty techno-dance crap and they
wouldn't turn it off for us to do a sound-check.
Unfortunatly I'm not experienced enough to do a sound-check without
hearing my system and our current sound-person is the drummer's girlfriend
who, bless her heart, is working her tail off but is way to inexperienced
to mix from scratch.
As a result we fought most of the night with feedback and generally bad
sound.
[...snip]

This is really a no-brainer to me, but then I'm coming from the
professional musician's viewpoint not the professional (or un-professional
as the case may be) club owner perspective.

If you're so professional, did you ever think of hiring a professional
sound crew?

Any competetent FOH guy shuld be able to set the basics by sight, and pull
the basic mix by half way through the first verse. And have the whole mix
ok by the end of the first song. If the band is professional too, you
could consider giving him an easy time of it by starting out with, say, 4
bars of bass and drums, then have the gtr come in, etc - don't try to
start him off with 5 harmonies, 3 brass 2 keys 2 gtrs etc all in the intro
to your first number...

And who is your manager? Is he another "professional" too - like your
drummer's girlfriend? Did he advance the show? Did he even mention
load-in/sound-check times with the venue when booking the gig?
[come to think of it, how many "professional" drummers do you know who
have their girlfriends come to the gig, let alone mess with the sound
desk?]

And did you say "most of the night"? You're lucky the venue management
didn't kick you off the stage after the first few songs. I'm betting
"professional" isn't one of the first words that comes to their minds when
remembering your performance that night.



ps. Denver is a nice place - I was there in '98. What's the name of this
"very swanky" club - is it new?