Gig report

[Chihlidog]

Sometimes soundmen just make me :facepalm:

Had a gig today in the shadow of a nuclear plant. :o

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r70/chihlidog/nukeplant2.jpg

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r70/chihlidog/nukeplant.jpg

Our click track kept cutting out on us. We use it to keep in time with the pre-recorded keyboard tracks (We dont have a keyboard player, my bro is the genius behind our stuff and he cant play keys and guitar at the same time of course) when we cant hear jack on stage. I give props to our drummer, even though he could barely make out what was going on, he stayed in time the whole set.

Anyway, I thought we did ok, but of course you never really know up there what it sounds like to the audience.

Well, watching the vid back my wife took of one tune, the keys were barely audible (and they are ESSENTIAL to our sound) and he HAD MY MIC OFF!!! My backups were not there. Well, they were, but only straight from my mouth, I can barely make them out on the vid, and I can only do that because I know where I sing.

Was over an hour drive to the gig, too. :-\

Oh well. These things happen. Anyway, just sorta ventin. Cool pic though:

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r70/chihlidog/chilimad.jpg

[Mark Wein]

One thing I've learned the hard way is to never piss off a sound guy. Usually if my vocal mic isn't in the monitors or house mix it's because I was overheard complaining about the "shit sound engineer" ;D

Did you get a sound check? Sometimes even getting a sound check is useless if its a multi-band festival...especially outdoors. Relying on clicks in those setting usually scares me....I think I saw on your myspace that this was a bigger event this weekend.

With all the b.s. did you have fun?

btw....are you glowing from the power plant? :D

[Chihlidog]

One thing I've learned the hard way is to never piss off a sound guy. Usually if my vocal mic isn't in the monitors or house mix it's because I was overheard complaining about the "shit sound engineer" ;D

Did you get a sound check? Sometimes even getting a sound check is useless if its a multi-band festival...especially outdoors. Relying on clicks in those setting usually scares me....I think I saw on your myspace that this was a bigger event this weekend.

With all the b.s. did you have fun?

btw....are you glowing from the power plant? :D




I didnt though! Were really laid back about it. If something is wrong, we'll just say "hey, is it possible to give us more such and such?" etc. They want less stage volume, no problem. They want us to do a million checks, no problem. We dont give them crap.

He had no reason to be mad at us except that we kept asking more more keys in the drummer's monitor. Well, he came up on stage and himself heard that he barely had any. turns out the eq on that monitor was like all the way down. He upped the mids, boom, it was cool. Hey, not our fault! And we werent nasty, we just tried to work with him on it.

He was super cool to us afterwards, too. Even wanted to get us together with a friend of his who he thought would dig our sound.

So, ya got me. What kills me is THIS song, more than any others, my backups are essential to the ending. Well, they screams and yells, but this is teh metalz, so, ya know.

[Chihlidog]

Oh, and I am not glowing from the plant. I was just glad nothing went wrong with it while we were there! :o


I've actually driven past it a few times before, I knew it was there, just didnt realize the gig was so close to it.

[Mark Wein]

I'm always "extra nice" to staff at the venue anymore...it always comes back to bite me in the ass if I don't...

Possibly he was a cool if incompetent sound guy..... :)

Are you going to post a vid?

[Chihlidog]

I'm always "extra nice" to staff at the venue anymore...it always comes back to bite me in the ass if I don't...

Possibly he was a cool if incompetent sound guy..... :)

Are you going to post a vid?


Well, who knows. Were not your typical-sounding band, so it seems a lot of soundguys are just thrown off by it. Yes, we are heavy, but YES, we need keys! Yes, we have lead AND back-up vocals.

Sorry, no vid. Like I said, the keys arent there enough, and my backups arent there. And I dont know how anyone else would feel about it, even if I thought it was OK enough to put on the net, I wouldnt do it without seeing if my bro felt the same way. Sorry, man. On the positive side, the guitars are nice and growly and punchy and ballsy, just like I like em! :love:

[Mark Wein]

We are a little tricky to mix on a big stage, too. In a small venue we can mix ourselves - we have drums, bass, 2 guitars and a keyboard player and two of us sing. In a bigger setting sound guys think they have to do all this stuff to us and it usually turns into a mess :(

Here we are in a small club:

57V-sviHIAU

I now what you mean about posting vids online..with our blues band we'll play 40 songs in a night so there is always a few good ones if I video the whole night and everyone is happy but with the rock band its a little harder to get good live videos so I usually run it by everyone before I post it...

[Chihlidog]

Heh, you're a heck of a player, Mark. Sounds pretty good. Getting a vid to sound decent in ANY venue is tough, let alone a small club that probably has a ton of reverb. Mind if I ask how you recorded that? We've never gotten sound like that from any live recording. Of course, we have always just used camcorders or digital cameras.

[Mark Wein]

Thanks! ;D

The club actually ran a video camera and fed it from the sound board...they charged us all of $35.00 for a DVD and since we don't play very often I got it...it was our first electric show in over 2 years (this was last January and we haven't played since then) so much of the video didn't make us very happy but I liked this song and its nbot on our album so I thought I'd put it up...except for our vocals being a little out I dig it...I have one more from that night:

v2PFrmTbaHg

Its not as good and I got a bunch of shit on HC for being a weak singer so I don't post it very often anymore...

[thredlok]

That's because everyone there, can shred like Vai and sing like Freddie Mercury.:p

[telecaster911]

Nice pics chili... I saw that you were playing via the Promise Land myspace. It's kind of funny how rented sound feels like they need to do a huge soundcheck (after the 5000th hit on tom 1, I just can't take it ;D). I run our sound most of the time and it takes a verse or 2 to tweak it for the room and that's it. The drummer's brother will do some of the minor tweaking through the night (usually just the singers vocals up a bit later in the night). Mark, I really dig the blues band.

[Mark Wein]

That's because everyone there, can shred like Vai and sing like Freddie Mercury.:p


And none have the clips to prove it, either ;)

[Mark Wein]

Nice pics chili... I saw that you were playing via the Promise Land myspace. It's kind of funny how rented sound feels like they need to do a huge soundcheck (after the 5000th hit on tom 1, I just can't take it ;D). I run our sound most of the time and it takes a verse or 2 to tweak it for the room and that's it. The drummer's brother will do some of the minor tweaking through the night (usually just the singers vocals up a bit later in the night). Mark, I really dig the blues band.


Funny how that happens. On the majority of our gigs I run sound from the stage and the mix is pretty good after a song or so. It helps playing with people who use their own ears, though :)

Are you talking about the videos I posted elsewhere on the site or these? Whats funny is that its all the same guys in both bands except the other guitarist isn't officially part of the "blues" band although he's been playing some of the gigs with us recently,

We are actually starting a 3rd "fusion" band with the same lineup except for the addition of the sax player you see in the video for the Jackson 5 song I posted. The band is turning into a Swiss Army knife ;D

[thredlok]

That's because everyone there, can shred like Vai and sing like Freddie Mercury.:p


And none have the clips to prove it, either ;)


When you're that good, you need not bother with clips...the little people should be able to tell through your posts.

Kinda like that blues BT thread Affy put up, it had a lot more critics than it did participants. I put up a clip (albeit it sucked compared to the rest) but I have no delusions about my playing. :P

I am Eric Johnson

[thredlok]

;D If Eric Johnson had his left hand amputated ;D

[Mark Wein]

That's because everyone there, can shred like Vai and sing like Freddie Mercury.:p


And none have the clips to prove it, either ;)


When you're that good, you need not bother with clips...the little people should be able to tell through your posts.

Kinda like that blues BT thread Affy put up, it had a lot more critics than it did participants. I put up a clip (albeit it sucked compared to the rest) but I have no delusions about my playing. :P

I am Eric Johnson


I get seriously tired of that. Affys blues thread was one of the cooler things on GJ just because it got everyone feeling like they could participate in a clip jam. I tried to listen and comment on all of them but there were just so many that I gave up. I don't remember anyone being negative about it, though. I think most of the guys who were doing Red Ants clip jams didn't feel the need to contribute but we've heard all of them play countless times and it was cool to hear the guys you usually don't hear. That was the inspiration behind the "solo contests" here, actually....

I know guys like Red Ant, Ed Degenarro, Chris Lenk, Oscar Jordan, Jazz Hands, DKH, Burgess, Frank Prince, R03er and a few others play well. MikeSF is one seriously badass MF that flies beneath the radar over there, too. I am sure there are a few other guys that do that we don't hear.

There's nothing wrong with not playing as well (since we all start that way) but I get tired of the "lesser player" wars and the arguing over music by people like Wayne Vinson. Seriously, if someone else likes something that you don't STFU and let them enjoy it. And don't post a shit board recording and then lord your tastes and trolls over everyone else's opinions....

[Mark Wein]

;D If Eric Johnson had his left hand amputated ;D


LOL

[thredlok]

I don't read that crap...I'll read jimmy james threads to see what new troll he's putting out (the rubber ass thread was funny).

Wayne is ok, if you don't engage him in that arena, we both like football "prognostication" so we can converse on that common ground, but that's about it.

ps. I'm glad you didn't didn't take the opportunity and tell me I play like Eric's Johnson ;)

[Mark Wein]

I don't read that crap...I'll read jimmy james threads to see what new troll he's putting out (the rubber ass thread was funny).

Wayne is ok, if you don't engage him in that arena, we both like football "prognostication" so we can converse on that common ground, but that's about it.

ps. I'm glad you didn't didn't take the opportunity and tell me I play like Eric's Johnson ;)


I stay out of most of it. I get along with Wayne most of the time but I learned early on to read and not post in his threads and I'll be OK. I have no interest in sports "prognostication" or poker so we don't have that common ground and I don't enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing. Whoever's alt Dick Long is just seems to be having fun being a parody troll.

I actually like Jimmy James although my very first interaction with him was my very first online trolling before I knew that people did that for entertainment :-[ I get the feeling he would be fun to hang out with in real life. And the rubber ass thing was hilarious....

you're welcome ;D

[telecaster911]

Are you talking about the videos I posted elsewhere on the site or these? Whats funny is that its all the same guys in both bands except the other guitarist isn't officially part of the "blues" band although he's been playing some of the gigs with us recently,




Well, this one...and others I guess. I've seen most of them.

[Mark Wein]

Are you talking about the videos I posted elsewhere on the site or these? Whats funny is that its all the same guys in both bands except the other guitarist isn't officially part of the "blues" band although he's been playing some of the gigs with us recently,




Well, this one...and others I guess. I've seen most of them.



Thanks! All the same band, just different songs I guess ;D

[Denverdave]

I hate bad sound. But I was also a semi-pro sound man for over a decade and did a few high profile gigs, so I am VERY picky about live sound, and probably 75% of amature technitions are iffy at best. I was actually considering a run at being pro sound tech, but my actual technical knowledge of sound systems is not at the right level. I can mix live sound likes it's nobodys business, but schooling would be required on the techincal side and I haven't the time or money for that at this point in life.

Chihili - at least you had a gig! Cool pictures too!!!

[Mark Wein]

I hate bad sound. But I was also a semi-pro sound man for over a decade and did a few high profile gigs, so I am VERY picky about live sound, and probably 75% of amature technitions are iffy at best. I was actually considering a run at being pro sound tech, but my actual technical knowledge of sound systems is not at the right level. I can mix live sound likes it's nobodys business, but schooling would be required on the techincal side and I haven't the time or money for that at this point in life.

Chihili - at least you had a gig! Cool pictures too!!!


It used to be that most "Club" sound guys in LA were horrible at their job but acted like they were running sound for Rush at the Forum. In recent years most of the club guys I've run into (keep in mind that aspect of my career has slowed down considerably) have actually been pretty good in LA and still horrible down here in Orange County.

And Chili is ahead of me on gigs for the last two months >:(

[Denverdave]

And Chili is ahead of me on gigs for the last two months >:(


Me two.....zero here. But we have gig on November 14 &15, and very possibly two more in December (including new years Eve). The booking guy for the December dates is supposed to come see us at the November shows to detirmine if he wants to book us, so we need to be good at those dates (with a new bass player too!!!).

[Mark Wein]

I think I have one in December and we'll start rehearsing with the new band in a week or so so I hope to get things rolling again...