A rough night last night. Someone commented recently on how the Journal had gotten pretty monotonous “pretty day, pretty place, awesome open mic” blah blah blah. Well, let me throw something else into the world: last night sucked.
I like playing eclectic shows, and some people question that. I like playing shows with other acoustic musicians, sure, but I frankly don’t like a lot of folk music and I miss my heavy metal days. I Love mixing it up with metal bands, reggae groups, hip hop groups. I don’t like anything that brings an audience that is outwardly hostile to us, but I like to think that the majority of OUR audience is pretty open-minded and that we have good taste. I like to think that when we have our choice of artists on a bill, we might create something eclectic, but that it creates a cool show. Sure, it has to be balanced: ilyAIMY as a duo shouldn’t follow a loud metal band, if only because no-one will notice we’re playing, but we can make a good accounting of ourselves right before one, even if most of the audience consists of metal-heads. And frankly, the full band can be and has been slapped smack between death metal acts and hold our own as long as the sound guy can get our volume to compete.
So, though we were playing Mill Street Brews last night, which is apparently a pretty well-known rock venue in Massachussetts, and though most of the posters on the walls were for Testament’s upcoming show, and though all the other bands on the bill for the night were metal acts, I wasn’t going to be too cynical.
My heart sank a little bit when I saw the note on the soundboard – “Couldn’t find the problem with the tweeters, see if you can find the problem”. Something to that effect. Still, any note leftover from the night before would SURELY have been addressed by now, right? RIGHT?!!? Well, not only were the tweeters not working (for those of you not versed in sound equipment parlance – the tweeters create the high end of the sound and without them everything’s sort of muddy, midrangey and bass thumpy) but the PA as a whole cut out completely once or twice. We ended up routing everything through the monitors (which actually sounded awesome) and turning half of the monitors around to face the audience. This was plenty of volume for us, and frankly, the lack of tweeters wasn’t going to hurt the other bands as much since the ONLY thing going through the house PA would be vocals and perhaps the kick drum.
Well, the soundguy and the head tech decide (10 minutes before we hit the stage) that they’re going to cannibalize parts from the stage in the next room to help our sound along. The guy is griping that he’s not paid enough to move speakers and requests (and by “requests” I mean yells to the room at large that “hopefully some big guy who’s HOPING to play tonight will get over here and move this shit”) that the bands move them themselves (we don’t ask him to move OUR amps!!). The fact that he’s 57 and doesn’t get health insurance frankly sounds more like his problem than mine, but we get everything in place and ask if we can sound check. we’re told “No. Start your set.” And we launch into it. Heather keeps her spirits up, but at this point I’m thoroughly demoralized, pissed off, and eager to leave. Randomly, in the middle of a song, it is decided that the PA is back up and running and one channel at a time our sound is routed back OUT of the monitors and into the room through the hopefully reincarnated house system. My guitar never DOES come back through the monitors very fully, and when I step off stage to listen to the overall EQ, it sure as FUCK doesn’t sound like anything’s been fixed.
We get cut off by Irate Sound Guy Without Health Insurance 15 minutes before the end of our set and I’m only too glad to turn the stage over to White Rose Confession. Though I wouldn’t wish SGwoHI on anyone else, at least White Rose isn’t routing 100% of their output through this POS house system. Of course, they have their own problems, including poor mixing and a mic that kept shorting out. SGwoHI, who wasn’t being paid enough to move speakers, apparently also wasn’t being paid enough to sit at his console and actually BE a Sound Guy, so every new issue required audience members to go on a building-wide search for him.
It was an irritating night. White Rose is an amazing band. They’ve got It, whatever It is when they talk It. Star quality + a good, solid, commercial yet original sound. whatever – they’ve got It in huge dumptruck fulls. They are amazing and yet I can’t even relax enough to truly enjoy them. Their guitarist is an artist with more control over his instrument than anyone else I’ve ever heard. As always, Alice in Chains leaps to mind in that what they’re playing isn’t particularly fast, isn’t even all that complex half the time, but it’s EXACTLY what fills that space. It’s what’s supposed to be there, and you can’t imagine it being anything else.
I spend some time wandering around the rest of the venue, and decide that it’s the night, not just our special SGwoHI (though he’s wearing a shirt that says “we’re not happy until YOU’RE not happy” – so maybe this s all intentional?). The security outside isn’t telling people “don’t take your drinks outside”, they’re walking up behind people outside and smacking their drinks out of their hands. The woman in the other bar has an amazing
voice but keeps yelling at people because they’re talking too loud. She’s irate that her monitors aren’t working (because they’re wired into OUR PA!!! – shhh!!!). The band after White Rose Confession can’t stand one another and cut each other apart as they’re setting up on stage, while they’re ON stage, as they get OFF stage… It’s their last gig together and they’re eager to part ways, the singer taking every opportunity to loudly denounce the tastes and sexuality of the other members and declaring how glad he is that it’s the last night he’s singing any of these tunes.
We get out into the cool post-storm evening and sit on the hood of the Saturn and deflate. That’s when we meet the Food Guy.
