Tonight I was dropped in at the deep end yet again, being asked to do the sound at the Phoenix with 30 minutes notice. Initially I didn’t want to do it as I knew what kind of bands would be playing, hardcore metal! But I really need the money, so I agreed to do it. Things starting out well enough, soundchecked the headline band, and they sounded pretty good, so I was thinking it was going to be plain sailing from then on, but how wrong could I be. The first band to play, Grifter sounded really good, I was happy with their sound. But then came Redemption Unnamed, and that’s where the problems started, Rich and Alex had their amps way too loud, much louder than they normally have it. You might ask why that is a problem? When the vocal mic is about 8 feet from the bass and guitar amps, you get feedback through the vocal channel, in fact the input single from the backline, which wasn’t mic’ed up incidentally, was louder than the vocals, so I had the ride the vocal channel, and compress the hell out of it to get the vocals to come through, but because of the level of the vocal mic, it was riding on the edge of feeding back all time. I managed to get my way through that set somehow, then the next band, although not that heavy and their amps weren’t in particularly loud, but for some reason the vocals were feeding back like mad, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on, I tried everything, adjusting the EQ and compressor settings, but to no avail, until the last song, I managed to find the right combination of settings. This is where a half hour sound check for each band before opening would be great to iron out any problems, rather than quickly checking the levels and then getting them on, and adjusting it on the fly. Ironically the final band, who I thought would be the most trouble, were the best sounding band of the night, despite a bit of bass and vocal mic trouble, which was sorted quick enough. It really seems like it wasn’t my night tonight, although a little more notice would be nice, at least I would be able to prepare, as I am not really a regular soundman, I just fill in occasionally. I might put my name forward to do the sound for more gigs as frankly I could use the money, £27.50 for 5 hours work comes in very handy, especially now as I have no money!
Yesterday (that’ll be Wednesday) I was a right lazy bastard, didn’t get out of bed until past 5pm, as it was my day off work. Not really because I didn’t want to get up, I was so tired that I physically couldn’t get up. Well, that’s technically a lie, I did get up briefly to take a wander to the bathroom, then I laid back in bed and watched some TV, although I only managed about 20 minutes before dozing off again, just couldn’t keep my eyes open, I spent the rest of the day in that almost comatose state, until I finally dragged myself out of bed for some Internet browsing and chatting with friends on instant messaging before going to the Phoenix for a gig, luckily without me being on the sound desk, then came home had another instant messaging session with Tomas, before retiring to bed, although I couldn’t sleep of course, so spent the next few hours flicking through my cable TV channels, before eventually getting to sleep about 4:30am, needing to be up again for 8:30am.
Anyway, I have rambled on enough, time for bed, and hopefully in the morning I can hear properly again, as all I can hear at the moment is an annoying ringing sound!