Went to a gig last night with a band I usually do sound for. Being a courteous kind of guy, I kept well out of the local sound guy's way until it was all rigged, then when someone mentioned I was the regular band FOH, I smiled and asked if he'd like some 'gotchas' to watch for. I got an arrogant sneer and "I think I'll be ok" so I left it.
Not a huge place, but not small. Good stage. Nice RCF subs+line array tops. Lots of beefy monitoring on stage.
And then the gig started.
I was at the back of the room - about 10m back from the stage/pa. I had earplugs in. And the sound actually hurt when it peaked. Not hugely, but there was peaks of mild pain. Politeness restricts me from commenting on the quality of the sound (suffice to say, I wasn't impressed).
By the end, I was outside with the smokers. I actually think that the bar staff had complained and there was a door between the rooms (and it was a big pub). Afterwards, it seemed that the singer had had to resort to earplugs, various members of the band had tried to get it turned down and the bass player had even screamed at the guy to reduce the onstage monitoring to something under an apollo rocket launch volume.
Apparently, the sound guy (who spent the entire evening in a 'pulpit' at the side and never once came down to listen to where the audience were), thought it was brilliant. I think he was disappointed that everyone seemed to be telling him it was too loud. I'm guessing he thought it sounded great where he was...
Anyway, back to earplugs. I took them out when I got outside and lost one. Bum. Fortunately being a 'boy scout be prepared' kind of guy, I remembered that I keep 'spare' foam ones in my wallet. Lifesavers! So I made it through the rest of the gig. I'm going to buy some more of my 'good enough and come in a cool keyring case' ones from Amazon. But I'll also buy a few more sets for friends (and that band) as presents. Best for people to have them if they go out to places as more and more youngsters seem to have ruined their hearing and need 'human genome changing' volume levels in venues.
And .... breathe .... feel better now ...
