[Harp-L] Re: Arrogant sound man



Both of my bad experiences were in the same town. Memphis.

We played the IBC comp. 3 years ago. The band I was in was playing at
Alfred's. The booth for the sound crew was high up near the ceiling with a narrow slit for them to see out.
You could not see the sound guy from the stage to give cues unless he put his head out the long narrow window.


Just about every harp player that went on was way too low in the mix. I felt bad for one guy because his amp was squealing from him
trying to get more stage volume. The house sound would not turn him up in the system. Alfred's is a very large room so every instrument needed to
be miked to be heard properly. The pa speakers were large floor columns. They set our levels before playing then left them.


When we got our feedback sheets from the judges we lost points because "the harp player wasn't playing loud enough."
I wasn't loud enough because the idiot sound guys they hired made it that way!
I used the house 4x10 Fender the first night and my Deluxe Reverb the second night both cranked to near feedback levels which is around 2 1/2.
It's not uncommon anywhere to see the soundman set it and forget it and walk away from the board or engage in conversation not paying attention for
cues from stage.


The second bad experience came the third night in Memphis. We were in a secondary competition of "battle of the bands" that the club owners held.
We won at Alfred's and moved down the street to another bar. I forget the name but they had an Elvis imitator that went on before the" battle".
I think Ryan Hartt's band played there during the regular comp.


The guy running sound was also host (from his booth) and super egoist. He was the star of the house. We waited for Elvis to finish then we put our gear on stage. I moved an amp mic 2 feet to the side so I could position my amp behind it. The soundman got all beside himself and started chewing me out, being very condescending for touching his mic. "Who was I to move the equipment. Only he moves it. Am I the sound man. No. From there he started to talk to me like I was a 3 yr. old making sure the rest of the band heard him talking down to me. I wanted to rip him a new one but I knew it would hurt the band's chances at performing or me being in the mix at all. He made me wait with my amp off the side until everyone was set up then moved my amp into place. I mentioned there was no power strip for me to plug into and he started to mock me again like I was whinning child.

To this day my blood boils because I never got a chance to shove that mic up his.... or my fist down his arrogant throat.

mike

On May 8, 2009, at 5:56 AM, harp-l-request@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Message: 9
Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 00:24:40 -0400
From: "John F. Potts" <hvyj@xxxxxxx>
Subject: [Harp-L] Arrogant sound man (true story)
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <9CDBA868-DC14-4ECE-862B-B4321C70103C@xxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed

snip...
The guy mixing the stage sound was just too cool.








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