One of the weird and unsatisfying things about being a tech(nologist) rather than a musician is that we’re supposed to be music-neutral. When artists come into our studios or live venues, we’re supposed to do the best job we can, regardless of how we feel about their art. When a luthier makes a guitar, there is no expectation from the guitarists as to whether the luthier believes the instrument he made is going to make horrible noises or be somewhat musical. When a technican is asked to build a recording studio, fix a piece of gear, or sort out some kind of electronic or mechanical mess a musician made with equipment, the tech is expected to be genre and quality-neutral.
But it doesn’t work that way, does it? Musicians and studio owners and clubs all bitch about the technicans they work with, “They just don’t seem to care.” In fact, they probably don’t. And they probably shouldn’t be expected to, either.
Back in the 70’s, when my partner and I were first starting up our music services business, we had a purpose for doing what we were trying to do. I wanted to record the area’s great, mostly jazz, musicians and he wanted to create the most transparent sound system possible and run it with the area’s terrific musicians as a sound source. Of course, all of that cost a small fortune and not having a trust fund to pay for it we ended up doing work for anyone who could and would pay the bills. For three years, he did two or three shows a week (along with his day job and assisting me weekends in the studio) and I assisted. I did that many sessions a weekend (along with my day job and assisting him on the live shows) or more when we were doing jingles. While that was going on, I was also doing tech and recording engineering work for two other studios in the area. Along with my day job. After three years, my partner had enough. He quit, got a better day job, and never looked back at music again.
I moved to a bigger city, got a day job doing something closer to music (manufacturing audio consoles), and found another partner who specialized in jingles and kept doing the tech and contract recording engineering work. Then, I moved to the biggest city (L.A.) and got a far more demanding day job and started going to school nights. If it hadn’t been for an accidental connection to a great band, I’d have been out of music (other than making equipment) for that whole decade. However, I lucked into a relationship with a really special, really talented band (The Sum Fun Band) and I worked with them anytime they played for about 8 years. If they hadn’t appeared in my life at that time, I might have never gone back to live music or, maybe, music in any way.
This show was recorded before I met these guys, but it’s a pretty good representation of what they did while I was their FOH and monitor system guy. Often, the band was a couple of pieces bigger, which only made it better. Which brings me to the point of this rant.
When I moved to California, I was tired of doing the jack-of-all-brands-of-music thing. During the past ten years, I’d recorded country, country and western, bluegrass, hillbilly, bubblegum pop, heavy metal, and probably a few other genres of “music,” all of which I hated or, at best, ridiculed. We did live shows for all of that crap, too. My partner left music forever, thanks to that experience. I wasn’t that smart or that flexible, whichever comes first. Like I used to tell my students, “If you want to stay in this business you have to do a little of everything.” The other message should have been, “If you want to end up hating your life in music, do a little of everything including the crap you despise.”
My friend, Scott Jarrett, used to say, “If you can imagine making a living any way but through music, you should.” There is an aspect of desperation to that statement that I did not get for a long time. There are many ways to make a living that do not require ignoring your own opinions and tastes. Working at the technology end of music is not one of those. I remember being backstage at an Iron Maiden show in Irvine and listening to the roadies describe how much they despised the band and how “I could play better than these blokes with ten busted fingers.” I remember all of the country and bluegrass concerts and festivals where I wished I could experience total, but temporary, deafness for a few hours. (Earplugs don’t even get close to doing that job.) I remember spending hours tweaking a record for “artists” who would not be able to reproduce anything resembling that music on their own and wondering, not just would they notice my work, but would I even get paid?
I retired in 2013 and “retirement,” for me, meant no longer having to do unappreciated, uninteresting work. For the first year or two, when someone asked what I’d charge to record their music, I’d tell them, “I have to hear it first. If I like it, I’m cheap. If I don’t, you can’t afford me.” I need to progress from that to either “no” or “hell yes.” I’m slowing integrating into the music community in my new home and getting asked to do more live shows and, even with my current lightweight recording rig and borrowed facilities, more recording gigs. 50 years of saying “yes” to everything is making this transition difficult. However, disobeying this rule can mean that I do one crap gig and I don’t want to do another one for a couple of years; if ever again.
The thing that is hard to sell to musicans and venues is that, at this point, I have finally arrived where my partner laneded 35 years ago. If I don’t love the music, I don’t have any reason on earth to hear it. If I never hear another Beatle, Stones, Led Zep, Eagles, REO, Skynard, Dylan, Bill Monroe, etc. cover again, it would be a much better world for me. I don’t want to hear any of that geezer crap on the radio, either. Honestly, I’d go through a lot to get to tech, live or recorded, some really interesting acoustic jazz, world music, R&B, jazzy acoustic folk, or reasonably complicated original pop music.
So, after musing over this for about a week, I told the owner of one venue I have worked with that I wanted to be more focused on the type of music I worked on than just the venue’s needs and the response was, “Ok, no pressure on the Sept shows. I will do my best to fill them and, if I can't, I'll let you know. Sound ok? I know you are doing sound here, in part, to help us and we appreciate you a ton.”
Aw, now I’m back to saying “yes” to everything. Not really, but I do feel like the work I put into make a show sound the best it can is appreciated and that I’m on the right track here. Now, I’m going out into the backyard where I can practice saying “no” and “hell yes” until I can do both without choking.
4 comments:
May we all reach the point where we can do mostly what we like, not what we must. But when we only do what we like, isn't that called selfish? At your stage in life there isn't much point in doing something you hate, unless it allows you the chance to do something you love. I offer that there is a land between "no" and "Hell yes!" It is called "okay" and while you shouldn't spend all of your time there, your net happiness may increase if you visit the land of "okay" occasionally. Especially if it increases the amount of time spent in "Hell yes!"
It's a tough call. There isn't much music I haven't heard and not all that much I haven't either recorded or provided sound reinforcement for. When it becomes repetitive and was not all that interesting the first time, "ok" just becomes a habit to learn to break. For about 50 years, I wasn't "allowed" to have an opinion: just record the music or "make us sound real good." It wasn’t a sacrifice I made unwillingly. I loved playing with the gear, figuring out how to make people sound as good as they could sound. I loved it, but after a while it got old. Everything does. I suspect that if you did anything long enough, you’d get tired of it.
A lot of live sound techs get numb, stop caring about anything but getting through the night, don't care how the job gets done as long as it doesn't require much from them. I spent most of my life studying the equipment, learning not just how to use it but how to make it. I want to use that lifetime of experience making good music sound better.
Weirdly, there are some sounds that I love and some I don’t. Some sorts of music that I love and some I can take or leave and some I’d just as soon not experience again. Bluegrass, for example, just doesn’t hold much interest for me and that nasal twang bluegrass vocalists insist on doing it just irritating. Speaking of pain, pitch errors have always caused me pain; one of many reasons I try not to sing much, myself. So, some instruments which can not be correctly tuned are physically painful for me to hear. As much as I liked the guy, I could barely tolerate Roy Orbison’s singing. He just never hit the notes reasonably accurately.
It’s tough to say “no” to projects that I know I probably won’t enjoy because I know that once you fall out of the que you often can’t get back in. I got to do some great shows at the Sheldon over the last 3 years, but more and more of the shows there end (for me) with a lousy sound check and an understanding that the FOH mix is going to be a mess. I used to love just getting to set up the microphones on a drum kit, an acoustic piano, or an acoustic guitar. When I know it’s going to sound fairly awful in the end, a lot of that joy vanishes.
There is a special pleasure I get from using great microphones, too. Mostly, the only time I get to do that is when I bring the microphones to the gig. Most venues have few-to-no excellent microphones. That creates a garbage-in-garbage-out situation that can’t be fixed with EQ or any other effect. I am, however, at a point where finding “hell yes” situations and activities is getting harder every day. I suspect that is another function of growing old.
There is no chance you will make any money only doing the things you like to do. So, while you might be having fun living off of your trust fund the rest of us are working for a paycheck.
No trust fund here, just SS and a lifetime of living frugally and my hard-earned savings. However, if the "rest of you" is the product-reviewing media, you are certainly doing what you do for a paycheck and not the value rendered to your readers. When reviews of quality products and crap look the same, the whole point in the reviews is missing. But it is a fact that the people/conglomerates who own magazines are desperately looking for ways to pay for their leveraged debt and keep collecting those mismanagement "fees" until the next round of economic collapse train wrecks all of the bad paper they've written.
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