Holding A Grudge or Just Paying Attention?

After the Snarky Puppy misadventure, my wife (Elvy) and I had a couple of long conversations about concerts we’ve seen and loved or hated and the end results. Turns out, my Geezer with A Grudge habits apply to music, too. I have never been punished by an artist twice and we have made a habit of seeing the people who exceed my expectations at every opportunity. The last bit has slowed up considerably now that I am no longer in the business and live some distance from where most of the action happens. Because of the expense and hassle, I probably won’t be seeing many artists twice from here out.

For example, I’ve seen Pat Metheny almost a dozen times at a dozen different venues and never once felt betrayed, abused, or let down by his band’s performances. After that many shows, I am still willing to go a long distance to see him again. A small part of my motivation for moving to L.A. in the 80’s was to see the Crusaders in their native element; especially since that was the only way to see them by that late period in their careers. I saw them as the headlines for the 1983 Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Forum, at our local club (The Golden Bear) in Huntington Beach, and at a couple of outdoor shows in the South Beach area. Every show was knocked out and amazingly close to their recordings, quality-wise. Same for Jeff Beck; who I have seen 3 times and 4 if you count a 1960’s Yardbirds concert in a Denver bar. Jeff is often loud, but always musical and the sound quality has been close to state-of-the-art every time I’ve seen him play. Elvy isn’t as much of a jazz fan as me, so many of the above shows were my experience alone. On the other hand, we’ve been to more than a few pop music concerts because of her interests; Queen, for example.

An example of the other spectrum would be Robert Randolph and the Family Band. I bought 2003's Unclassified and 2006's Colorblind the moment they arrived. I used to intro my auditorium lecture classes with Squeeze or Ain’t Nothing Wrong with That. Like Snarky Puppy, I missed my first opportunity bto see RR when the band was at First Ave because I was working a gig, out of town, that evening. Then I saw Robert and his band at the Minnesota State Fair. The sound was terrible and, being an outdoor concert in a facility where I’ve heard some terrific shows, all of the blame landed on the band (and the FOH nitwit). I tried that show twice and the 2nd time was worse than the 1st. I haven’t paid a moment of attention to Robert Randolph since; nor bought any of the band’s newer music. I still think they are a good recording act, but as a live band they suck and I wouldn’t cross the street to see them for free.

To be clear, what I’m expecting in a live concert is at least the sound quality of a decent car stereo (sans hip-hop sub-woofer mess); at the dead minimum. There is no point in spending tens of thousands of dollars on a sound system that is worse than a car stereo; and that is not a high bar. A better goal would be to match the fidelity of a good home entertainment system. Still not a stretch, but an improvement over a car stereo. Excuses from FOH goobers for room acoustics, audience behavior, and the band’s stage excesses don’t mean a thing to me. The band and the FOH engineer are totally responsible for and in control of the concert sound quality. If, as is the usual case, they don’t care one result is either do I.

Even 20-50 years later, I can remember many of the concert moments that blew me away; some as if it were a recent experience. What I remember about the lousy sounding concerts I’ve experienced is “I’ll never do that again.” That, literally, is all I remember of non-musical experiences. That would be my Geezer reflex: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” I had thought about doing a chart of a few of my concert experiences, but it would be a lot of one-time experiences and my HTML charting capabilities suck. Put it simply, there are far more “artists” who I have seen once and wouldn’t cross the street to see again. Too many musicians are more concerned with their egos than with their music. This is not a new thing, but a long-established tradition; especially with jazz and pop musicians.

The conversation Elvy and I had about our 50+ years of going to concerts together was a little surprising. She was even more adamant in her “I’ll never do that again” response. We did remember many of the same great shows close to exactly the same. For both of us, the memory of the sonically disappointing-to-awful shows was limited and a little irritating. We’re not rich and wasting money is something we’ve tried to avoid for all of our adult lives.

Weapons of Mass Destruction – Live Sound

Nothing disappoints like a good band and a lousy live sound company. I’d been waiting to hear Robert Randolph and the Family Band for half a decade when I discovered the band would be on one of the outdoor stages at the Minnesota State Fair. I own three of the band’s CDs and have seen several of their shows on YouTube, so I’m familiar with their stuff and had high expectations for the band.

My wife and I showed up early to get good seats and my first indication that there was bad news on the way was the fact that the band’s crew appeared to be a sad mix of clueless kids completely out of their depth with the Avid monitor console and biker bar bouncers. The two kids spent the whole setup making “yup, yup” noises into Randolph’s SM58 and demonstrating a sort of ignorance that only music school graduates exhibit. Even the traditional “testing one, two, three” seemed beyond their grasp. Looking for a couple of friends we expected to join us, I ran into Michael and Claudia McKern near the back of the seating area and invited them to sit with us. They wisely declined with the expectation that the sound would be deafening and painful any closer than their nosebleed seats. I should have taken the hint right then. The show started on time and got going with more than few technical hitches as Randolph’s crew spent the first twenty minutes running on and off stage wrestling with instrument and microphone problems. Their lethargic stage setup and goofy concentration on unimportant trivia were a sure sign that show problems were on the way.

The sound company was a local vendor and I’ve heard this system before. It’s a small “array” system (a glorified term for speaker columns on steroids) that is incapable of reproducing anything more sophisticated than “the white zone is for parking” announcements. The only “quality” the system has is volume. Accuracy and frequency response have been sacrificed for output and the company has a habit of pushing their pitiful equipment far past it’s meager capabilities. Last night was no exception. My best description of the sound quality is “a really loud, but damaged, AM radio accompanied by an equally lo-fi cardboard tube subwoofer.” Mostly what was demonstrated was that throwing money at a lack of talent is just good money after bad. The people in charge of running this system are hearing impaired. No amount of equipment can fix deafness.

The sound of the kick drum was one of the two most disgusting options live sound clowns seem to have; lots of 100Hz with no definition and enough resonance in the system to make every kick strike ring for no less than half a measure, even on slower tunes. The bass guitar was equally indistinguishable from rumbling earthquake noises, except when Danyel Morgan slaps his bass which produced weird quacking sounds. The band’s great voices were reduced to public address system quality monotone speech. The rest of the mix was a wash of distortion and mid-range confusion. The only way this could have been worse would be to take it indoors where lousy acoustics would add to the mess.

The band struggled to generate energy with their technical handicap and produced some moments that transcended the sound system. As for us, we filtered from the front rows back to the street without any real improvement. The FOH clown was busy fooling with a personal computer or his cell phone during the worst moments of the show and he made no attempt to clean up the sonic mess he was making. Clearly, this band would be better off running sound from the stage without the interference of “professionals.” In fact, the best three shows I’ve seen this summer were all sans-soundmen. All of the worst shows had some fool in charge of the sound system whose job was, apparently, to create as much audio havoc as possible.

All of this reminded me of why I decided to quit making professional power amplifiers twenty years ago. “Sound reinforcement” is just a polite term for making loud noises intended to damage hearing on a large scale. There is no excuse for allowing this kind of audio garbage in a modern world. Musicians and the industry have no business complaining about MP3s or file-sharing when there appears to be no quality control in any aspect of live music. Nothing could sound worse than this kind of PA system with this kind of fool in charge. So, if our customers can’t hear the difference between high resolution audio and a 128kbs MP3, we only have ourselves to blame. Honestly, this kind of sound system is largely responsible for the fact that a whole generation is going deaf. A decibel meter anywhere in sight of the stage would have measured hazardous sound levels.

Postscript: The second night's show was better, musically, but the sound system was even worse, if that was possible. After almost a decade of looking forward to seeing and hearing the Robert Randolph Family Band live, I most likely won't make that pilgrimage again.