Hell's FOH Goober

A friend took this picture for me with his cell phone (No, I do not carry a cell phone.). I call it "Hell's Sound Goober." If a Hardly chair and tee-shirt (you can’t read his shirt, but it is a Harley ad) aren't a warning that the guy behind the console is deaf, unfamiliar with musical sounds, and likely not all that bright, then you are in hell and probably deserve to be there. What a musical mess, which was really sad because the intro band,

Yam Haus, was excellent. The “head line band,” was a weird Memphis Tom Petty cover band that, honestly, wasn’t hurt all that much by a distorted, sub-woofer-dominated “mix” that was apparently intended to deafen as many people as possible and provided some interesting moments when substantial portions of the sound system thermaled-out for several minutes while the sound goobers looked confused and wandered around aimlessly until the system “fixed itself.” At least, I was entertained by the momentary pause in distortion and old people’s music.

There were several things that confused and disappointed me about this local show. First, the order was totally screwed up. Only on yokel small town America would a run-of-the-mill cover band headline in front of a very talented local band on their why (I hope) up. Second, there are at least two Tom Petty cover bands in the area—one in the Cities and one in Rochester—who are easily as good as the group the city overpaid to import. Three, the Sheldon Theater has used this same sound company several times and every time they make a painful, unnecessarily distorted mess out of any audio signal they touch and, worse, this Harley goober is behind the board when it is obvious he has never heard a decent record in his life, let alone a good live show.