Spock
November 8th, 2006, 06:37 AM
Bands are always looking for someone to “make them sound good”, or “are good to work with”, but I’m here to tell you that what could look like a real good move can backfire one you.
I’ve always been in small bands, in most cases we played small places and being vocal heavy all we needed was a static monitor mix that represented what it sounded like out front. We could most of the times mix ourselves, and had our own PA.
Get a family member to mix, it’s cheap and you should be able to work with them, was the thought. About 10 years ago we had a little cover band going and things were picking up, getting more gigs. I know, I’ll have the wife mix for us. I’d do most of the setup and then hand things over to her. This was working real well. It had the added advantage of her being too busy to get trashed with her friend Ami while we played. (Maybe later I'll get to the stories of the car getting towed, or the puking in the bass player's)
Well all good things have to come to an end. Our guitar player, a doctor, got a job in another city, so we booked a last gig. That last gig we had a good night, good crowd, things were going real well. We come down to he last song. We always ended with the same song, “Take Me To The River” by the Talking Heads, which I sang.
A lot of people had cleared out by this time. We start the song, and this blond hair, blue eyed extremely well built young woman gets up on the dance floor and starts the most seductive dance I’ve ever seen. Everyone else cleared out of the way, and she had the floor all to herself. You guessed it, the wife was giving me the evil eye from behind the board. Now, I didn’t do anything, I still don’t know to this day who that woman was, but I could tell from the look I was getting it wasn’t going to be a fun ride home.
Then things got worse. The woman on the dance floor started making that “I want to take you home and rock your world” type of look, right to me! Not anyone else in the band, just to me. She was dancing and spinning around, but kept her eyes locked on. The whole bar noticed it, and was now watching the show she was putting on, and how I was reacting. This was starting to get weird real quick, almost like an axe murdering psycho was watching me.
I can see the wife is just getting more and more pissed. Finally, the end of the song. “Thanks, everyone, goodnight!!” Good god, that’s over. The wife comes up to the stage just as the bass player and drummer say to me. “Holy shit, I bet you were thinking, why didn’t happened before you got married.” Of course the wife hears that comment and it just makes her madder, I get smacked for it even though I didn’t say a thing.
“But, dear, what did I do?”
“You, you, you know what you did.”
I was just lucky that we didn’t have any gigs for while.
Now, who else has a story about a poor choice of a mixer?
I’ve always been in small bands, in most cases we played small places and being vocal heavy all we needed was a static monitor mix that represented what it sounded like out front. We could most of the times mix ourselves, and had our own PA.
Get a family member to mix, it’s cheap and you should be able to work with them, was the thought. About 10 years ago we had a little cover band going and things were picking up, getting more gigs. I know, I’ll have the wife mix for us. I’d do most of the setup and then hand things over to her. This was working real well. It had the added advantage of her being too busy to get trashed with her friend Ami while we played. (Maybe later I'll get to the stories of the car getting towed, or the puking in the bass player's)
Well all good things have to come to an end. Our guitar player, a doctor, got a job in another city, so we booked a last gig. That last gig we had a good night, good crowd, things were going real well. We come down to he last song. We always ended with the same song, “Take Me To The River” by the Talking Heads, which I sang.
A lot of people had cleared out by this time. We start the song, and this blond hair, blue eyed extremely well built young woman gets up on the dance floor and starts the most seductive dance I’ve ever seen. Everyone else cleared out of the way, and she had the floor all to herself. You guessed it, the wife was giving me the evil eye from behind the board. Now, I didn’t do anything, I still don’t know to this day who that woman was, but I could tell from the look I was getting it wasn’t going to be a fun ride home.
Then things got worse. The woman on the dance floor started making that “I want to take you home and rock your world” type of look, right to me! Not anyone else in the band, just to me. She was dancing and spinning around, but kept her eyes locked on. The whole bar noticed it, and was now watching the show she was putting on, and how I was reacting. This was starting to get weird real quick, almost like an axe murdering psycho was watching me.
I can see the wife is just getting more and more pissed. Finally, the end of the song. “Thanks, everyone, goodnight!!” Good god, that’s over. The wife comes up to the stage just as the bass player and drummer say to me. “Holy shit, I bet you were thinking, why didn’t happened before you got married.” Of course the wife hears that comment and it just makes her madder, I get smacked for it even though I didn’t say a thing.
“But, dear, what did I do?”
“You, you, you know what you did.”
I was just lucky that we didn’t have any gigs for while.
Now, who else has a story about a poor choice of a mixer?