aeblog

live sound

Music is supposed to be the best, purest, most unadulterated, closest to what the musicians want etc etc when it is heard live, right? This is what I have always thought, but apparently the people at the Middle East do not feel the same way. Although I have known this for a while and been disappointed countless times, I keep on finding myself back at the M.E. hoping hoping hoping that somehow things will have gotten better.

Well, I'm sorry to report that they weren't better as of Saturday. I went to check out the Wrens (thank you Chris for the tickets) along with the three opening acts, and had a very hard time appreciating what any of them were trying to do because the sound just sucked. I find that if you really know a band's music, when the sound stinks, you can use your prior knowledge to kind of fill in the blanks and erase some of the muddiness in your head. But when you are trying to hear something totally new, as I was on Saturday, crappy sound just kills the whole experience.
I found myself wishing that I could hear the cds of the bands just so I could understand what on earth they were trying to do. How backwards is that?! Recorded music is supposed to approximate the live performance, not the other way around. At least this holds true in my book for fairly standard 4-5 piece rock groups. Of course there are experimental musicians out there for whom the recording process is part of the composition and who create music that is intended to be at its best in recorded form. But these bands were not of that ilk, nor are most of the bands that play at the Middle East.
I would think that the owners of the club could do something to improve their situation, but perhaps in the spirit of the rock 'n' roll attitude, they don't really care. Thankfully they care enough to have sprinklers, but I imagine a little bit of strategically placed acoustic foam and some new speaker cones could go a long way in improving the experience for their guests.
I ended up feeling sorry for the bands because they just weren't being heard as they should have been. This kind of dependence on equipment that is owned and operated by people out of your control is a big problem for small, poor bands. Who's going to bring their own PA? For that matter, who can afford their own PA?

Despite all this crappiness, I was able to pick up the fact that the Wrens were clearly very good musicians and put on a professional show. Their stuff sounded better than the rest, but I still feel like they were not even close to being represented as they would have wanted.
Thank god Paradise does not have the same problem.