Day 8: The Burning Sensations, Green like Go + an Acoustic Duo.
The last and final day for me was a Sunday afternoon show outside in the Uni Ampitheatre outside the Foundry bar.
It was on a much smaller stage and the system was tiny in comparison to the last few nights (just dual 15’s and horn each side)… however was actually ample for 2 out of 3 of the acts.
The first up was ‘the Burning sensations’ which basically is the live band project of Ed Muzik. A 3 piece electro/punk/pop act with tongue very firmly in cheek. Featuring songs like ‘The Roast Song’ and ‘Your mumma likes Drum n Bass’ this was right up my alley. They played well and sounded pretty good out the front considering the system was pretty small for a loud band with a full drumkit. I noticed the wind pick up towards the end of their set and this is a regular and obvious probem with outdoor gigs. When an outdoor stage is fully open and there is no shelter the mics and their diaphragms are susceptible to wind and the very annoying noise it makes as it passes through the mics. I instantly did the first thing you should do and roll off any low end on the vocal mics and it cleaned up it up a lot.
The second act was an acoustic duo, by now it was the middle of the day, the sun was out and the wind had died down. They were great and the PA was a perfect size for these guys.. they sounded great and it went down a treat for the few people that were there drinking beer in the sun.
Last and by no means least were Green like Go, a 5 piece American influenced pop rock outfit that reminded me of old ‘Killers’. Straight away it was evident that these guys were going to be too much for this small system, especially with no dynamic control, what made it worse was the sun was now gone and there was a strong south west wind picking up. Not only was it blowing through the mics on stage but it was carrying the sound from the PA speakers and sending it swirling around the ampitheatre at random. It took me half of the bands set to get the mix even to a point where I was mildly happy and from then on in battled the wind and the underpowered system. There are times as an engineer when things are simply and sadly beyond your control…. This was one of those times. The band played really well but sadly sounded like arse….. not very often will you see or hear of an engineer writing about how bad thing sounded when they mixed.. but I guess I call a spade a spade and a shit mix a shit mix. I can honestly say though that I did my best.. and my best was not good enough.
In a way it was a real sad end to what was an awesome week, the last band on the last day ended up being a nightmare of a time (and NOTHING to do with the band). To be fair I think I like the bad gigs as much as I like the great ones, it puts me back in my place, it forces me to think about what happened, whether I could’ve done things differently, what I have taken away from the experience. Own and operating one of the South Islands best recording studios I believe strongly that everything you do must be a learning experience. The minute you think you have it all ‘sorted’ and you know everything is the minute you are dead to the industry and may as well give up. There’s nowhere to move or grow if you believe that. Something to think about… next time you show up to a recording studio to record an album or a song, or turn up somewhere for some audio post production or mixing….. ask the engineer what his most recent CRAP job has been. Ask to hear it, ask why he thinks its bad and what he has learnt from it all. If they don’t give you a believable answer of tell you that everything they do is awesome.. .. then I believe they are simply full of it.