The Sweet Sound Of Schadenfreude
Occasionally, I run live sound for local musicians and events. It’s not my full-time job, but I’m skilled at it.
I was asked to do an event for a local band with a special guest from out of town recently, and then I was asked to do a second event with the same people at another venue the next day. The first event came around and went off without a hitch. Everyone was happy, and after it was done, I confirmed when setup and soundcheck were the next day.
I arrived at the appointed time to find that I was locked out of the network I had set up to use. I went back to the soundboard and found someone else there fiddling with the settings. I asked him what was up, and he said he’d be running sound today. He also said someone had messed with all the settings on the board, and he was in there until 2:00 am the night before fixing everything. (I was the last person on that board for rehearsal two nights before.)
Now, I’m not someone who likes confrontation, so I went to find the person who was second in charge to find out what was going on. She told me that the person in charge found out that her friend had come into town the night before, and he wanted to mix that day, so I wasn’t needed. Okay, fine. I was already there after a decently long drive, and I liked the band. I just hung out to hear them without having to mix the sound.
Since I was early, I was able to watch the soundcheck and see quite a few problems crop up that had not been problems two days earlier — EQ getting really muddy, monitors not working properly for almost everyone, etc. I just sat back and watched a bit of a dumpster fire for the next couple of hours. The band was still great, and the special singer was great, but it was hard to tell with the harsh mix coming through.
After the show, I talked with some of the musicians to see if I had missed something during rehearsal that had thrown the system into chaos. Nope, everything worked great when we left it after rehearsal. The only thing we could figure was that the new sound guy had come in and completely erased everything that was set up and had to reset the board from ground zero, including EQ and monitor mixes. If he wasn’t so arrogant and quick to blame anyone but himself, I easily could’ve set him right as I had all my setup saved. But he burned that bridge within my first minute of talking with him. I don’t think he learned anything, but I got a bit of satisfaction hearing how bad it was.
