Well ProjectM, if the "something else" you are planning involves the states, look me up and I'll take that beer bud! 

Absolutely Chuck!

I love doing live sound.

I almost took a one-off live sound gig this month and then decided it really might be more than I wanted to deal with at this time.

It is a different art.  In a live environment, anything can happen.  Cables get yanked, mics get pointed at the monitors, singers mix up their mics, guitarists crank their amps to 11, and bassists fall down.  No matter how loud the vocals are in the monitor, the vocalist will always wait until showtime to demand more.  The keyboardist will never be able to hear what he/she wants to hear.  Some self-involved zombie will always knock speakers over.  Even people outside the venue want to tell you how you could improve the mix.  There's never enough time for a good sound check.  The band plays at completely different volumes in the show than they did during the sound check.  The guitarist is always personally offended by how he thinks the mix might have sounded.
 
(My personal favorite...) There's no one around to help you haul all that equipment up three flights of stairs.  There's no one to help you take it all home at the end of a very long night.

 Chuck it sounds like you didn't do it for the money. If I didn't like doing it and it didn't pay...well my decision would be made. The people that know how to do it all...heck, let them do it ..That's the problem though, these people who know how to do it never want to become actually involved in doing it.
 
 Your friend should count you as a good one. Not just anyone would have spent that amount of time and effort. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Chuck,
 
that sounds like it was a nightmare of a night. Unfamiliar board, bands demanding that you know it like the back of your hand, one band after another..... yikes!!!
 
It reminded me of a battle of the bands,  one band I played in was involved in.  The preliminaries were held at this huge outdoor pavilion place and they had rented a really nice PA and crew to run it. (for 2 days) Preliminaries on Saturday and finals on Sunday afternoon..... until the weekend of the event.....Saturday was beautiful.... sun shining 30 freaking bands from a several state area all set to play and it started early and went late. Fortunately we pulled an early slot because we had a gig that evening quite a distance away. I called the head judge during one of our gig breaks.... the names of the 6 finalists included our name. We made the finals.
 
Next morning....Sunday, it was raining.  We decided to go anyway because the stage was covered and hated to miss the chance at the prize money.  At the event site, the crew had moved the mixer and other gear up to the stage. Since not many people besides the bands had shown up and it was still raining, the finals were canceled for the day and rescheduled.
 
Unfortunately, the PA rental was unavailable and the promoter/owner of the event was in a bind.... 6 bands, a rescheduled finals, and no PA. So he asked the bands in the finals if anyone had a big PA.  Turns out we had the largest PA with speakers and power and board size so he offered to rent the PA from us regardless of whether we placed or not. The other bands griped at that but were told they could either play our system or choose to stay home.  We insisted that our FOH guy was on the board since he knew the system and the other bands were more than welcome to have their FOH guy right there with him.
 
This worked OK until the other band from our town which has also placed into the finals started their 30 minute set.  They had stacks of marshalls and cabinets galore on stage.... and they were LOUD.  So loud in fact that, I was standing at the board listening, and I could barely hear the singer. Just guitars..... their sound man was yelling that we were intentionally sabotaging their show. Dave our FOH guy threw up his hands and pointed to the board..... everything was turned down except for that one mic the singer had.  Note: we had miked all the other bands into the system..... guitars, bass, drums, and it sounded good. But these guys were so loud that they could not hear the monitors and we out front could not hear the singer...... until they stopped playing, and in between the songs it was obvious that the system was cranking the vocals as best it could....
 
If I remember right, at that time we had 4 bass bins with 8 speakers, 4 midrange cabs with 6 speakers and 6 horn/ tweeter cabs and somewhere around 3000w triamped into them.  The system would kill..... and it sounded good.
 
Anyway, back to the band.... they were so loud that half the band was playing the chorus to the song and the other half,  with the singer, was play the verse..... and they didn't realize it for several seconds....   We told their sound man to tell them to turn down the stage volume and we could make it sound good. They eventually did towards the end of their set.
 
They ended up coming in with a second place win despite this problem with volume...... our band took first place in the show and wow did the other bands complain about that once they heard the results. Sore losers. Our band was formidable competition due to our "care less if we win attitude" and our stage show... we were there to have fun. We were 3 piece so we had to do something besides try to play good... the stage show was original and funny stuff...
 
The venue owner booked us again..... for a weekend several weeks later. Actually he again needed the PA system more than us but since we not only played some serious rock and roll, we also played country and even bluegrass, and the event coming up was a bluegrass event..... he told us, we could play if we wanted but didn't have to and he'd pay us the same either way..... so we sat the weekend out except for one country/bluegrass set on Saturday night.... yeah we threw in some rock too.... That event was a 3 day event.... Sunday evening, Mike Cross, a NC artist of some renound was scheduled so we packed up and cleared the stage on Sunday afternoon. We had a gig Sunday night so we missed Mike's show..... he's a one man bluegrass celtic music artist historian..... on vocals, guitar and fiddle. Hate I missed that show.
 
I was bluegrassed out by the time we packed up Sunday, and I didn't want to hear another banjo for a very long time.
 
Anyway, thought you might enjoy that story.
 
Mike Cross on You tube>>>>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsNvrlzSSaA

Then every half cocked wanna be sound tech who's standing 10 feet directly in front of a mesa full stack comes over and goes...

Then there's the flipside of that scenario, when the FOH guy is completely clueless and more interested in chatting up the barmaid than paying attention to the board.
 
I would never impose myself on the crew as an audience member, but if I'm in the band I feel an obligation to help out if possible. Offers of advice are generally met with disdain. "Dude, which one of us has the vintage Iron Maiden t-shirt? Now back off."
 

I've been frequently amused by the circumstance that the bands that can not draw enough fans to earn enough to compensate the sound tech are the most familiar with the mime of the mythical clueless sound tech.

I long ago learned to recognize that the bands who treat techs like dumbasses just do not know any better.

bitflipper

...vintage Iron Maiden t-shirt..."
 



Very funny because it is so true.