The sound continues to be a problem in that room. When I arrived, the stage looked like a tornado had just passed through. Cords were everywhere and a monitor was face down. The sound guy was kind of putting it all back together.
I was not a fan of the sound guy. Right from the start, I made a recommendation about where to put one of the monitors (in front of Greg and Bencuya), and he continued moving it further to the side (right where I set up my keyboards). When I said something like, "That's not going to work," his response was "That's the way it's going to be." I bit my lip and helped Ganesh load in gear.
Once I started dealing with my own equipment again, I set my keyboard stand behind the monitor in question, and the sound guy moved it, insisting to me that we keep an open path across the stage. Moments later I saw him pick up Ganesh's kick drum and move it. I don't think it's cool for the sound guy to ever move the band's equipment without permission. He excused himself with "We're all trying to make the gig happen."
So...I climbed off the front of the stage, unplugged the misplaced monitor, and moved it to where it should be. Then I could set up properly and still leave the open path.
Once we finally got down to checking the sound, my line had some sort of issue where he was not getting enough signal. I checked the line by running it into my amp and it worked fine, which made me think that the problem was on his end, but instead of him troubleshooting his part, he had me reroute my signal to accommodate him. I was not thrilled. Because of that, I had no independent control on stage (because all my adjustments affected what I was sending him).
Everybody else seemed fine with this guy, so it must have been me. He told us he'd been there since 10 that morning "fixing stuff." The guy last month had spent several hours "fixing stuff" too, and it had sounded pretty good. I'm kind of curious as to how much stuff needed to be fixed, since we're the only band that plays there. I would presume that everything was basically the same as we had left it.
Pre-show, we were hanging out in the dressing room, and the sound guy came back and mixed himself a drink, which I thought was weird--hopefully he's not getting hammered, and hopefully he's not using our booze to do it.
The gig itself was typical of Andrews, which is to say kind of numbing. On the second song of the gig, Bencuya's microphone clip fell off the mic stand while he was adjusting it, and he sang a verse and chorus holding the microphone in one hand and playing with the other. The sound guy was on stage and off constantly, dealing with bad cables and god only knows what else. Dannells played a terrific solo on Peg, but nobody heard it because the microphone on his amp was evidently not functioning. Early on in the gig I could hear my sound in the house, but once he got it dialed in, I felt like I vanished. Things like Hey Nineteen and Africa felt like I wasn't in the PA at all. It's never a good feeling. Pete said he couldn't hear me at all.
Speaking of Africa, I was playing the solo without thinking, and for some reason as I was playing I began thinking consciously about what I was doing, and couldn't remember the last note of the solo. If I'd continued playing and NOT thinking, I would have been fine, but since I started thinking, I played a HORRIBLE last note. Stupid me, stupid me.
We played Baker Street, and maybe it was just an optimum reed and my throat was really relaxed and open, but I have never played a saxophone that loudly. I was kind of impressed with myself.
Overall, I played pretty well. I don't think I embarrassed myself in front of Bencuya very much (except for the end of Africa--he yelled his approval at my last note). I was better than last month.
After the gig, the room emptied quickly--not like Halloween, when we had to fight through the dancers with our equipment. The DJ in there is still pretty bad; it doesn't seem to crush her ego too much when everybody leaves after our show.
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