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Thursday, April 19, 2012
Day 8
at Shenanigans in Sacramento, CA
with Competing
Wow-- Competing is insane. Crazy techiness that is barely within my comprehension. In hindsight, maybe we should have opened and have them close. Of course, in hindsight, maybe we should have played a heavier set... we lost some people with Bloody Indecision. Then again, we can only be who we are; ubik.s never going to out-grind the truly extreme metal or tech guys. We have big atmosphere. It's who we are. We rock, we're techy, we can even thrash or doom in spots, but we'll never really be a metal band and we know it. We're something else.
It is also hard to rock a crowd without a sound guy. We plugged Michelle in and fired up the mains, but there were no house mics, and no way to put Tyler's kick through the PA. Competing could have used some drum mics too, but we all did what we could with what we had.
With the live sound engineer running late, Competing, an instrumental 3-piece, just started playing. What we didn't know is: the sound guy showed up, saw an instrumental 3-piece on stage, assumed he wasn't needed, turned around and went home. When Competing finished, we asked the booker if the sound guy had shown up yet...
If that was my job (and it is a job, it's something I went to school for, and I know a lot of people who do it every day), I would have seen Competing on stage, thought “Oh shit, I'm late!” and slapped a mic on the kick while they were playing. If it was my job, of course-- I probably would have even turned on the stage lights. Not this guy. He just left.
What an asshole.
Of course, we can all fend for ourselves, and we played well. I couldn't hear Michelle at all because Shenanigans' board... well, I know where the mains are, and we got vocals into the crowd an one monitor, but the aux busses that looked like they had to be the separate monitor/PA sends... no matter what I did with them, they never fed any more speakers. Dunno why.
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| Yeah... thanks sound guy. We didn't need a kick mic... or lights... or... for you to show up or anything |
I've never asked, but I'm positive Wes has a broadsword.
All that considered, we had more people there than I'd expected, we sounded pretty good (kick drum notwithstanding), and we're starting to play like we're on tour. We're not quite at “well-oiled machine” status yet, but we're definitely warmed up. The people who dug it, really dug it.
The day was spent surviving Sacramento heat. I was drenched in sweat doing nothing. We mostly kept to ourselves, staying indoors with Ben, who's putting us up, and dogs. It's basically too hot to move right now. I'll bet it's still jacket weather back in Seattle.
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