Why book loud groups in venues below residential apartments?

[rwc]

I don't get it.

I was doing sound for an R&B group the other night at this place in downtown Manhattan.

It was basic. The keyboard player was loud and good enough out of his own amp, guitar player through the PA with some reverb effect since the place had no guitar amps of their own(wtf sign #1), and the bass player through an ampeg. Two vocalists using microphones with XLRs a friend who was at the gig had in his trunk since they had no working XLRs and one wireless mic with a dead 9v battery that just so happened to be the last battery(wtf sign #2).

It's only the vocalist and the guitar player through the PA. It wasn't quiet, but it wasn't crazy loud either. They were all amazing experienced players, it wasn't tastelessly earcrushing. This guy who seemed to be an owner kept signaling to me to "TURN IT DOWN" even when the guitar player was barely playing.

As if I can magically turn a knob and make the bass player's amp/keyboard player's lower, and snap my fingers to turn the drummer's sticks into slim jims. What got me wasn't so much the fact that he said turn it down when it was about 90 dB @ 8 PM as much as he would ask me to turn them down while they were playing.

I went up to speak to him and kindly told him I have no control over aspects of the performance not going to the mixer, and also explained that it would be record breakingly tactless to stop people in the middle of playing as a plethora of seated people watched and tapped their feet so I could tell them to "PLAY SOFTER" He said it can't go over say 80-83 dB or the people upstairs will complain.

OMG WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWTF??!!!!? (#3)

What gets me is that this is not even a small place. There's lots of space. They could easily do SOMETHING to ease the pain of the surrounding people without turning into a closet, like so many other venues, at the very least put somthing like a WALL around the paper they presently use as a wall so that it doesn't sound like you're in the room with the group from outside the bar/restaurant.

What also gets to me is that people book this shit and then complain when they arrive. If The Who plays a small club under a bunch of offices and apartments, and people get pissed, you can't tell the who to turn it down. It's not them that's crazy. It's the moron who thought to have live R&B and rock bands play places with no soundproofing.

I am growing tired of venues that act as if they're doing you a favor by letting you play, and more tired of places that have space, charge $18 for a hamburger, that don't have the decency to have as much as working XLRs for microphones.

I have done stuff for events and weddings where all the gear was top notch and the pay was awesome through referral, and then I do stuff in these places, and it makes me wonder where is the middle class in venues? Where is the venue where a band can be a band, that have microphone cables for microphones? Where is the place where I don't have to dress well and waste awesome gear on the groom's inlaw's request for "she'll be comin around the mountain", but also not have to worry about whether or not I'll have any functioning microphones?

I am really bummed out, at least from the past month and a half over half a dozen gigs on live music in Manhattan.

rant over

[MoreSpaceEcho]

that's a fine rant.

I am growing tired of venues that act as if they're doing you a favor by letting you play

+infinity. for musicians there's not much that's more discouraging. i get mad just thinking about it. i'll spare you a miserable diatribe and give you the short version: Pianos.

*closes eyes and tries to go to Happy Place*

ok, there's a bar downstairs, kinda next door, they have bands saturday and sunday nights. it's fine. never really bothers me. tonight though, the band featured a bagpipe player. and he was out on the street warming up/screwing around before they played.

i had not realized such horror could exist in the world. i was probably a good 60 feet away from him with a door, a floor and several walls between us and it was still just unspeakable. sweet screaming baby jesus what a disagreeable sound.

[JGriffin]

tonight though, the band featured a bagpipe player. and he was out on the street warming up/screwing around before they played.

i had not realized such horror could exist in the world. i was probably a good 60 feet away from him with a door, a floor and several walls between us and it was still just unspeakable. sweet screaming baby jesus what a disagreeable sound.

* has a great idea for the next Donny record *

* which he will send to MSE to master *

[MoreSpaceEcho]

*immediately applies low pass filter at 20Hz*

[PeterAuslan]

I used to play in bands, I do live sound for a living, I have been the production manager at 3 venues and I have seen all sides of the equation.

I would not open a club in this city as its too demanding. Arcane laws that are impossible to follow, FDNY and NYPD coming in at all hours disrupting business to do random inspections, newcitizens of the neighborhood who moved in because it was cool only to find out that cool means noisy and bands that cant even draw 10 people.

While some cities have this problem - NYC has it in spades due exceptional population density and real estate desirability.

You can play clubs in most other cities where the club is a free standing
building not connected to any residential buildings. How many freestanding
music venues (with a capacity below 600) are there in NYC? Not many
and the last one I can remember was L'Amours. There may be a few new ones in Brooklyn these days.

You can soundproof a club all day long but you still have air-conditioning ducts and pipes that are carrying the sound + other unforseen structural resonances. So when a club is in/or next to a residential building there are going to get noise complaints: Annex, Pianos, Fat Baby, Mercury Lounge, Bowery Ballroom (yes they get complaints too - ironically one of the complaints was from one of Keith Richard's kids)

As for $18 burgers and bad XLRs - the club needs to pay the rent (which is ungodly exhorbitant), you ever see the electrical bill or the insurance? Coupled with the fact that musicians as a general rule do not treat the house gear the same as they would a recording
studio. Could you imagine someone throwing beer or water all around a recording studio? How about someone jumping up on the drum kit. Dropping the mics on purpose because they are so punk rawk - damaging the mic and possibly the drivers in the arrays. It happens frequently in
live sound. I could go on and on.

Its a never ending battle with both sides having some valid points. I love music and i love mixing so I deal with it - but the crap I just listed comes with the territory.

[JGriffin]

There's a venue here in Chicago that --despite having a bunch of issues, like most do-- was a pretty cool place to play and they never had problems with noise violations...until a couple of years back when someone moved in across the street and started calling the cops every time a loud band would play.

And I know it's a residential area and that's fine, but none of the other residents had any issues with this place, it's just these new people, who somehow didn't notice when they moved in that there was a live music establishment right across the street. So now they can't have full bands anymore because some dim bulb didn't check out the neighborhood he was moving into.

Gr.

[Gentleman Jim]

rwc wrote:

...the place had no guitar amps of their own(wtf sign #1)...

I have to disagree wholeheartedly here. As a non-jazz guy, I would consider walking into a club and seeing that they had house backline as a major red flag.

I know you're young, and I know you live in NYC. In most of the world rock clubs don't have house backline. It's really only shitty showcase band mills in LA and NYC that have bullshit "policies" that make every band use their Marshall AVT combos, Carvin bass rigs, and 10 year old drum kits with the original factory heads on them.

The whole thing may have started at crappy LA bars like the Coconut Teaszer, where the sound guys were so lazy that they would bitch and moan if they had to move more than three mics between bands. I once saw the house sound guy there try to have a band kicked off the bill because they had a left-handed drummer, and that meant that the drums would have to be rearranged and the mics repositioned before and after their set. In the end, the guy just went out to the van and got his own kit. No shit, the house guy made him set up in front of the POS house kit on a stage that was probably 15x8. Total douchebags.

**************************************************

I do sound at a small club about an hour and a half south of NYC, and there's a certain breed of NYC musician that I've become familiar with. Typically they make a big deal about how they have to do a full soundcheck, because they have an oboe player sitting in for just this gig, and said oboe player has never heard their music. (Where I come from, this is actually called rehearsal, not soundcheck.)

When informed that they can come in two or three hours before doors and we'd be happy to accommodate them, they next ask if we can show up five hours before doors and allow them to "get soundcheck out of the way", so they can walk around the beach for a couple of hours, then go get dinner at a sit down place while still allowing the food to digest a while before their set. (Sure buddy, book a rock show and then turn it into your romantic walk on the beach with your girlfriend; we'll all just stay here and make sure your gear doesn't grow legs.)

Of course, the day of the show, I've managed to get to the club a few hours early to set up mics for the soundcheck, and I wait.... and wait.... and wait some more. I listen to This American Life over the PA while straightening up backstage. The other bands start to arrive, and I hold them off from putting their gear on the stage, because the band from NYC is probably about to show up any minute now. I mean, they made such a big damn deal about the whole thing, right? Surely they would call if their plan changed. But here it is, now just a little under an hour before doors....

And then the call comes.

"Hey, this is Benny from the band. Is.... anyone there who's in charge?"
"Well, I'm Jim, the house sound guy tonight. Which band are you from? Are you playing tonight?"
"Yeah, I'm from the band that's playing tonight."
"OK, which band? There are three bands tonight."
"Uhhh.... Flaming Monkey Vomit. We're the ones on Old'n'Scratchee Records.... It's kind of a subsidiary of Vice Magazine. Our producer - well, our Executive Producer - is James Murph-"
"Benny, it's not really important to me right now who put your record out. I understand you'd like to get some time in with your oboist before doors. They're in fifty five minutes. How far away are you?"
"Yeah.... ummm. Well, the drummer is loading the gear right now. So we're gonna leave here in probably like ten minutes. Fifteen minutes, tops. So we should be there in like fifty minutes."
"And where are you coming from?"
"Well, I'm in Williamsburg, but the drummer is in like... South Greenpoint, but it's basically Williamsburg. It's right on the border, so it's more like Williamsburg. And the accordion player lives in Fort Greene, but like right next to the BQE. It's actually kind of far from an exit to the BQE, but you can see the road from her window. So that shouldn't be too long. And then the percussionist-"
"Benny?"
"-the percussionist is about to get on the subway-"
"Benny..."
"He's getting out of work at the Union Square Barnes and Noble-"
"BENNY. STOP TALKING! It's not important where your percussionist works. You haven't left Brooklyn. One of your band members is in Manhattan. You are at least two and a half hours from getting here. Your band goes on at 11:00. Doors are at 8:00. It's now 7:05. Just get here when you can, and we'll make it all work."
"Well, the problem is that we have this guy playing oboe with us, and-"
"I get it. But you aren't going to get here any sooner if we keep talking. Just go, and we'll see you when you get here."
"ok....." *click*

(fast forward to 10:30. The band shows up, finally. They're all wearing oversized Bono sunglasses and random knit scarves with their tight t-shirts with faux retro graphics about littering or municipal recreation leagues. As soon as they hit the interior of the club they scatter like giddy little roaches. There appear to be nine band members, but then it turns out that there are three in the band and six friends who are along for the ride, every single one of them can be correctly judged as mostly useless just by visual observation. Yes, this includes the band members.)

Me, to the guy standing cluelessly in the middle of the floor, right next to a pretty sweet 1960's Gibson combo amp, a case for a semihollow guitar, and the cliche antique overnight bag for cables and pedals: "So.... are you Benny?"
"Yeah."
"I'm Jim, the sound guy."
"Hey. Nice to meet you." (Benny acts as though we didn't have a phone conversation earlier, stares at me vacantly.)
"Ok, so you guys are on in a half an hour. What's your lineup? I know you have drums, percussion, an accordion, an oboe... bass? guitar? How many vocals?"
"Oh, the oboe guy couldn't fit in the car, so we decided to bail on that."
(I've been here since 4:30 because of the stupid "oboe guy." I'm nonplussed to say the least.) "Ok.... so what are we looking at?"
"Umm, I play guitar and sing. I have my own mic. And then accordion and drums."
"Don't you have a percussionist? He works at Barnes and Noble."
"Yeah, he couldn't make it. It was too far, and he has to work tomorrow afternoon at 3:00." (Huh?)
"Ok... so how many vocals? Does anyone else have their own mic?"
"Well, I have my mic, it's kind of old. I use it for effects, through my guitar amp. So when you see me turning toward that mic you should turn my amp up so that you can hear it over the guitar. Sometimes the guitar drowns it out."
"They go through the same amp?"
"Yeah, but I put the mic through a fuzzbox and a delay, for effects. I need that to be loud in the monitors, but only when I'm using that mic. The rest of the time I don't need a lot of guitar in the monitor."
(Sure, dude. I'll ride your guitar monitor level religiously to make sure that when you're playing guitar and singing through a fuzzbox, both coming out of the same speaker, you can hear it as clear as a bell. That's what this knob over here does.)
"Great. So you wanna get your gear and bring it in?"
"We have it in already."
"I see your stuff. How about everybody else's?"
"The accordion player left hers outside the front door. She runs through pedals, and she just needs a DI."
"And your drums?"
"We'll just use the house kit."
"There isn't a house kit. That sign you passed that said 'Welcome to New Jersey' should've been a tipoff. 'Welcome to New Jersey' is Latin. It means 'No House Kit.' We're a strange and wonderful people here, we drive cars and like the sounds of our own equipment."
(Now it's Benny's turn to feel thwarted and confused. I bask for a moment or two, knowing that he's used to being on the other side of the dynamic.)
"Can you ask one of the other bands if we can use their kit?" (NO SHIT, THIS QUESTION HAS BEEN ASKED OF ME MORE THAN ONCE. WHO AM I, THEIR OVERPROTECTIVE MOTHER?)
"Well, you know them as well as I do. I think if you approached them with humility and maybe offered to return the favor by getting them on a bill in New York with you, at least one of the bands would happily let you borrow their kit. Did you bring snare, footpedal, and cymbals?"
"I think he just brought sticks." (Again, an actual quote. This would even be a disaster if the band was playing one of your sorry-ass NYC showcase clubs.)
"Well then, I think you have to guarantee it will be a weekend show." (I smile and wink.)
"Are you sure you can't just ask them?" (Once again.... this actually was once asked of me.)
"Dude, I was here at 4:30 to prepare for your soundcheck, which was really supposed to be a rehearsal. You didn't show, you didn't call. I think it's about time you took responsibility here. I'm not a gear matchmaker, I'm a sound guy. My job isn't to get the drums, it's to make them sound good and a little louder, that's all. Your drummer's job is to play the drums, which means he should have some drums to play. I think it's a good idea if the two of you work out who's going to talk to the other bands, you're on in twenty minutes."
"Do we at least get a soundcheck before our set?"
(I stare at him and count to five Mississippi in my head.)
"No."

[JGriffin]

I love that story.

[chris harris]

Great post, Gentleman Jim!!

[cgarges]

I played in one of those NYC showcase clubs for what was supposed to be a "pop music festival" a couple years ago. We were told to be at the club for soundcheck at 3PM. We showed up at 3PM and there was no one there. Then, as we were waiting, trying to figure out what to do next, someone walked up and started unlocking the front door. Then, our phone rang and we were told sound check would be at 6. We asked the guy at the door if we could load our stuff in, which he said was cool.

We loaded all of the band's gear down a long flight of stairs, carefully stacked it up next to the stage, and left to go get dinner. When we got back, someone from one of the other bands had taken the initiative to get my very expensive custom drums out of their cases and set them up on stage. After some asking around, I figured out that the girl who was in charge of the festival had told the other bands that they couldn't bring drums (even though they HAD) and that they would have to play my kit. When questioned about this, this same girl told me that our band leader had said that would be okay, which he hadn't. I know this because I was sitting next to him in the van when she called him. He said that she mentioned one of the drummers would "need to borrow a piece of a hi-hat stand or something."

In any case, the dude went ahead and set up my drums.

I'm convinced that most NYC clubs are a clusterfuck. I'll save my LA story for later.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[iC]

heh "Benny"
http://www.bennygohome.com/home.html

[JGriffin]

We were told to be at the club for soundcheck at 3PM. We showed up at 3PM and there was no one there.

Gaah. This happens to us all the time. Told to be at soundcheck an obscene number of hours before the show, only to find the doors locked and all the lights out when we show up.


Another story: we were hired to play a retirement party for a grade school principal. It was a late afternoon event at a pretty big local club that has mostly cover acts. We were told to load in at 3:30, soundcheck at 4, and start to play around 6. Since the club had "professional" bands (the woman who organized all this wasn't necessarily the smoothest operator - somehow a band you hire for a party isn't "professional" but a band playing what is probably a strangely similar set of cover tunes in the evening at the same establishment, is) coming in for the evening we had to be off the stage by 8:45.

So we showed up at 3:30, loaded in and set up. There was no sound guy there. 4 p.m., no sound guy. 4:20, the club owner showed us where the dressing room was (it is a nicely-appointed place, it was cool to have a room in which to change and relax) and set us up with some bottled water. He also told us he wasn't sure where the sound guy was. That he'd been calling him and getting his voicemail. We're not too terribly worried yet; were all set up and we have over an hour. 4:45, bass player is checking his pedals and one of the teachers asks when we're going to play. "well, the party starts at 6, so we'll probably..." Oh, no. the party starts at 5. I think you guys are supposed to play at 5. Um. A quick check with the organizers reveals that yeah, we're supposed to be on in fifteen minutes. Still no sound guy.

4:55. Our singer says to the club owner, "you know. we've got two sound engineers in the band, should we maybe set up the PA and get this thing going?" dear god, no, I think, as my throat starts to tighten up. "Sure," says the club owner. "no problem. I don't know where my guy is, so the hell with him." Ah, shit. Alright.

5:00. Trying to set myself up to give as little offense as possible I pull out 3 mic stands and set them up downstage for vocals, and find 3 SM58s backstage and put them on the stands.

And that's when the sound guy finally shows up. The bass player sees him, waves me off the stage and the sound guy storms in, all pissed off. We stay out of his way but within earshot for at least the next ten minutes. Thankfully he's not pissed that we were setting up mics on his stage. I know I would be. He's pissed because, even though we knew about this gig 6 weeks ago and even though the rest of the club's staff was there on time, somehow he only found out he was working this afternoon...this afternoon. It's one of those stories you're not sure you can quite believe. We decide not to make a big thing of it and hang back while he's putting up the mics. We go through the sound check and start to play. Within the first two songs, eight schoolteachers descend on the singer's wife and demand that the band turn down. It's a party after all, and these people want to talk to each other, not scream to be heard over a loud rock band. And the sound guy apparently has us up at full weekend rockshow volume.

Okay, we may not be a "professional" (sorry, it irked me) group, but this ain't our first rodeo and we know a wallpaper gig when we see one. So I go over to talk to the soundman about it.

He's completely freaking out. Doesn't want to turn anything down. Doesn't see how we have any other options, he's totally offended, says "if they just want background music I can plug in my goddam iPod."

It's not that big a deal, man, it's a wallpaper gig, just take everything out of the mains but the vocals, we'll turn our amps in towards each other and turn way down.

"but but but..."

Please, just go with me on this. We're in it now, we can make this work. Finally he bought into the plan.

Went back onstage, tossed the setlist, pulled out a bunch of quiet stuff, and played to the room. Turned out to be a good gig, the schoolteachers loved us, the club owner asked us to come back, we even got to play a little loud-ish stuff later in the set as people drank a little more and loosened up.

Of course, when we tore down at 8:30 to be off the stage by 8:45, the two "professional bands" had loaded in right to the bottom of the stage ramp, forcing us to basically climb over all of their gear with our gear to clear the stage for them.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

ok, we need to have a TOMB Hall of Fame thread just so we can put gentleman jim's post in it. wow. great story and beautifully told.

CG i can't believe someone would unpack your drums. that's just unthinkable. tell the LA story!

[comfortstarr]

Though sadly it was a long long time ago, my old band had pretty good NYC luck. CBGBs was always fairly straightforward, the Knitting Factory was great. We even played once at the Limelight. They were doing bands prior to dancing. We were nicely feted by the owners (who were strangely decked out like the dudes from Clockwork Orange) even though we were nobodies times 10. We had a great time in LA at a place called the Shamrock--don't know if it's still there, I think it was in nascent Silver Lake. Again, this was many eons ago, but it was great place, sort of biker-ish, yet friendly as all hell.

[Bro Shark]

God damn Pianos. Damn it in the fucking neck.