Being insulted as an engineer

[Electricide]

Went to the Mars Volta show last night in Chicago (missing the Cubs heartache!), anyway

The singer kept motioning to the monitor guy during the first song to turn him up. After the first song, he went over to the monitor engineer and bitched him out, throwing his arms in a hissy fit and grabbing his console lamps.

After the second song, he held the mic up against the monitor to make a point that there was no feedback, e.g., not enough level coming out.

After throwing the mic stand 20 feet through the air towards the monitor console and engineer he said

"ya know this is a really nice venue, but the sound guy is a fucking idiot"

Ouch :ar15:

So what's the worst insult you've either gotten, or heard someone make toward the engineer (maybe you were assisting). Who knows what the engineer's reason was, but it doesn't matter when you get embarrased like that publicly. How do you save face?

[takeout]

Wow.

I was indifferent about that band before; I used to think they were just yet another self-indulgent n?-emo wankfest. Now I actively hate those primadonna jagoffs. Thanks, Cedric!

[red cross]

Why didn't the sound engineer turn up the monitors? The talent can be arseholes sometimes, but isn't it our job to make sure they get what they need, if it's in our means to do so? Having been on the other side on a few unhappy occasions, I can concur that SOME "sound engineers" are completely unprofessional fuckwits of the highest order...

[Electricide]

That's the trouble. Usually, in the studio, if the artist is pissed at the engineer because s/he sounds like ass, it's probably the artist's own damn fault. "Learn how to drum you hack" threads have been abundant lately. But based on the album and show I have to guess these guys know a bit about engineering. Maybe it was a legit complaint.

The artist gets the last word, and you're left explaining youself to the studio manager, who just got an earful from the singer, of the venue manager, who wants to know why mic stand are flying towrads his console.

What do you do when you can't give the artist what they demand, and they're too pissed to accept your explanation?

[dgochenour]

I've been on both sides, too, but I have much more live experience as an engineer than as a musician.

I've been insulted like that before, as well. Even when nothing "seemed" wrong. Sometimes an artist would be asking for more monitors when you *knew* that the EQ was good and the level was just stupid loud on stage, and the PA couldn't give much more. It doesn't sound like that was the case in Chicago, though.

There is only one thing you can do: keep your mouth shut, do a great job, and wait for the show to end. Then go have a drink.

[lsn110]

Kinda related story:

My drummer friend once had a sound guy come up on stage and grab her sticks which he proceeded to throw at her head.

The provocation: They were playing their last song....and it went on too long for his tastes.

Then again, it's kinda hard to call this guy a sound engineer as the PA was basically a practice space PA with 2 vocal mics...

I think the road goes both ways. It is the engineer's job to give the band what they want to the best of their ability (shitty equipment not withstanding). Violence by anyone isn't warranted and generally pisses people off to the point that they don't care anymore and will purposefully NOT do a good job.

[Al]

The singer from Mars Volta is lucky the sound engineer kept a proffesional head on, he may have been having technical difficulties with the monitors that evening!, he may have just gone up to him after the show and punched his fuck'n lights out!, i know i would have been tempted to!..you can put your proffesionalisms aside for at least 5 minutes cant you?, would it not be worth it!?

[Kyle]

I was a production assistant at North by Northwest here in portland a few years back. I had to jump in and do some live sound for Beth Orton on this acoustic stage. This was a quite stage and she kept asking for more volume in the monitors and I kept turning it up even though I knew we were really close to some feedback. She asked again and it finally happened. FEEDBACK. She looked at me like I was her brothers killer and then shook her head at me like she felt sorry for me. Then gave me a thanks for nothing comment after the set. She was also 20 min. late for her half hour showcase, so we couldn't do any kind of sound check.

I know a guy who did monitors for Ratt and would get spit on by the drummer and he would mouth "I'm going to kill you" at him durring the set. He would get everything dialed in for them, then they would get all coked up and wonder what he did to their sound. He quit after about two weeks.

[buzzaudioguy]

sorta off the subject... sorta not...

I used to run sound at a local rock/punk club that has a long standing history of having the WORST sound system in town. A few guys in town, as well as myself, know how bad it is but usually manage to get a decent mix when we work the system. One afternoon I get a call from the club's owner asking if I could come down and help the touring soundguy get setup for a show that night. I wasn't scheduled to be there that night, but the band showed up WAY early, and the club's soundguy wasn't going to be there for several hours. Being a relatively nice guy I went down there. MAN!!! I've never met a bigger asshole soundguy in my life! He ripped on the club, the sound system, ON ME EVEN the whole time I was there. "This board sucks! Why don't you have more aux's! I can't believe you don't have any gates! Why qualifies you to be a sound engineer!" WHAT!?! Finally after about 45 mins of his BS I finally told the guy to go fuck himself and walked the hell out. I went past the owner on the way out and told him "Sorry dude, but this guy is WAY out of line. He seems to know everything so let him figure it out. I'm not even suppose to be here today!" I missed the show that night, but from what I hear the guy's attitude grew even worse as the night went on. Our other sound guy showed up(super nice guy by the way!) and by the end of the night nearly smacked the dude over the head with a mic stand. One word... ASSHOLE!!!

[tiger vomitt]

ahh the joys of live sound. after many years, 2 years ago i decided never again.

someone said once, onstage, "this is the worst sound i've ever had, anywhere."

ahhh, feel the love

on another nite i also had a PA mysteriously disintegrate during someone's show. feeling somewhat dejected, and in a rather stupid move i went upstairs to take whizz. i come back downstairs maybe 60 seconds later to "WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!" at 150 dB. it wasnt feedback but it sounded like it. i think it was a power amp having a seizure or something. the next day, MYSTERIOUSLY, the rig was ok again.

oh yes, live sound sure is gratifying. id take that over hanging out and recording in my living room for money any day.


NOT

[teleharmonium]

I've seen this go both ways. There are in fact plenty of guys running sound that should indeed be shot at sunrise. And there are plenty of people on stage who have no business being there, but then we knew that already.

As far as anecdotes, I've got a New Order live tape where after several in between song requests for changes to the monitor mix, Barney modifies the lyrics to 'Blue Monday' on the spot to both request more guitar in the monitors and call the sound guy a 'stupid cunt'. Ouch !

[Piotr]

I've always considered conflicts like this to be based on deeper issues than just "who's the sound guy?". Whenever I meet someone who has excessive amounts of attitude I try and relax and work with it. I have kicked a client out of my studio for being an asshole. It's like a restaurant..."We reserve the right..."

Being a sound operator can suck when the clients are assholes, when they are talentless "artists", when they try and stiff you. Get over it. That's just human nature. It exists in all industries.

Better to smile and commit to solving the problem so that it won't bother you in the future, even if it's just in your mind. Mainly, remember that human beings are much more complex than sound systems and that assholes exist everywhere.

[miamidevice]

I'm surprised that The Mars Volta wouldn't have their own sound people with them - I would imagine that they'd be a really hard band to mix. Also, god only knows what happened during the soundcheck. From what I understand, the guys in that band are pretty down-to-earth. Add that to decades of collective touring experience and undeniably talented musical abilities, and I have a hard time believing that what happened on stage is the whole story.

In my touring experiences I have regularly been insulted by house sound men, been screamed at to turn my amp down or not hit the drums so hard, or just been given attitude the minute we walked into the door. I am an incredibly easy going guy, and I know enough about sound to understand the difficulties inherent in doing FOH for a loud rock band in a not huge venue. Despite being willing to accomodate lots of requests from crotchety sound guys (and the jaded chip-on-shoulder assholes are almost uniformly men) or try to work with the house guy to try and find a compromise between the way they like things to be and the way we like things to be, I've still had many awful experiences with assholes. I mean, I understand it to a certain extent: it's a horrible, soul-sucking job that you could not pay me enough money to do and I imagine that leads people to become pretty embittered pretty friggin' quickly. However, there's no excuse for walking up to a band the minute they start carrying their gear into the club getting in someone's face, pointing at their 8x10 bass cab and saying "that fucking thing is not going on MY stage." I've had so much shit like that happen to me that I have very little sympathy for the sound guys in stories like the one you told about The Mars Volta. I mean, there was this one asshole in Saarbrucken that I could go on about for days...

That being said, microphone stand tossing is never a solution for anything (except maybe microphone stand tossing contests).

m.

[thunderboy]

Maybe I'm lucky, or maybe I'm a fucking stellar sound guy, but I've never been bitched out by the folks on stage. I have had my share of equipment failures (always impeccably timed so as to occur at the worst possible moment) and nights when things were just not coming together on stage or in the house, but I have always managed to keep a positive relationship with the artist (I'm probably suppressing some memories here, but oh well...)

The thing is, sometimes you have to convince them that you are giving them what they want. And by "convince" I mean "trick."

More vocal in the monitor? Sure, let me just pretend to turn this knob you can't see and fiddle with this graphic equalizer a bit...better? Great!

It usually works, but in some cases, such as when the folks on stage are deaf, it does not. It is those times when you have to put on your little striped engineer cap and get to work. Sometimes you have to get pretty medieval on the monitor eq, sometimes just changing a mic can help (that eight-year-old 58 may not sound as good as the six-year-old 58.) Often, just working with the artist to find a solution will help, even if the actual problem isn't resolved.

Crap. I just remembered at time I got insulted by a member of the audience. Crowd was coming in, I was standing by the board, guy walks over to me and asks if I saw the band the last time they played here. "Yeah, I was working that night...why?" "Oh, it sounded awful!"

Umm, then there was that review in Rolling Stone...

Gonna go kill myself now.

jt

[takeout]

Whether or not the soundguy "deserved it", Cedric should still keep his damn mouth shut onstage. "Professionalism" means dealing with it, continue rocking out, and address it later. The crowd didn't come to the show to hear you harangue the monitor guy; they came to be rocked, so rock already.

I maintain: primadonna.