I generally try to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. I haven't been doing this too long, but in my short tenure as a house sound guy (jazz club, ~250 capacity), I've worked with plenty of musicians who make it difficult to get a good mix.
People who:
*play their guitars inconsistently
*bob up and down in front of the mic
*deep throat the mic
*LPF the bass guitar at 150Hz
*insist on having their acoustic duo's monitor mixes at 5x10^12 dB
*insist on cranking their half/full stack in a 250 cap room
*insist on bashing their symbals in a 250 cap room
*don't have a pickup on their upright bass when they play w/ horns.
*don't want a mic OR a DI on their upright when they play behind a horn section (oh no, you'll be able to hear me fine
)
On top of that, what little money is made by the owners is not reinvested into the sound system.
We have one DBX 166 comp/gate. I bring my RNC. That's it for dynamics processing.
We've got a Mackie 24-4. Channel 18 is spotty. Aux send 1 is gone, so I'm limited to using 2-4 for monitors. One of our two stereo monitor amps lost a channel. One of the 2 flown FOH speakers lost a tweeter - so we've got a couple free-loaner EAW LA's up on poles right now. Most of the boom stands have sketchy clutches - god forbid I have to mic the piece-of-crap out-of-tune no-name piano which, btw, is missing several of the bolts attaching the lid to the body. The Yamaha SPX 90 has a dead battery so I can't save any presets. The ART fx box is a piece of crap with an impossible interface that I have yet to figure out. The sound booth is nearly enclosed and shares a wall with the walk-in freezer. The freezer compressor is above the PA rack, giving me all the white noise, electrical interference, and 95 degree breeze I could ever hope for. On nights with a good crowd, I'm pretty much trapped in there, in front of this thing for a couple hours.
Sometimes bands show up after we've already started seating for dinner, so on top of having tp schlep gear in between tables and waiters, nobody gets a soundcheck.
Then I get stuck playing DJ, having to keep an eye on the friggin cd player. The last player sat directly underneath this compressor which, btw, leaks water. Surprisingly, the cd player doesn't work any more. I found a spare lying around in a closet, and after replacing the faulty audio cables connecting it to the board, hooked it up. The club has a lot of custom-made compilation discs that they like to use for background music. Problem is - 99% of them have spent most of their life either on the floor or in the pool of water beneath this compressor, so guess what - you're gonna want to sit down for this - they skip all over the place. And everybody knows it. And yet they continue to put them in. And they get mad at me for not catching the skipping within 15 seconds. So they're starting to get osme of my music. Don't like Satriani for your 60 yr old jazz crowd? Tough.
And yet we host some of the better shows in town.
In spite of all of this, I love my job and I think I do well at it. But when I see other shows, I don't know what this guy had to put up with before I got there. Yeah, he may suck, but he may just be trying to make the best of what he's given.
Besides, I have a tendency to be a cocky know-it-all jackass, so I gotta watch myself.
-Dan.