Today is finally here. Pearl Jam live at Summerfest. Been waiting for months. Starting the day off skiing with friends, ending it with more friends at Summerfest. More details to follow…
Oh yea, tickets curtesy of the Ten Club. They should be great seats.
One last thing, for those not in the know, Pearl Jam will be on VH1 Storytellers on Saturday night. Check your local listing for details…
So I’ve seen a fair number of concerts over the last few years. It helps to do the occasional stage hand work to see some of the shows I’ve seen. One thing I’ve noticed is that some of the audio mixers that travel with some bands just don’t know what they are doing.
The last few major concerts I’ve seen or worked at are:
Tim McGraw and Faith Hill
Kenny Chesney
Green Day
Tim McGraw
Dave Mathews Band
Beastie Boys
Billy Joel and Elton John
Pearl Jam (three times) at Alpine Valley
All of these concerts took place at either the Kohl Center or Dane County Coliseum, both places that are acoustically horrible.
For Green Day, DMB, Beastie Boys and Billy and Elton, I couldn’t believe how good they sounded. Lyrics as clear as day and music that was just as good as the album. Green Day and Beastie Boys especially. All of the Pearl Jam concerts I’ve seen, they’ve been mixed damn near perfectly.
For Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Kenny and Tim McGraw by himself, I honestly couldn’t believe how bad the mixes were. The music comes through clear as day and sounds great. The vocals, however, just really couldn’t be heard over the music consistently, and when you go to see a band, at least from my perspective, you want to hear the lead vocals clearly. The Tim and Faith show from just two days ago wasn’t as bad as the KC concert, but it was by no means good. There were parts where I couldn’t hear the singing.
The KC concert from last year was the worst case I’ve seen of this ever. I was about 20 feet from the stage and for many of his songs, especially the more up-tempo songs, I couldn’t hear him at all. When he would do a ballad you could hear him, but that was it. And this is very disappointing. Hopefully, when he is back in August this manage to fix this problem. Last time he came through, I wasn’t the only one complaining. A lot of people complained.
What I think happens is this groups do their rehearsals somewhere and the setup the mixing and get everything sounding perfectly. But then they go to other buildings/venues, and every building is acoustically different, and they use the same settings. Simply put, this doesn’t work and it shows. At every venue they need to adjust the mix so it comes through clearly and I don’t think they do this, probably because they don’t have someone traveling with them capable of doing this.
Further proof the music business sucks. Sony sells their songs and the musicians, the people that actually made the music, receive 4.5% from their sales. What does Sony do with the other 94.5 cents it makes? Granted iTunes is getting a piece, but Im guessing Sony is taking home the majority of it and investing it in ways to further prevent us from listening to the music that we buy. Hmm, I buy a CD and can’t play it on my computer’s CD player without install spyware? That just doesn’t seem right.
And they wonder why we think CDs (and music in general) are overpriced? Now if I bought a CD for $10 and knew the band was taking home 60% of that, it wouldn’t be bad, but I’m guessing they maybe make a buck of that. And who can find CDs for $10, they are 12-13 if you’re lucky.
Sony playing a Cheap Trick on musicians?
Last modified: April 28, 2006, 6:42 PM PDT
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Two rock bands, the Allman Brothers Band and Cheap Trick, have filed a lawsuit against Sony BMG alleging that they are shortchanged when Sony divvies up royalties from digital downloads.
Filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in New York, the suit claims Sony should pay its musicians more as part of a contract the company has allegedly failed to live up to, according to reports published on the Web sites of Forbes and Billboard magazines.
The bands, which were at the height of their popularity more than 20 years ago, claim in their suit that they’re entitled to half of the profits from online sales at sites such as iTunes and Napster, Forbes reported.
Right now the bands receive only 4.5 cents on every 99 cent sale of one of their songs, the suit claims.
Neither Sony representatives nor managers for the bands could be reached for comment Friday evening.
Got an email today announcing that Pearl Jam‘s new album is coming out May 2 and I’ll get to download the first single on March 8th for free. I can’t wait!!!
Mad-City Wedge 