Originally posted by Guy Chadwick's angry neighbor:
I did review Friday's show for BYT. You can check that out here: http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/live-dc/mega-shoegaze-extravaganza/
from the comments section:
i was the soundperson on duty at the velvet lounge. the irony of the situation is that we upgraded parts of our pa especially for this weekend. our high frequency driver on the left side blew out during ulrichâ??s soundcheck. this issue wasnâ??t caused by extreme levels from ulrich or from the soundboard end. the delay was caused by us trying to resolve this problem before we started the show. the monitoring issues during luxa were caused by poor communication in the heat of the moment. i feel awful that it affected their performance as iâ??m a fan of their music and a friend of andy. i was looking forward to friday ever since i found out it was going to happen at the velvet lounge. it was seriously like a dream show for someone like me. and i did try my darndest to make sure everything went smoothly despite a lot of freaking out early on due to the blown speaker. we still donâ??t know what caused the crackle and the smell of burning sulphur during the last bit of ulrichâ??s set as no additional speakers were blown during his set and no signals were clipping at any point in our set up. perhaps his sonic alchemy translates into physical alchemy. in any case, we did fix our blown tweeter in time for the silver apples on saturday. simeon was very happy with the way things sounded and it made up in a small way for the multiple blows of friday. as one of the people responsible for our pa i offer my apologies and respect the patience of the bands and audience members.
i sympathize with what this person wrote, he was definitely put in a rough spot, but i wonder about "the monitoring issues during luxa were caused by poor communication in the heat of the moment". the band made it very clear what the monitoring problems were… when someone points at laptop + energetically points at the floor = turn down the laptop. point at singer with one hand and point towards ceiling with other = turn up the vocals. obviously there were issues aplenty, but i'm not sure how the band could have been any clearer about what they needed. speaking with the band afterwards, they (politely) complained that nothing was changing in their monitor mix, despite their gesticulations.