On Saturday the above mentioned bands played a Todd P curated show at the Brooklyn Museum. It was part of the museum's First Saturday series. Bob Gruen was also on location with an exhibit and special discussion panel.
I arrived at the museum a bit later then I wanted, thanks MTA! The Beets were almost done their set at this point. Despite seeing them many times, and even booking them, I didn't even realize it was them on stage because the sound was so terrible. The stage was center in a long narrow room that was about 50% glass with very high ceilings. Now I'm no sound engineer (actually I was a long time ago) but that sounds like a bad combo for acoustics.
Like I said I missed most of The Beets so I won't comment any further on them but I was there for Grass Widow. They're one of those bands no one has ever heard of and then all of a sudden they play a show in NYC and they're suddenly everyone's favorite band. I had no idea what they sounded like so I had no expectations. After two songs I gave up on them. Not that they're a bad band, it's just that the sound was so awful I had to get out of there. I went to the deli down the street to pick up some supplies.
When I got back they had just finished and we were excited to see Crystal Stilts. I'm not going to pretend to be a huge fan but they're pretty good. By this point we had talked plenty of shit on the sound but I was hoping that for the headlining band shit would improve. What I didn't consider is the fact that Crystal Stilts likes the reverb... a lot.
They started their set and it was like mud soup. The excessive reverb effects were mixing with the excessive natural reverb in the room and it was just terrible. I was with a friend who's a pretty big fan of Stilts and he walked out after 4 songs. The rest of us made it through 5 maybe before we left. Damn. I guess I should have skipped the bands and checked out Gruen instead. In retrospect that would have been the wise move.
I have no pictures from the event but the museum asked people to photograph the bands and submit them to their Flickr group so there's plenty to see. Bob Gruen will comment on the ones he thinks are worth his critique.
4 comments:
Totally agree, the sound quality was shit. That marching band was awesome though..
you internet dweebs don't know good sound from your own asshole. It's such a cliche, nerd complains about "sound" as his shorthand for "I'm an insider."
in reality the sound there was fine and you're just another blowhard talking out his ass.
Haha, that's pretty funny. I almost exclusively go to DIY shows with terrible or non-existent sound systems. I could give a shit about fancy sound systems and any of that crap. I don't buy vinyl. I don't own $300 headphones. I rip albums at the lowest quality. I don't give a shit, if you hadn't figured that out yet. But when a band I've seen live several times is not even recognizable because of all the sound bouncing around then it's OK to call it bad. I'm not a sound nerd I'm just a guy with ears and it was fucking obvious the sound sucked. It's OK "Anonymous" the lineup was solid, but the big glass room fucked up the sound. You could have put the best system in NYC in that room and it would have sounded like shit.
The photography was cool, the setting was cool, the number of kids present was awesome...aside from the area portioned off for photographers (where people should be dancing/viewing)...I'd say it was a fun event.
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