On Stage

So I went to a show last night. I say show because my friend Jesse gets very upset that everyone says show instead of concert. I am still not entirely sure why that is. Show/concert… it is all the same to me.

Anyway, I got to see the band Kutless on Friday night and they were pretty good. They had a positive message and I enjoy their style of music.

My friend Mike did the sound for the festival and it sounded pretty decent while he was doing it. (Of course, then the other sound techs would step in and muddle everything up, but that’s beside the point.) But last night I was up on stage during the Pillar show and it was really interesting to watch a concert from the back and on the stage rather than be in the audience. Mike was doing monitor mixing for the show so that the band can hear each other playing. It’s funny to see all of the activity going on during the songs because you don’t realize actually how much communication occurs between all the people on stage because you just dont see it as you are focused on the singer or the guitarist or whoever is leading at the moment. Pillar is a very musically talented group. Their drummer is simply amazing. One song had him jumping up and down while playing the drums with one and, spinning the stick in the other and then alternating hands. Absolutely amazing that he could do all that and still keep time.

It did give me an inside look at the job of a sound tech running a stage with more than 10 bands. Very interesting how certain people react to stress, how they handle it. Some of the bands (mainly the ones who were not very good) treated the techs like crap. The more professional ones seemed a bit better, but then again there are always a couple people with egos, so if you dont have their mineral water just at the right temp … watch out!