OK, Guys, What Was I Hearing?

[3rd&4thT]

And whose fault was it?

Earlier this evening I heard one of my favorite groups live for the first time - Steely Dan, at the Beacon Theater in NY.

Well, I heard something like Steely Dan. It was mush. Yes, Steely Dan of the famously "arid, antiseptic, clinical, overproduced" studio recordings.

I don't think of the Beacon as a terribly wet hall. I've seen plays there, and actors can project dialog clearly enough to be understood.

But what I heard tonight was clumped, incoherent, opaque, unarticulated mush. We heard Donald Fagen's adenoids, but not his speech parts. About the only vocal line that was clear to us up in the balcony came in "Kid Charlemagne" when he asked "Is there gas in the car?" and the audience roared back, "Yes, there's gas in the car."

Keith Carlock whacked the drums as if possessed by the spirit and logging camp of John Bonham, though the limiting was audible. The wind players were enthusiastic, if blurry.

Familiar musical lines separated out in careful to the point of obsessive studio production, mixed together here like soup. The two beautiful backup singers sang what might as well have been wordless obbligatos in four voices. Very clever of them, to be sure.

Steely Dan's songs felt long, and if the lyrics are indistinguishable, a bunch of them together begin to sound a bit alike. The heavily limited volume as perceived at the back of the house ran the tiny gamut from Holy Mackerel Loud to A Bit Louder, with an occasional Jeezus That's Loud. F*ck Eleven, that knob's at Twelve!

It's now three hours afterwards, and my hearing still has not returned to normal. Should I be worried?

So, who or what is to blame here? The arranger? I heard no obvious re-voicings. I did notice that the instruments doubled and buried the vocal line in the same octave a lot. Never a problem on the CDs, but it killed here. That's only a partial explanation, though, it doesn't account for the whole experience.

Was the problem my sitting upstairs, as I couldn't fork over $150 a seat for downstairs? There were certainly enough monitors facing directly at us up in nosebleed territory. We were on-axis with a vengeance. Should I be pissed at the FOH engineer? Or is this state of the art, and something I should have expected going in?

3rd&4thT

[McGee]

Probably bad mix on badly installed line array, combined with less than ideal accoustics in bad seats with no effort put into relayed audio for distant seats.

But hey, maybe the band were off that night?

Or maybe Steely Dan only really work in the studio. I certainly would be real cagey about seeing them live. I've had the chance a few times and have gone ummmm.

[kooz]

Not being familiar with the venue or the tour, I can't say for certain, but McGee may not be too far off. The FOH person may have been attempting to compensate with volume for a poorly aligned Line Array...which shows inexperience at something. first time on a (or that particular) digital console maybe?

However, if volume was that much of an issue, perhaps the FOH person was trying to pound monitor spill into submission and the venue couldn't take it.

Either way, yes, you should be worried if your threshold is shifted. Anytime that happens, you're likely looking at damage to your curve. Only partially your fault for not having plugs in after 10 minutes. Other parts of the blame can be shouldered by the mix team, the band and their management, as well as the venue. With sound reinforcement at the level it is today, technologically speaking, there is little reason for damagingly high SPLs at concerts.

Regardless, I'm a bit shocked to hear this about an artist who seems so particular about their music. Then again, I know that you can't please all the people all of the time. did you get up and walk around during the show to see if it was an acoustical issue? or System issue? I would have made my way down to FOH to get an idea of what it sounded like there, and to guage the stress-level of the chief operator.

[Jim Williams]

It had to be the venue. I heard them live outdoors at Lake Tahoe and it was magic. It sounded so much like the recordings, but cleaner. Check them out at an oudoors venue and eliminate the reflections of a room. Most halls don't do well with amplified music, it saturates the air insides. This is very noticable at the Escondido Performing Arts Center, when the levels go down, very nice, bring them up and it's mush. This I notice with the same act varying the loudness during the set.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[3rd&4thT]

Thanks for your reactions, gen'l'mun. We are narrowing it down to the upper reaches of the hall. A local authority informs me that it's the characteristic sound of the Beacon's upper balcony, which for some reason, they've never tamed.

Musically, I can't complain about the performances. I wouldn't say that Steely Dan were having an off night. It was a long set, and I never detected any laziness or "phoning it in." Tempi were generally a hair slower than the recordings, but musicians tend to do that in a larger hall. Only "Black Friday" was faster, and it helped the song.

But I ain't going back to that balcony.

3rd&4thT