Last night was the much-anticipated DV8/Phoenix show.

Nobody came to the show.

Well, that’s not true. There were a few people- most of which were associated with one of the two bands. All in all, maybe 30-40 people there. What a disaster.

Sons Of Nothing forfeited a sizable chunk of profits from the show to go toward producing a digital multitrack recording of the performance. The band got a recording, so I guess it’s not all bad. Maybe they can add the sounds of a real audience later.

I arranged to have three people shooting digital video as well- with the intent of editing the source footage together with the mixed-down audio onto DVD. I haven’t had a chance to look at any of that footage. I hope it’s usable.

We had a guy named Dan come in and run lights for the show. He was very familiar with the moving heads at the club and the console they had in place. He brought along a couple more heads to supplement what the club already had rigged.

I spoke with Dan earlier in the week to give him a general idea of what my expectations were of the lighting. I told him I’d have a detailed cue sheet for him with suggestions on lighting for each song and various parts within the songs.

He failed miserably.

That’s the big reason why I’m worried about the video footage we got. Even if the guys running the cameras were on their marks and shooting what I wanted, if the person playing or singing isn’t lit adequately, it doesn’t do us much good to have video of it. There were countless times I had specifically indicated that Tim or Matt should have a spot on them because they were playing a solo or singing and they were in the dark.

And then the gregarious guitarist Tim had to do his offstage guitar solos for Comfortably Numb and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Hello! How are we supposed to get video of you performing your solo when you’re walking around in the dark and not playing on-stage?!

I found myself burying my face in my hands several times through the night because of lighting problems.

It’s possible I grossly underestimated what would be needed to do the kind of lighting I was asking for. Maybe we should have tried harder to get Dan into the club earlier in the week to set things up. On the other hand, he really wasn’t being paid enough to make that worth his time.

In that case, perhaps I should have made my lighting needs much simpler and less... prone to darkness.

During soundchecks, the live sound engineer and the recording engineer were complaining about a nasty buzz coming from my laptop - where the sound effects originate. They told me there was a grounding problem in one of the cables so I ran to Radio Shack at Crossroads Mall to get a new cable. After I returned to the club and hooked in the new cable, the buzz was still there. Very frustrating. I probably should have had a dedicated line conditioner to plug my equipment into.

Yesterday, I was painfully aware of my hearing loss becoming more of a liability than just an inconvenience. I couldn’t hear the buzz everyone was telling me about. I could not discern a single word anybody would yell at me from the stage when I was on the balcony with my computers. I was having problems just carrying on simple one-on-one coversations with the members of the band and our crew, even when there was no music playing.

At the end of the night, I felt convinced I need to resign from Sons Of Nothing as the technical director (a.k.a. provider of audio/video effects and sound and light liason) because dealing with my hearing loss is likely to become more of a problem and not less of a problem.

I still feel the same way about it today: a little hopeless. I don’t know what can be done to remedy the situation, if anything. I’ve been able to get by so far by “playing things by ear” (pun) but that’s getting less... practical.

That time of year

Happy Halloween.