Is This The Proper Place To Complain About Disrespectful Recordings?

ScottTunes

ScottTunes

Gear-A-Holic
Feb 7, 2011
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Left Coast
#1
My acoustic band was asked Wednesday night to "fill in" for a cancellation... We gracefully accepted, confident in our "product."

All of us (band members) are mid-50s and older... But serious about what we can do.

We show up, rush our set-up, play our 3 songs, answer a few questions in a short interview, and hurry out to make room for the next act...

I told my family (consisting of wife, kids, grandkids, cousins, in-laws, and siblings) and friends about this "gig," and am now sorry I said anything to anybody, and even sorrier to be connected to this gig!! Can't un-do it, and can't change what happened, and can't HIDE anywhere!!!

Where can I rant about this???

How can I tell my grand-kids this ain't me???

Anyway, thanks for allowing me to rant!

This gig was recorded, and posted on the web (and therefore permanent), so I thought this would be the place to post this rant.

FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, ALWAYS "VET" THE COMPANY THAT CLAIMS THEY WILL PROMOTE YOU!!! The consequences will be no worse than you HATING the product they deliver from your efforts!
 
#3
Been there. Don't sweat it, really. We did a live interview/studio performance for a minor NPR affiliate locally. We were a duo (two acoustic guitars and vocals). The interviewer swung a SM58 in our direction and asked us to play a song. Needless to say, the recording was horrible, but since they didn't give us headphones we didn't know just how bad (it sounded fine in the studio, of course). We were given a CD of the show before we left, and playing it in the car on the way home I was furious. My partner just smiled, and said "it's the 'voice of the valley radio' ... no more than 12 people heard it". I called the station the next day and asked (demanded) that it not be replayed, and expressed my disappointment.

At a shoot for a local cable access channel at a local pub it became obvious that the recordist, sound man, and host were in way over their heads ... and couldn't get their !@#$ together with a shovel and a pail. Sound, video, nothing was any good. It aired. Not one friend or acquaintance said anything about it. They either didn't watch (most likely) or if they did, knew that mentioning it to me might evoke a !@#$ storm ... :D

Last year, different duo, internet radio station getting some local traction. My duo (different from above) gets there, great studio, awesome folks, great interview (we'd been there before). A quick sound check by a local "pro" at the board, and we're off. First song, all I hear is my bass ... big, boomy, overpowering ... i.e., bad, bad, bad. Turns out we sound checked the main mix going to the air (which sounded great) but when we went live on air the sound man gave us a monitor mix in our headphones (trying to be helpful). We hadn't checked the monitor feed, and didn't expect to get anything in our headphones other than what we heard in sound check. So while we're live on air, I'm frantically trying to communicate my problem to the sound guy, and can't understand why everyone else in the studio doesn't seem to be concerned about what I'm hearing. The broadcast, upon hearing the recording, was fine. But for an hour in studio I almost lost my mind ... ;)

I haven't thought about these in a while ... but ... a week from today we're doing a live concert/taping for a VT cable access channel, and the following Monday doing a shoot for a CT cable access channel. I sure hope these go well!

Sometimes we end up relying on others to know and do their jobs ... and they don't and don't. Nothing you can do about that.
 
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#4
I can understand being dissapointed, but, I'm not any disrespect was in intended on the part of the station or " engineer " .

If the live on-air gigs continually aren't up to snuff, then maybe stop doing them?

Perhaps find a similar band with similar instrumentation that performed & let the engineer know you'd like a similar result.
 
#11
Could be worse. I was at a gig once that I provided the PA for. At a break (between the first and second set) someone took it upon themselves to plug a boombox into the PA, grab a microphone and began adjusting all of the knobs (while feeding back) bellowing "testing 1, 2" repeatedly. By the time I got back into the room, I was furious and after the "announcements" were made, had to hurry up and guess at what the original settings were. Needless to say, the rest of the gig wasn't exactly utopia. A few months later I was approached by someone who said they just saw the gig on local TV. I was mortified. Never were we told this was being filmed or in any other way recorded, and of all times, to have "the horror gig" perpetuated. It wouldn't be bad if they got the best gig ever on film, then maybe there'd be some return on it, not just negative publicity.
 
#14
I had a really poor recording of my band made, and published on Utube, before we could hear it, a couple of years ago, I kinda know how you're feeling. Nothing is permanent though, I asked that it be taken down, and not remixed, and not put up again, as we were not told it was going public, before we got to hear, and approve it. A calm, and polite discussion, between me, and the people that did the recording went well, ...it was taken down. The guy in charge of the whole thing called me, and told me he didn't see what was so bad about it, (it was a nightmare of a mix, and bad camera work also), but also said he was sorry for any mis-understanding, and the video was taken down right away. No more recordings allowed, unless every detail is understood beforehand since then.
 
#17
two fingers said:
Yeah this. I was starting to think I was taking crazy pills or something. What was the problem? Bad sound quality? Somebody called you a poopie head on the air? What gives?
Click to expand...
I can't tell either but now I'm dying to hear the recording, wonder if there's enough info to hunt this thing down online?

That and I think the version of comfortably numb posted on this thread gave me ear-cancer:dead:
 
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#18
FWIW (probably not much), my band was invited WAAAY out to the middle of nowhere to be filmed for a cable access show by some people who were VERY serious about what they do. We knew it was small potatoes and figured there was no harm and potentially fun, and knew some people in the wilderness who offered to put us up for the night.

So we drove for hours and crashed with our friends the night before. We might have had a bit too much to drink. Maybe.

We showed up at the studio, tired, hung over, sweaty, but ready to do our best. They told us we were the only shoot that day, but then rushed us to the performance area, facing two GINORMOUS TV cameras from the dark ages, each with an operator, and a very stern director in the booth. They didn't really cue us and suddenly they shot us the 5 finger countdown so we launched into the most awkward and surreal performance of our lives.

The sound was a total loss. There were two vocal mics that we naturally used for vocals, but the very serious experts had expected those to pick up the rest of the instruments as well. They burned us a randomly indexed DVD with titles generated by a TRS-80 (I assume), and the entire recording consists of five second fades between slowly panning and zooming cameras. The master was badly stretched VHS tape, with all the visual noise and distortions you'd expect. The only thing they missed was star wipes!

They were very nice and we had fun overall. We knew they'd air it and we didn't mind. It's the kind of train wreck that's accidentally charming. That team could have turned a Stevie Wonder gig into outsider art. I still have the DVD, and I'm dying to use the very worst of the awkward footage for a video for one of our new songs. I have less hair now, and the recording is so beat up that it looks like a time capsule from the 80's even though it was probably early/mid 2000's. I call that a win!
 
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#19
Actually I've been filmed once that I know of, singing and guitaring in a punk trio. A friend was handed the camera and asked to capture the performance.

So for the first song the camera doesn't move - this guy might as well be a tripod.

Then someone sits down in front of the camera and my friend doesn't move. The rest of our 30 minute set was played to a video of someone's head.

Not that it matters, we were terrible and the tape could be anywhere now. I never had a copy.
 
#20
Joe Nerve said:
I'm missing something here.

What actually happened?
Click to expand...

two fingers said:
Yeah this. I was starting to think I was taking crazy pills or something. What was the problem? Bad sound quality? Somebody called you a poopie head on the air? What gives?
Click to expand...

Everyone seems to be guessing bad sound, I'll throw in unexpected political content, social commentary, a pro/anti legalization stance, or whatever other opinion that you had no idea you were helping to promote & would have steered clear of otherwise.
 
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