Nancy Griffiths. Her reedy, thin voice was weaker and more out of tune than I could stand. The final straw was her pathetic political finger-wagging between songs.
Steve Morse gets both second and third prize. I’m a big fan, but the Steve Morse band was so loud I moved farther and farther to the back of the room until I was out the door and just kept going.
More recently, the Dixie Dregs at the Boulder Theater. Again, deafening, so loud I couldn’t distinguish between instruments. We went to the bar next door, which was piping in the live concert sound for the last two thirds of the show. Better, but still a mixing mess.
Fourth prize goes to Dan Tyminski at the Cavern, outside of Nashville. Dan was trying out his band and they couldn’t decide what genre they were playing. Lounge-lizard-country-pop-bluegrass? But the real culprit, again, was gawd-awful sound. Boomy, thumpy, distorted, aggressively unpleasant. Complained and were told: this is the last show Dan’s going to do with this band and is going to re-group (I.e. he was just playing out the string), and they weren’t filming this show for Bluegrass Underground so the usually great sound crew wasn’t being used (but nobody else has complained so refunds were refused).
The really disturbing thing about all these experiences was how so much of the audience loved the show.
Steve Morse gets both second and third prize. I’m a big fan, but the Steve Morse band was so loud I moved farther and farther to the back of the room until I was out the door and just kept going.
More recently, the Dixie Dregs at the Boulder Theater. Again, deafening, so loud I couldn’t distinguish between instruments. We went to the bar next door, which was piping in the live concert sound for the last two thirds of the show. Better, but still a mixing mess.
Fourth prize goes to Dan Tyminski at the Cavern, outside of Nashville. Dan was trying out his band and they couldn’t decide what genre they were playing. Lounge-lizard-country-pop-bluegrass? But the real culprit, again, was gawd-awful sound. Boomy, thumpy, distorted, aggressively unpleasant. Complained and were told: this is the last show Dan’s going to do with this band and is going to re-group (I.e. he was just playing out the string), and they weren’t filming this show for Bluegrass Underground so the usually great sound crew wasn’t being used (but nobody else has complained so refunds were refused).
The really disturbing thing about all these experiences was how so much of the audience loved the show.