Last night I head out to see the New Pornographers perform and was anxious to find out if Neko Case would be joining the band on stage or not. Technically I have seen the New Pornographers play before. But I only get to say that as a technicality because they were the opening act and I only arrived in time to see about two of their songs. And Neko, and artist who is high on my list of people to see, was very absent.
So last night I was thrilled to find out that Neko was indeed performing with the band. Not only do I think she is awesome, seeing her live is on my 100 List so I am able to check something off!
Last weekend when we saw the Decemberists, they were so good but just didn’t have a handle on the audience. Last night the New Pornographers confronted an different issue. The sound, particularly for the first part of the show, was terrible. Neko has this killer voice that can drown out just about anything and yet she was washed out.
The show last night was at a venue notorious for their terrible sound quality and bad crowds. But, I’ve seen plenty of perfectly good shows there as well so I’m not willing to write off the whole place. Wonder Boy’s theory is that something was wrong with the amps last night. Something about the facts that amps have three parts — focusing on high, medium and low sounds — and the part that amplified the low sound was busted. Maybe, but regardless, I felt bad for the band. Audience members were yelling at them because we could hear their vocals and they were trying to fix things from the stage. I’m sure the sound person was frustrated but he whole thing, but isn’t he or she the one who is supposed to be fixing the sound quality and not the band on stage?
By the end of last night’s show, many of the sound issues were resolved and the music was still great. Get a great bunch of musicians and performers together and it’s hard to go completely wrong. And I’m happy because I saw Neko. I’m also a little bummed because neither Wonder Boy or I could rationalize that a poster from last night’s show could make our wall of fame, but so it goes.
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