Dunno what we do right here in the desert (maybe it's in the water), but (from the club point of view) the night went off without a hitch. Yep, the Fall show at Club Congress last night was as successful as could be.t
First thing was that their road manager, a nice guy named Sean came into the club and told me and Nicole, the assistant club manager, what we could expect: Smith will move mics, he'll futz with amps, he'll piss of the band ... basically, expect chaos and not get upset. We pretty much knew this, and if part of his show is sabotage, then hey, whatever you want, knock yerself out ... other requests were no downstage monitor wedges (I set up two wedges as sidefills), tripod base mic stands, no flashing lights (I had to turn off the pinspots on the disco ball). The guys in the band were all really nice and soundcheck went fine.
The Fall are touring with and sharing backline with a North Carolina four-piece called The Talk, who do pleasant if generic noisy indie rock, and they namecheck other NC indie bands (Superchunk, Archers of Loaf). Also on the tour is this silly vidiot who, between bands "mixes" video images and music and it's all quite annoying. It's the sort of music you'd play to drive people out of the club after the show ...
Their set started on time, although Sean had to play therapist and convince the band that they really should play. They play, and Smith ambles on stage, and proceeds to remove the rack-tom mic from the drum. He takes off his jacket and hangs it on the ride cymbal overhead mic. Guitarist Ben's vocal mic is immediately removed from its stand and put on the floor. Smith decides he doesn't like the next vocal mic and drops it on the floor. He wanders around the stage, putting his vocal mic in front of the bass amp, the keyboard amp, wherever. He picks up the mic he dropped and sings into both at the same time. He puts a vocal mic inside the kick drum. I guess he doesn't recognize my SM91 in the kick drum as a mic so we have a kick sound most of the night, until late in the set it gets flipped over. (So I unmuted the vocal mic in the kick drum and it sounded pretty cool.) I use all of the PA (big surprise, that) and the Crest 8001 on the mids occasionally thermals and cuts out for a couple of seconds.
They play a tight, angry set, giving the crowd (165 paid) their $20 worth.
They play an encore. The crowd is stunned.
After the encore, I start zeroing the mixer. They come back onstage and do a SECOND encore. The crowd is astonished.
Yeah, the best show of the year, so far. Suffice it to say that the rest of the tour won't go as well.