Cleveland show review

scanner313

The EYE
Aug 5, 2002
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Western PA, USA
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I attended the Cleveland show last night at the Agora Ballroom. Although I enjoyed the show intensely, I have to complain that the sound was not very good at all.

I don't know if they were using a house PA system or what, but whoever was working the sound for the guys didn't do a very good job. The guy was late bringing up the volume on every single lead Mike Pinella did. He was late on most every lead that Mike Romeo did as well. The overall mix wasn't very clean and the bass was almost not even there. The drums weren't crisp either.

Now, maybe it was where I was standing (right side of floor, about 10 feet from the stage in front of Pinella) but when I was at the back of the room (by the bar) during the last 2 songs of Seven Witches set, the sound for them was pretty good.

I was really disappointed with the sound quality on the 1st 4 songs, particularly Romeo's guitar sound. It was just noisy during the rythm sections. The leads were still good. After that the sound improved and the guys were tight, but the leads were still all late which really hurt the quality of the show.

The impression I got was that they were forced to use the house soundman who was totally unfamiliar with their songs. Either that, or they did have their own sound man but he was working a board he was totally unfamiliar with and the result was him not being able to keep up. I don't know, but whatever the situation the soundman didn't do a very good job, in my opinion of course. Anyone else feel the same, different?

The only other criticism was that they only played for 90 minutes or so. They went on around 10 and were done by 11:30. I don't know if that was a club rule or their own, but it would have been cool if they had done a few more songs. I'm not knocking the guys for that as it may not have been their choice, but if it was then maybe throw in a few more tunes to fill 2 hours or so.

Anyway, I just felt I had to put my 2 cents in on this. Overall, it was an awesome show! Russell was amazing as were the rest of the guys. I had a great time!
 
I was standing all the way on the left side on the floor, and while the sound wasn't perfect by any means, it wasn't quite as bad as you're describing. I thought the drums sounded fine, I could hear the bass decently, and the vox were perfect throughout. They keys were low in the mix during parts as was the guitar, but not enough to detract from the show IMO. Can't wait for them to come back and fufill their promise of playing The Oddysey! Bigger crowd than I expected! Awesome show!

P.S. Almost forgot, MJR's backing vox were almost impossible to hear, but the others were fine.
 
Like I said, it may have been where I was standing, but I really thought the sound quality was mediocre at best. And you're right about MJR's vocals. Not at all there.

By the way, do you think the harmonies in "Of Sins and Shadows" were sampled? They were just too perfect considering the fact that MJR's mike was barealy on and the other backing vocals weren't all that pronounced. Yes, the music stops in those parts, but they sounded xceptionally better than all the other backing vox. Russel was incredible though.
 
set list included accolade I and II, out of the ashes, evolution, egypt, awakenings, king of terrors, wicked, sea of lies, of sins and shadows, smoke, church... inferno,communion,the death of balance, darth vaders theme from star wars..... cant think ............not in that order. they sonded great up front and center. i could hear everything there,except the keys ,yeah they wernt very loud. all in all a great show Ill be there every time!!!! my wife and I got to hang with em for a bit, they are definately a great bunch of guys!!
 
scanner313 said:
By the way, do you think the harmonies in "Of Sins and Shadows" were sampled? They were just too perfect considering the fact that MJR's mike was barealy on and the other backing vocals weren't all that pronounced. Yes, the music stops in those parts, but they sounded xceptionally better than all the other backing vox. Russel was incredible though.

Yeah, they always sample those vocal parts, but I think it's understandable. It would be very difficult to pull those parts off any other way.