OldNeumanntapr Notes-
The Cliffs Resort in Pismo Beach hosts an annual free Memorial Day concert on the lawn behind the hotel right on the bluff tops overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Every year my friend Abe uses the occasion to host his ‘Silly Hat’ birthday party, so there are always a lot of silly hats with equally silly people underneath dancing around! I’ve recorded two previous Memorial Day shows at the Cliffs; The California Honeydrops in 2012, and Mother Hips in 2013. (Both are up on the LMA for download.) Cuesta Ridge always puts on a fun show. I am their archivist and Brent, their drummer, is my brother in law. My sister Stephanie was selling the band’s CDs. This year Cuesta Ridge opened for Hot Buttered Rum. Kip Stork, formerly the SLO Brew soundman, gave me a line out from the new ‘digital’ Behringer X32 mixing board and I was pleased to find that it was in stereo! Unfortunately, this year’s Hot Buttered Rum recorded had serious fatal flaws and was aborted midway through the set. I had emailed Terry Lapointe a while back asking about getting a soundboard patch at this show. He said the band would freely allow it, but mentioned that he wasn’t going to be there running the board. (I had met Terry when HBR played ‘Beaverstock’ at the Castoro Cellars Winery in Templeton in 2014 and have kept in contact with him off and on through email since.) I started the Tascam when Hot Buttered Rum took the stage, and stayed to make sure my levels were good before going up front to shoot photos. When I came back to the board about 20 minutes later I found that the new HBR soundman had jacked my levels through the stratosphere and the red OVU light on the Tascam was glowing constant red. (Kip and told me before the show that since he was using all the monitor outs on the X32 board the only output left was the ‘Control Room’ output. This worked fine for Cuesta Ridge, but apparently not for HBR. Whatever adjustments the HBR soundman did to the mix must have affected the output that I was using.) I turned the levels down and then noticed that there was a loud popping noise coming through my Beyer 770 headphones. When I alerted Kip to the problem he said that it sounded to him like a bad DI on the fiddle input. I realized then that the recording was hopelessly flawed and I pulled my patch and shut down. It’s not worth it if the sound is flawed. It’s not worth recording an inferior signal; it’s not worth uploading a flawed recording; and it’s definitely not worth it to the folks that might download said recording. I told Kip that at least the Cuesta Ridge set sounded good, and since I am their archivist it was their set that I really wanted. Thanks to Kip for his help, thanks to the bands, thanks to Todd from Good Medicine Presents, Thanks to Cuesta Ridge for being such a fun band to record, and thanks to the Cliffs Resort for hosting the free Memorial Day concert.
Do NOT Convert To MP3.
Enjoy! Share freely, don’t sell, play nice, don’t run with scissors, etc. ;)