Audio Technology - Issue 26

Springsteen. 'The Boss' is back, the sound is off... Sometimes the world just side-swipes you and the real becomes the surreal. Saturday 6pm, I'm planning a quiet night at home alone. 9pm that same night I am onstage with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band looking out at 30,000 people. When I say 'on stage' I should say 'side of stage' but Springsteen doesn't really have a side stage, the stage is one giant pergola - everybody is either on the stage or out in the masses watching the show. Apparently he makes sure that people backstage don't miss out on the show by being backstage, and for that reason they call him 'The Boss'.

Lets go back a few steps, Friday night, my girl is out and I'm at home making a mess of my lounge room while a mate of mine and I figure out how to turn his 1271 Neve modules into microphone preamps. On Saturday morning my wife wakes me up reminding me she is going away to an 'eastern awareness weekend' (in that temple near Wollongong, if you know it) to experience a couple of days in the life of a Buddhist monk - very Zen, very chilled. "What are you going to do?", she says. I mutter something about "playing super dweeb with some Neve type". I go back to sleep and rise at the more respectable time of 5pm.

I figured two quiet dweeby nights in a row might be good, and besides I didn't have any other options. Later on I would probably call up Neves Anonymous and work something out for the rest of the night - as I have said before, I can't help myself.
6pm, the phone rings. "Hey it's me, wanna get some dinner?" In a flash, a night of Neve-itis is swapped for the bright lights, and the big city... usually the better option, believe me.

7pm I am having a drink with a couple of mates discussing where to eat. One of them says, "Look, I have to do some work first, so I'll have to meet you later on... unless you want to see the show". "Umm... show?", I enquire quite innocently "Yeah, Springsteen. You're welcome to come along if you don't mind getting bored hanging around a bit."

So the next thing I know I'm on stage standing next to Beck close enough to touch The Boss himself, watching him play an acoustic version of Born in the USA, sans the chorus - it's a different song without that chorus and (in these times) more than a little poignant. Next thing the band explodes into War, What is it Good For? (Absolutely Nothing). This time, as they hit the chorus the stage lights up, the audience lights up, the video wall lights up, and... off goes the sound.

Something, somewhere tripped. There is Springsteen and his band on stage, but no sound. Around me people (who are actually meant to be there) are running around like proverbial headless chickens, trying to find the fault with the sound.

The band take the sound cut-out in their stride and keep on playing and within a verse or so the sound returns and the kafuffle stops. That is, until the next time the band start pumping and the sound goes again. So there I am up on the stage (pretty much by myself now) trying to stay out of the way of the poor sods frantically trying to figure out why the sound's cutting out. As with all these things it's always the last thing you check (because then you fix it...). Anyway, apparently the video wall was the culprit - drawing too much power or something like that.

The show was disrupted a couple more times and for reasons only they understand, the E Street Band turned on a absolutely blistering show - as if to make it up to the audience for the dodgy sound, the band leapt into another stratosphere of performance. Love him or hate him, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band playing with 'something to prove' is a truly humbling experience.

It was a real one-off deal for me and I was pretty excited. I knew just how excited when I found myself jumping up and down with absolutely no idea how long I'd been doing it for - something to see for sure. As I stepped back a bit my mobile phone rang. On the other end was my lovely wife Zenn-ed out at the Buddhist temple. "Whatcha doing?", she says, "something dweeby?".

"Err... I'm onstage with Bruce Springsteen, looking at 30,000 people looking back at me. I can't talk in case the phone makes the PA blow up. I'll call you back..."

So why am I telling you this? Well, aside from me using some more big names from my world to keep the editor happy [;-) - CH], the thing is, I read and heard a lot of crappy reviews about the exact same show. Reviews saying how the sound was so bad; that it was a rip off; how the band barely played; how it was the worst show ever seen; how it's time to ban outdoor gigs. Well, I'm here telling you that from where I was it was the best band I have ever seen. I'm no big Springsteen fan, but I could see about 10,000 people clearly having the time of their lives. The other 20,000 were just a colourful blur. It is amazing how sound can change the way you perceive things.

For those who could actually see the show it was incredible, for those who relied on a video screen, which was turned off most the night because of the dodgy sound, it was a disaster.

So was the Sydney Springsteen show a case in point for putting an end to big outdoor concerts? Probably. But from where I was standing, any performer who has ever been in front of that many people will not put the outdoor stadium gig away easily. Like I said, it's something to see for sure.

So, live... how many times have you heard a band say that their recording just doesn't capture their live feel? Well, I have a theory on this and it goes something like this: if you can see and hear the band you get a sense of excitement that is different to just one or the other I wrote a column about it a while back and it looks like here I am doing it again.

So imagine a live concert DVD - say it's Springsteen's Sydney concert that I saw - blaring out of a TV's crap little speaker. It's pretty easy to watch, but turn off the vision and you realise the sound is rubbish... or at least pretty sub-standard. This is exactly the same as recording a band's favourite 'live' song. Everybody wants it to be the hit single, it's the song the band close their set with, it's the one the A&R executive loves, it's a no-brainer hit single... anyone could produce it. Except that time and time again the 'super hit’ sounds like a super flop when it's recorded and everybody moans about the 'live feel' going missing.

What I figure is usually missing is not just the live feel, it's the stage, the lights, the beer, the drugs, the smell, the adrenalin and of course the sound pressure level. Without all those things all you're left with is a couple of six-inch speakers doing their best to excite you. And guess what? Most of the time they don't.

Ever noticed how many video hits shows there are? That's how record companies put the excitement back into the song - lots of girls, cars and fast editing. It works a treat but I wish it didn't have to.

So, wanna be a hit producer? Well you have got to figure this one out. Learn how to substitute other sonic tricks for the lack of visual input of a band truly rocking it and you're half way there. Do it consistently and you will be a producer at the top of the game. I am very serious here, this is the hard stuff.

Is the song the right speed to survive the culling of sensory input? Is the bass guitar grooving enough to trick you into thinking the bass player has never played better in his life even though he is only hitting one note? Does the vocal performance have that edge that gets you excited? Does it still sound exciting the next day? Next week? Are you getting chills up you spine? Are the mixes dull? Got enough choruses? Got too many? These are the things a good producer decides on and, as matter of course, these are usually the things that take a lot of studio experience to actually know from the gut, by instinct, ahead of the final mixdown or mastering. Very few people I have ever met actually make records with this stuff in mind, but boy when they do...

So it's all about a sense of excitement. I mean, think about it. When was the last time you were truly, unashamedly, unexpectedly excited? What did it feel like? Can you put some of that in your next record? Hell, just the hint of that feeling is why I do the things I do - it's why I make records, why I go out fishing, or off digging up gold, chasing up vintage audio treasures like they're ancient holy relics -it's a sense of private personal unpredictable excitement. I can't really put it into words but that feeling makes me feel good... real good.

Apparently lots of people just don't get it when I talk like this but listening to a backing vocal you have just done at 2am in headphones at that point when you're right in 'the zone' feels about as cool as life can get. If you don't believe me then you haven't been there yet!

So, excitement, emotion, energy, passion... Get some, learn some, put it back out into the world for someone else to get a hold of. Who knows, I might be listening to you sending chills down my spine on the radio in a couple of months, instead of hearing a diatribe on JJJ about what a drag big outdoor concerts are, followed by the flop recording of the week.

And as a post script to the Springsteen concert, the next week under similar circumstances I saw Moby play the Hordern pavilion to only 4,000 people. Moby had the lightshow Springsteen didn't have and no video screens. It seemed to me that he blew the smaller indoor audience away (To do his music justice, Moby had 80% of it coming off a DAT tape, a little sad but that's the state of things today.) At least he knows how to deliver what his audience needs to get off completely... for better or worse. I throw this in at the end because I just read a review by the same people that did one of the Springsteen slams and they thought Moby and his band delivered 110% - no mention of how hard that DAT player worked though. Oh well.

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