I spent many years in L.A. I was in a few bands that played all over Hollywood, Santa Monica, etc. It never ceased to amaze me how confrontational the house sound men were. Even if they didn’t say much, they were definitely not there to help the bands sound good.

The main thing that bothered me: The soundman would NEVER put any guitar through the front of house speakers. This was at any club, with any band. Also, they always acted as if we were nuts when we asked why the monitors didn’t work.

The only guy that consistently sounded good, with lots of guitar through the speakers, was the soundman at The Whisky. This guy really had it down.

Once, at Madame Wong’s West, the soundman for the room we were in regaled me with stories about how he used to work for ShowCo, etc. During our set, I could hear him experimenting with various effects. At some point a kid came in who looked like a teenage Woody Allen, and was hanging out at the soundman’s mixing area. One of our songs had a very abrupt ending, and as soon as the song stopped, through the monitors and the front of house speakers, I heard this kid’s squeeky voice with an echo on it, at about 100 decibels say, “What’s a compressor…essor…essor…?”

One day, I’d had enough of all of this, and my band was playing at a small club in West Hollywood called The Central. The stage there had these huge JBL monitors. The soundman there was famous for never using the monitors. He came up to me and asked how I wanted him to mix the band. So, I said, “Well, for the front of house, just have a loud, distorted bass drum coming out, but nothing else. Turn the singer’s monitor off, and as for my monitor, just have a 120 decibel screech coming out at about 15kHz. As for the drummer’s monitor, just unplug it altogether, and kick it off the stage.” The soundman looked aghast, and said, “I can’t do that…”. I said, “Why not? That’s what you did the last time we played here.” LOL.