Monday, February 25, 2008

sitting sideways from the soundboard

Last Friday was an extremely rare, typical blue-moon, date night for me and the hubby. Several weeks before, he scored some fancy tickets to a Friday night Jazz concert at the Kimmel Center with a delicious dinner option preceding it. It was certainly a step-up from Panera and Starbucks!

The food was fantastic, the music was fabulous and the weather managed to behave itself in spite of dire predictions.

One of the funkier, cooler aspects of going to this event was that we had seats behind the soundboard and got to see the soundboard guy do his thing. That set-up was quite a sight to behold: I mean a big venue soundboard (really, probably ANY concert soundboard) is HUGE! And the whole time I'm listening to groovin' tunes, this guy is sliding back and forth doing rather fiddly things ~ hands splayed, pinky always extended, fingers twisting, twitching, hovering over minuscule dials. And one of the more humorous observations I had about his doings was that he seemed to only concentrate his attention on 20 out of the roughly 479 dials at his disposal! It seemed rather bizarre and bewildering that he chose to mess with just those ~ the volume or tone or even the lights never really changed after his twitchy machinations. But then again, I'm not a soundboard-trained professional. I continued to puzzle over his actions throughout most of the concert.

However, regardless of the added distraction, watching this guy tweak and twiddle somehow enhanced my overall listening experience ~ maybe, I liked having a "show" to go along with the music. Perhaps I'm just insanely curious about what other people do. More than likely, I enjoyed pretending that I was somehow in on the action!

Either way, it was loads of fun and can't wait to go out on another "exceptionally rare/blue moon" date event with the hubby! Maybe next time, I'll be able to lean over and quietly ask my incessant, unanswerable questions to the soundboard guy in real time.

5 comments:

Mya said...

Isn't that when the bald headed white guys were twisting their own knobs?

And if you didn't notice any difference when he moved the faders, he was probably doing a good job. Glad you had a fab night.

Mya x

molly gras said...

You know, Mya, you may know something we don't ... there were an awful LOT of baldy white guys bobbing out there!

But the soundboard guy made it look so cool ~ I had this incredible urge to pester him during intermission!

Dave said...

You have all the food choices of Philly and you are going to Panera and Starbucks? And this given your cultural food upbringing?

molly gras said...

I know, Dave, I know ~ lame is all I can say. And cheap, cheap is another factor: I am a very cheap wench when it comes to spending money on dining out!

molly gras said...

I know, Dave, I know ~ lame is all I can say. And cheap, cheap is another factor: I am a very cheap wench when it comes to spending money on dining out!