Blame sound guy = weak live band

rekcuf, you obviously haven’t heard them live before. Simply put, they’re amazing. They’ve been fantastic both times they’ve been on Letterman.

tat really suck

yeah, they just suck! i suppose you’d say the same for the hold steady. whom rolling stone love to stroke on a regular basis even thought they’re your typical middle of the road idie bullshit not doing anything new or interesting. politics and writers who are NOT in the know are misleading people to another decade of barrel scraping. i haven’t seen much in rs about the last raconteurs album. apparently they don’t belong to rolling stone’s stable of bitches. we need TRUTH. and by the way if i wanted to know what some snot-nosed emo twat had to say about music (patrick stump reviewing music for rs) i’d walk down to the neighborhood middle-school and pull up a chair next to the depressed kid with the world’s most ridiculous haircut. i love the magesty of rock n’ roll and rolling stone is pissing on it’s future. get your shit together rolling stone! you don’t need any help in going out of business.

Fantastic live band! Watching an artist perform 1-2 songs on television will never measure this…
Anybody who’s curious but haven’t seen them in concert yet, it’s well worth the experience.

I didn’t catch TVOTR on SNL this weekend, but the sound on SNL seems to suck every week. I really don’t understand why, SNL/NBC has a bazillion $, can’t they buy some decent mics and acoustic treatments?

I didn’t think it was all too bad. Maybe the horns were loud, but that’s about it. Dear Science seems to have a few hundred tracks per song. It’s pretty unreasonable to expect them to reproduce that in a live setting. SNL’s sound didn’t take away from TVOTR’s funkiness, or awesomeness in general.

I saw TVOR live and I thought the sound was bad because some of the other bands didn’t sound so good. Then Muse came on and sounded phenomenal. A friend of mine who has played on a bill with Muse says they bring tons of their own equipment everywhere. I think it’s fair to blame live sound on the band when they have the resources to make sure it is good. I mean, the Fleet Foxes sounded great last week. I think bands that use a lot of electronics tend to sound be disappointing live relative to their recordings.

Man…you guys don’t understand the sound transfer from stage to TV/radio. Normally, a discrete mix is taken from the board to another engineer who mixes out to air. It’s the mixer putting it to air that’s fucking it up, not the band, the room or the mics (or lack thereof). TV is extremely difficult to mix…especially directly to air. Chances are, the band sounded great in the room, but there’s no way to represent that to two 6″ speakers on your television. And what matters more? I won’t start that debate.

Also, dalimama…I’ve seen The Hold Steady several times and they are great live. What the fuck are you even talking about?

And FYI – most of the “live” DVD’s you pick up from your favorite bands have been taken back to a studio and have had the vocals overdubbed again, so that they can be auto-tuned and wetted up with “live” sounding reverb. So, you’re not really hearing the actual performance. Don’t ever believe that you are. Unless, of course, you wanna be a schmuck and think that Hannah Montana is really good.

…and when I say “TV/radio” below I’m actually talking about ACTUAL TV and radio, not the band.

Sound is bad for them live too, I saw them recently and it was really muddy and bad. I don’t think their sound translates well live from record.

I thought tvotr sounded pretty good. they are definitly an acquired taste. their performance reminded me of when radiohead was on playing national anthem and idioteque. snl sheds light on groups who need it sometimes. next week the jo bros right? well at least alec baldwins the host

THIS BAND IS BULLSHIT, YOU CALL THAT MUSIC, ? TALENT ?

YOUR MUSIC SUCKS ASS, UR PRODUCTION SUCKS ASS, UR SO CALLED LYRICS SUCK ASS,YOU JUST SUCK ASS AS A BAND

purple…you have NO taste!

This is a classic example of the corporate music machine model blowing up in their face. Watch their Colbert Report debacle of a performance for more proof. When you piece together a band and produce the hell out you get a group that is not cohesive as a unit and lacks stage savvy. SNL is constantly criticized for their sound, but I am grateful to them for preserving the purity of a live performance. As a touring musician I can tell you that SNL is giving you vocals and line feeds that are representative of what is coming from each performer and they are not super processed like on some other shows. This means bands that can really play sound great, those who can’t are evident. Bottom line is this band has rampant tempo problems, the horns are loud because they are loud instruments and the players have to know how to control their own dynamic as there is no volume switch on a horn. The singers voice was strained because he was not aided by a pitch correction device or heavy filtering like he would be in the studio, or on other sets/stages (think Britney Spears). When he plays bass he is awful, and is the cause for much of the tempo issues. When he does not, the band lacks groove and becomes a cluster f***. They are proof of everything that is wrong with popular music today.

TVOTR suck. They can’t hack it as a live band. The bass player is horrible. Worst SNL performance since Lucious Jackson. Say what you will about Nickleback or Hinder, at least they don’t sound like shit when they play live.

The SNL studio used to be a radio recording studio years ago. The studio (and all of this is known if you’ve ever taken the NBC Tour) is suspended in air kind of…the way it is designed, it is the best acoustics for musical performances. So, when you see a band suck on SNL, it’s because they are legit a crappy live band. Most likely their albums are over-produced. Go watch Cold Play or Arctic Monkeys on SNL…great live shows. Same goes for Killers and many others.

I think it’s actually phase problems. Often the vocal sounds really low because it’s out of phase with the rest of the mix. This has nothing to do with the quality of the bands. There are problems during the sketches too. This is definitely a sound engineering issue.

I enjoy reading comments from people bashing TV On The Radio and then insist that Coldplay is a great band. Almost as good as people that like to type in caps lock.

if you hate tv on the radio then stop reading articles about them, haters.

i noticed there is a “shredder” guitarist taking place of the sax as the lead, during the breaks, what’s up with that? i find it corny. as far as the sound techs, they may not be making the most of their equipment. with such organic bands as fleet foxes and tv on the radio, it is hard for an inexperienced sound tech to get that live “sound”. they may be used to “beyonce” push and play tracks, no adjusting, no sound check. thats the beauty of SNL.

I went out and bought the record after reading about them in RS and gotta tell ya, I didn’t get anything out of it and was like, WTF…..
Then, I saw them live and really didn’t get it. My brother put it best: “Often what Rolling Stone thinks is hip is really just trendy at the time and has not enough substance to be ‘classic’”.
I agree.
Also, they’re def a studio band.
My two cents…

Interesting how many have come up with various reasons for the TVOTR audio problems on SNL.
Fact is, if you watched the broadcast from the beginning you’d know that they were having serious audio problems from the start. Monologue and many skits didn’t have mics working and audio was being picked up through house microphones.
By the end of the show an hour and half later, the audio was improved but not at all fixed.

i thought they were great. its ridiculous that some of you are complaining about minuscule things like the horns being to loud. and to say that they are not a good band is plain douchebagery. i understand NOT likeing them, but at least respect the fact that they are different and unique unlike those bands of shit mentioned above ; Nickleback, Hinder

my bad…bands of shit BELOW; Nickelback, Hinder. if a bands music is capable of being played repeatedly on a top 40 music radio station/mtv….then that band is usually shitheads who solely care about making money with cliche songs.AND THE DALLIMAMA is an ignorant fck! anyone who uses the term “emo” in an argument obviously is too much of an ass to create a real argument

Granted, SNL mixes are hit or miss, but some bands do better live than others, and some bands just have an off night. No one, bands or engineers, are perfect 100% of the time, and getting a performance right without the regular engineer I’m sure was a problem….but there was no engineer fix for bad vocals. After the first song was bad it was strange things were not fixed for the second song. I find it hard to believe they thought those vocals sounded okay on stage monitors….the sound ain’t THAT different than house/b’cast mix! Just a bad night for all I think. I think it is shitty the band can’t just admit that. Hell, even Aretha Franklin could be self-critical of her inauguration vocals, and any real artists I’ve ever worked with are never really satisfied with their work. Only the self-entitled generation want you to tell them they are good when they are not, and can’t take criticism when they perform poorly. Not saying they are a bad band, but they had a bad night, and they ARE responsible for how they sound. Get that shit right in sound check. If their engineer could not work the board, his ass should have been monitoring and telling the SNL union engineer it didn’t sound right.

Quote:>
Anyone who is an audiophile could hear it was so much more than just loud horns…fact is, sound was being picked up through secondary ‘house mics’.
Just for the record, I never heard of this band before(and I’m a promoter…different strokes/different folks)the SNL gig so I have no interest in taking sides. but I do know quality sound (as a collector of almost 10,000 hrs of uncompressed soundboards)
Again, this was a in-house problem.
From another thread:
When TV On The Radio performed “Dancing Choose” and “Golden Age” on the 2/7 episode of SNL, a number of folks, not all sound experts, noted that maybe the band should have spent more time soundchecking because there something was clearly amiss with the mix (ease up on the horns, guys). Turns out the band’s monitors and the room sound had them thinking it was all OK, that they didn’t realize they came-off like shit until they got off stage and friends let them know about it. Kyp Malone spoke to the Canadian Press (thanks for the tip Eric), explaining the situation and offering a lesson in why sound guys should go union, at least if the band they travel with is heading to Saturday Night Live.

“In the room, it sounded fine to us,” Malone says. “We had a really good time, and it felt really good. Then we came offstage and immediately started getting texts about how (terrible) the sound was.”

Malone says their sound engineer couldn’t work at the show because he’s non-union, so they put their faith in the SNL crew.

“I want to tell strangers on the street who keep talking to me about it that I’ll go back in time and be a union-working sound engineer, and also go into the future so I can duplicate myself and come back as two people and work the sound and do the performance,” he says.

The band performed on “The Colbert Report” the following week – host Stephen Colbert delighted in stroking Malone’s ample beard, comparing it to taking “a vacation in a faraway forest” – and the sound was much improved.

“Colbert seems to have saved us some humiliation,” Malone says.

I believe I’ve been edited by moderators here.
Quote originally shown in my last post but has since been removed. Oh well…I tried to provide some factual info.

Wow, how unfortunate that they have had this experience with SNL not once but twice! I saw the show in question and my original take was “um…not for me” and, while 15 yr old son was a little more open-minded (oh those young whippersnappers!) and came back a few days later to report that TVotR were indeed quite talented, I blew the whole thing off and forgot about it/them.

Then through the magical music-surfing interweb, I found one of their older tracks that I lovelovelove (”Wolf Like Me” – def my new fav song but their latest stuff is great, too) and kept wondering why their name sounded so familiar…then I remembered the SNL show.

Yikes! *That* performance was not *this* band–whether sound voodoo or what, these cats ROCK and they do it with sooooo much soul and style and substance and, and, and!

It may be, as others have said, that they are a better studio band than touring band. Possible, but I doubt it–any of their live videos indicate that these guys love playing music and that type of musician can never be better on a recording than in person.

I’ll let you know definitively after I catch them in May!

Keep your minds open, people, and you will be rewarded!

The problem wasn’t the sound, the problem is they are vastly OVERRATED!

I love TVOTR, but I do think they are a ’studio band’, and if you listen to Dear Science, that will be made clear. Still, they put on a good visual performance, and the sound wasn’t all that horrible, it just didn’t reproduce closely enough the majesty of their studio recordings. Also, I think they simply played too fast – especially ‘Golden Age’. The accelerated tempo did not serve this song well. Many bands play faster live; sometimes it’s just nervous energy. I hope to see them live soon and to be shown that they can bring it live for real…

am listening to “return to cookie mountain” as i read these “critiques” and personally, i love this band … haven’t been this impressed since first listen to “the brian jonestown massacre” …

SNL has perfect acoustics soooo i dont know why you’re calling TVOTR victims here. Television is allowed to have problems, especially since it’s a live show, so insisting this is a recurring problem is complete speculation. And showing youtube’s sucky quality clip of the performance is hardly the real thing.

It was my 1st exposure to them and it got me to like them enough to buy their music. I love live music and although the horns sounded prominent it was enough to make me think they’d be really great to see live. Oh, and I agree with another poster that they are the coolest thing since the BJM…