Girly soundy stories

Having worked as a sound engineer, doing live and studio sound in the past, I have frequently been astonished by some people’s reactions to having a girl doing the job. I was never one for good behaviour at gigs and had a great time as result. As a result these stories below were always a good story to tell your mates later.

Once I was setting up a band ready to record. I got the guys in the band to set up their music gear in all the appropriate places. Turned on all the studio gear, put a fresh reel to reel tape on (yep, ‘twas some time ago). Got out all the microphones and stands and set them up. Plugging things in, lugging things around, marking up the instruments on the desk for each track for which mic it matched and so on. Once this was all completed I asked the drummer if he could go sit behind the drums and start hitting the drums so that I could do an EQ on each drum. He ignored me and the boys cracked open beers and lit up doobies. After about half an hour I asked them when they wanted to get started. The response I got was... “Shouldn’t we wait for the sound guy to show up? Maybe you should give him a call?” So I asked them who they thought I was. “Well, your boyfriend is pretty late. Tell him to hurry up.” So I told them, “I am the sound guy”. You should have seen their faces. Another time, I was doing live sound, and this “friend of the band” kept telling me to “do this” and “do that”... that I should bump up some particular frequency, quoted in numbers, on some particular instruments, and it was unrelenting. I queried him... “How do you know all this stuff?” He said he read it in some magazine. So I said, “Alright then, you do it. I am off to the loo and to get a beer.” So there I was standing at the bar watching this guy, enjoying my beer, and he was shitting in his pants. He kept moving knobs and buttons but then putting back how they were. He started looking around for me. Eventually I felt sorry enough for him to go back. “Where the hell have you been? Thank god you are back.” “Oh, I was having a beer. I figured you were an expert and knew what to do.” Sound story number three. I was mixing a very loud punkish band at a scooter club convention and the scooter girls, who prefer ska and Motown, were disturbed by the sound and volume and kept coming over and screaming at me to turn it down. So I did. I put all the faders on zero. It didn’t make two shits difference. So there I was, having a lovely time, getting screamed at again, and I started laughing my head off. I let them yell for a bit more and then showed them that everything was on zero and they couldn’t understand it. Not one bit. They just got madder at me, so off I walked to the dance floor for a bit of a sway while they stood at the desk freaking out and they came and physically dragged me back to the desk. So I literally turned it off and showed them this, but of course it was still loud as fuck. At this point they finally clicked on and left me alone. No apologies mind you. Never is when you are a soundy.

I like a good burlesque show, but is it art?

I ask myself this question because our local Fringe Festival has had a penchant for burlesque two years running. The first year it made sense as they had acquired the perfect venue to showcase this kind of performance but now I find myself longing for some real cutting edge confrontational art events.

So rather than delve straight into talking about burlesque I thought I would consider what is a Fringe Festival. In my mind such a festival is largely not curated and happens on the fringes of a main festival which is curated. This means that a fringe should be available to one and all, professional or amateur to participate, in any art form.

I feel it should be a platform for artists to be able to try out new and risky ideas.

So, if a Fringe Festival is largely one “art” form, then it probably is curated and not really a fringe event.

Given the open nature of fringe then burlesque should be welcome to be a part of the event, but if this is at the expense of diversity then I start to question what is going on.

As a female performer who is quite comfortable with my body and not a prude by any means, I would like to see more women involved that don’t feel the need to show some tittie in order to be involved. Or vice versa..... guys that want to simply create without feeling pressured to be a particular kind of show man.

So is burlesque art? There are a million sites that talk about the art of burlesque, but the references are the same as the art of strip tease. Maybe this is something that burlesque artists need to address? There is also an art to cooking. But does that make it art?

Art is well known for its ability to encourage dialogue. Some of the burlesque shows I saw at the fringe last year succeeded in this respect. They had messages in their show, albeit in a satirical manner.

So.... See you at the burlesque. I’ll be having a bevvie and enjoying myself immensely, but I don’t know if I will feel like I am at a fringe art event, but I will be having a good time.

And just for invasion day in a couple of day (Australia Day)... here is a swell image to get you in the mood.