Review of Raleigh “Downtown Live” -
August 5, 2006 Raleigh, NC Bikers USA
There was plenty of beer flowing and a large enough crowd to make for a good concert event.
Candlebox was the headliner. Yada yada. Does anyone know if they sounded half decent? Perhaps the people in the first 20 rows. Everyone in the crowd past the mixing board was talking throughout every song. What does that mean? It means the volume was not cranked up enough AND that people were only interested in the beer.
The bands before Candlebox did not fare any better. The sound was mixed properly for the bass drum with little attention to the vocals and no regards whatsoever for the other instruments.
In all fairness, I got there after 5pm, so I only caught the tail end of Parmalee. The sound did not carry clearly past the mixing board for them or the bands that followed: Social Burn, Urge Overkill, and then the headliners, Candlebox.
You know there is a problem with the sound when you can carry on conversations with people 5 feet away, and that’s what people were doing. They were paying $4 for a can of Bud and nobody seemed to even notice when there was a band on the stage.
Other reviews will come in that will be quite opposite of what I have to say. They don’t know diddly squat if they say this was a rock concert. To be sure, I confirmed the lousy sound by testing it from several areas of Moore Square. The next show in the Downtown Live series at Moore Square, Raleigh will be in 2 weeks, August 19, 2006. The headliners will be Gin Blossoms. PLEASE get professional sound happening, because I’d prefer to write a favorable review.
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