Egyptian Theatre, Boise 4/6/2013

[toomilk]

I had a big long thing written and when I switched to a different a different application on my phone, it wiped it out. I'll just summarize:

-Same set list
-GORGEOUS theater. Beautiful Egyptian Revivalist decor. Lots of points in the night they would flash the house lights to the music and it was breathtaking.
-the softer songs really shined. I had chills radiating through my body to perfect miracle, let it flow, rated x, so long, oh baby, the road and - yes - fucking Freedom. I had tears in my eyes for let it flow and oh baby. There has been a lot of shit talk on including Oh Baby and Rated X in the set list and I just want to set the record straight: these are both great songs that somehow get a bad rap for some reasons vaguely having to do with machoism and I won't stand for it. Tonight they were both staggeringly beautiful and sounded like lost Pink Floyd songs. Dreamy. The end of Oh Baby had this added strumming pattern and a harpsichord-esque arpeggio that was beyond beautiful.
-you could feel the interplay between all of the musicians tonight and they played a lot better tonight. Still, the keyboard player dropped the ball a few times, but everyone was spot on.
-the back up singers ruled again. Dancing and shouting "woos" and just making the show more lively. They had little hand movements for all the responses in "i Think I'm on Love" that were funny and showed that everyone on stage was having a lot of fun (I can't stress this enough- it's infectious and shows a different side of the band most people don't know about). No special movements for 'snorting' though! Haha.
-I again noticed really nice recording mics set up on the stage. I bet it's for the new members to study their performance, but I'm hoping for a release. *fingers crossed*
-again, the softer walking with Jesus and not the square dancing version! Doggen doing things with the ebow and repeater pedals. Whew, good stuff.

Bottom line: "Spiritualized American Mainlines" is presenting songs that are pretty different. The casual observer might not notice the nuances, but all of us will. Catch these shows if you can!!!

[toomilk]

Also, I'll try to post the songs I recorded.

Pics:
http://instagram.com/p/XyoTwatrtW/

http://instagram.com/p/XyS3bBtruf/

http://instagram.com/p/XyVrBVNriw/

http://instagram.com/p/XyoKWENrtH/

[mojo filters]

-I again noticed really nice recording mics set up on the stage. I bet it's for the new members to study their performance, but I'm hoping for a release. *fingers crossed*

If it was just a pair of small diaphragm condensers down stage left and right, facing the audience, it's most likely just to provide ambience for stereo IEMs. I noticed Jason was on ears at the last Sage gig (1st time I'd seen this), along with Tom Edwards and also the backing singers (I think). Looking at the small stages on the pics posted of the recent gigs, despite Jason looking like he's back on wedge monitors, chances are other folks could be on IEMs to minimize clutter and stagewash, especially with 7 people needing foldback.

Obviously I'd be very happy for a quality live recording or two of this new and interesting line-up, but I can't imagine there being any official live release. However it would be nice if some rough live recording escaped the FOH desk, in to the wild

Even nicer would be proper broadcast mix for radio or web streaming

[toomilk]

It wasn't just the room mics. The drums were well mic'd with a pair of overheads (if that's a term) on boom stands and the general quality of the mics were nicer than I've seen previously.

But then again, I don't really know for sure!

[mojo filters]

It wasn't just the room mics. The drums were well mic'd with a pair of overheads (if that's a term) on boom stands and the general quality of the mics were nicer than I've seen previously.

But then again, I don't really know for sure!

Looking at several of the venues on this tour, rather than the usual complete house rock'n'roll level sound and lights rig (where venues actually publish their tech spec online), this room only has basic left and right hangs of pretty decent JBL line array and in-house mics with auto mixer typically used for talking heads eg corporate or wedding speech style events.

This venue tech spec states concerts need to hire in most of their production requirements, and for a 700+ capacity room like this I'd expect local providers will bring plenty of quality kit in, including lots of different drum mics, some of which may well end up not being used. I'd guess unlike a venue with house production where experience means they already know what's usually needed, and for drum mics as few as required is preferable as even with dynamic processing such as gates, they tend to pick up unwanted bleed from all the other loud stuff like guitar amps and wedges on stage. In small venues, especially with small, crowded stages, often the vocal mics pick up more than enough bleed from the drum kit and particularly the cymbals, to considerably reduce the need for overheads in particular.

Not being at the gig obviously I'm just guessing. But it seems a coincidence that at the one place where an outside company was providing sound, you happen to notice more/different-looking/better mics, especially on the drums. It's easy enough to set them all up and then adjust what actually is unmuted and needs to go in the final mix - better than not bringing enough and finding out too late!

However it could well be the band took advantage of this opportunity to hire in extra kit to do a separate recording split. Unfortunately previous times we've known gigs were being recorded, such as the Sage 2005 (with video there as well) and if I remember correctly at least one if not two of the early Acoustic Mainlines were professionally recorded from an extra split separate from the monitor and FOH feeds, but nothing actually came of it either via the official channels nor a leaked/shared mix of the multitrack - hence my scepticism that anything will appear, despite reletively keen demand from hardcore fans, I can't imagine it's commercially viable.

If they wanted a recording to help the new members "study their performances", the common mid level digital consoles found in these places (M7, SC48 etc) have enough auxes, groups etc for either the monitor or FOH to set up a recording feed separate from the main L/R/fills mixes, sufficient to fulfill that purpose.

But we never know ... it's not too much effort to keep our fingers crossed, though it may become tiring in the long term

[toomilk]

Speaking of recording, I took "voice memos" of Let it Flow and "A" Song from the Boise show.

They actually don't sound bad at all. "Let it Flow" is incredible...

http://www.sendspace.com/file/oks2x9