Happy Labor Day weekend, everybody.

A couple weeks ago, at Captain23's Lossless & Live Elephant 6 Archive, we posted a Neutral Milk Hotel concert from Chicago's (late, lamented) Lounge Ax on April 25, 1998. You can still download the concert in FLAC format here. Robert Schneider of The Apples in Stereo has written in with an amusing memory of that evening, which you can read below. Robert claims the Apples were playing the Empty Bottle, Schubas, or the Metro that night, but, as defgav has written in, it was actually the House of Blues the Apples played on 4/25/98. Thanks to defgav for the discovery!

The Apples were playing in Chicago on the same night as Neutral Milk Hotel at a different club (probably at the Empty Bottle, but maybe at Schuba's or the Metro) and after our show we rushed over to Lounge Ax to see our friends--

When I came into the club Laura Carter (on tour with NMH at the time doing sound) ran up to me with a desperate look in her eyes and said she just could not get the PA under control, everything was feeding back and in chaos, and she asked me if I could please try to help with the sound.

So for the first time ever (and the last I hope) I stepped up to the mixer and attempted to do live sound-- now I had never done live sound and it is a completely different art from mixing records, as the actual blend of instruments, EQ, panning, and other finer points of mixing take second place (if not like thousandth place) to the holy grail of live sound: reducing feedback so that the lead vocal is at least audible.

Okay so Jeremy Barnes is one crazy and loud drummer and the room was filled with cymbals crashing, Jeff's electrified acoustic guitar was feeding back through a big muff, and Julian [Koster] and Scott [Spillane] were alternating between guitars, basses, bowed banjos, singing saws, horns, the entire gamut of crazy-ass instruments--

Of course Jeff's vocal projection skills are excellent so keeping his voice on top of the mix wasn't so much the problem, but they had not had a soundcheck, there were only like three mics total in operation on the stage, and in the course of one song a single mic could be used for trumpet (extremely loud), vocal (not so loud), and singing saw (almost inaudible over the cymbals and feedback)--

Right away I barely had time to EQ the trumpet to sound sweet when suddenly there was a singing saw coming through the microphone, before I could get the gain on the mic sufficient for the saw there was a now-distorted trumpet blasting back into the mic which was feeding back at a level competing with Jeremy's drums-- I looked frantically around for Laura hoping to somehow get out of this wretched role I had taken on but she was nowhere in sight and I realized I was in for the long haul--

Now I do not know a lot about live sound, but I am pretty sure the job is not supposed to involve your hands flying across the console, panning and EQing and actively mixing every second of the entire show, like a concert pianist playing Rach 3--

In my head I was still trying to get a good blend as if I were mixing a record, but in reality I was getting farther from any sort of blend with every drumbeat! I felt like I was on some insanely badly assembled roller coaster at a county fair, the whole structure propped up on cinder blocks and you can see the load bearing parts have been replaced with paper clips!! You want to jump off but are afraid the motion will collapse the architecture!

So I stayed on the ride trying not to puke for the duration of the set (which was mindblowing despite my failures). I did not see the sign warning of possible health risks, and I'm surprised I survived with no major injuries or nervous breakdowns! I did manage to get a decent vocal EQ as I remember, and since then I have had a great respect for the sound engineers at my own shows.

That is my tale.

I am not 100% sure that this is the night but I'm fairly certain, it was right around this time-- I'm sure it can be corroborated by checking to see if we played a show this same night in Chicago.

Love
Robert Schneider