Electron Deception Show Review

Electron Deception has received two show reviews.  One of these was positive and one negative.  After having been reviewed, however, I started thinking that it might be useful for us to review our shows.  After all, who knows us better than we do?   

 

Summary: So, on Monday, June 15^th we played a show at Mo’s Bar and Grill in Salt Lake City.  We were opening for Nate Baldwin and touring band Windsor Drive.  We were fairly excited because it was only our second show in Salt Lake.  Unfortunately, things quickly went downhill.  First we almost immediately had problems with the PA.  There was no one to mix the sound and since we run all our instruments through the sound system (as opposed to using amps), this was a big problem.  Not surprisingly, this problem resulted in others; since we couldn’t hear that well we didn’t play that well, which meant we had poor stage presence, which meant that the audience wasn’t that into it.   

The audience wasn’t huge (it was a Monday night after all), but they were surprisingly positive, given how off I felt we were.  The highlight of the night was probably finding out that we sold one of our new t-shirts (a yellow girl’s tank-top).  So either someone like our music, or at least liked our silk screening design.  Also, we got invited to play again, which seems like a relatively good sign.  The other highlight of the night for me was seeing Ryan’s stage presence.  I was at an unusual angle and was pointing more or less at the keyboards.  Ryan told me he didn’t think his stage presence was all that great, but at least while I was looking at him he was rocking.  

 

Conclusions: I am beginning to feel that we need to revamp our sound.  Only about half our shows sound really good (usually they are at Muse Music).  Our biggest problem is that we use a fairly non-traditional set up (digital drums and keyboard, as opposed to guitar, bass, and acoustic drums), which means that not many people know how to do a proper stage mix.  This makes it hard to improve because we can’t really control the mix.  So, I’m thinking of switching to a mixed acoustic-digital drum set.  Also, I think we’re going to try to use amps for the keyboards.  These changes will probably alter our sound considerably, but they should also make for more consistently good shows.