KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Local sound guy Steve Underwood gave a firm thumbs up to band Corpulent Baby at the RagnaRock venue despite changing nothing on the board, sources who needed more guitar in the monitor confirmed.
“Yes yes, I saw the numerous irritating hand flaps from the band to adjust their music, if you want to call it that,” noted Underwood, veteran audio engineer and self-described “Kaiser of the Console.” “I set a perfect balance from the start. I don’t need a band of amateurs telling me how to do my job. I didn’t get hired for two weeks as a substitute mic stand tech for Winger in ‘89 because I’m some hayseed who fell off of the turnip truck! Plus, I’m pretty sure two-thirds of these knobs don’t even do anything anyway.”
People in the audience got mixed messages as they witnessed the band juggling multiple hand signals while also trying to perform their songs.
“Honestly, I couldn’t really tell what was going on up there,” admitted show attendee Lauren Hightower. “It started out as just a few motions from the vocalist, but quickly turned into a flurry of hand waves. I thought that maybe he was doing sign language for people who were hearing impaired. Also, what was up with the vocals? I could barely hear them.”
Corpulent Baby vocalist Axel Svendsen was furious at the sound guy’s unprofessionalism.
“For fuck’s sake, what does it take to get the vocals louder in the monitor?” asked an exasperated Svendsen. “It’s not like I was asking him to throw some auto-tune into the mix. All I could hear was bass drum and snare. I figured the ‘gesturing toward the mic then pointing upwards’ motion was pretty fucking clear. He just pretended to hit a bunch of buttons that weren’t there, gave me a big thumbs up, then went back to scrolling through pics of coaxial cables on his iPad.”
At press time, owners of the music venue revealed that they had a long conversation with Underwood about addressing the needs of the musicians performing, to which he responded with an immediate and reassuring thumbs up.