Rave first: Fantastic creative guitarist. Very original sound. Masterful use of electronics and effects. And he had a LOT of effects... an ocean of effects all around him. But you know this about AB. Played his Parker Fly signature guitar through a Line 6 amp of some sort. His Parker sounded good, but not as good as his tones on a strat. Especially the clean sounds would have been better on strat. Only played one Crimson song, and all the rest were his originals, and he's got a lot. Nice arrangements too. Mostly instrumental tunes, and the few times he sang, his voice sounded good, when I could hear it.... which leads me to my rant.

Rant: What is the deal with the kick drum? The loudest (by far) instrument coming from the stage was the kick drum. Not Adrian Belew's guitar. Not Adrian Belew's voice. Kick drum. Tremendously loud..... with the bass guitar as close second. Same thing happened when I saw John McLaughlin in Santa Barbara. I wanted to hear John McLaughlin's guitar. But the kick drum was way, way louder than anything else.

Must be some hip-hop thing. I notice that the kick drum and bass is prominent in hip-hop. Why? What's so interesting about it?

makes things sound heavier and punchier. More "modern" so to speak.

Or,.....it was just a bad sound mix, Or...it was where you were sitting. Acoustics can do weird things sometimes.

Modern? Then I'll take old school anyday. I listen to a lot of Blue Note records, and Rudy Van Gelder (famous jazz recording engineer) would record the drums with one overhead mike, all on the right channel. Though he would spread the piano across both channels. The bass and kick drum are in the background. Horns and lead instruments up front.

Natural. Just like you would hear it live in a club, back in the day.

AND ..... no earplugs needed! Another plus ..... you can talk without yelling at the side of your buddies' head.

I know. I'm old. 50 years old.

It was probably the room to some extent... they travel very light and can't always get everything sounding exactly the way they'd want it, I imagine. I don't think they even have their own sound person on this tour, though I could be wrong. When I saw them this time last year in Australia the overall mix couldn't have been better. I took a friend who'd had minimal exposure to Belew's work (except for the early Talking Heads/Bowie/Nine Inch Nails/Laurie Anderson etc that everyone's had without thinking about it), and he "got it" immediately... fortunately for us, the mix that night sounded very similar to the live album they released last year (Side Four... get it!)

If I'm going to listen to an overloud rhythm section, though, I'd want it to be the Slick siblings. Those kids can play!

That's no excuse for pretending that Rudy Van Gelder was the end of the line in studio technique.

Did you expect Belew to play at Blue Note levels? I sure wouldn't. He's gonna play loud, and the FOH guys are going to drive the bass drum through your chest, because they think that's their job.

Guy rips, However, $9000.00 for his Parker Fly sig is ridiculous.

Belew wasn't too loud. The kick drum and bass guitar was too loud. The kick drum was even way louder than the rest of the drummer's kit. Which was really odd sounding when the drummer took a short solo. I like natural mix levels on the drums. Snare and crash cymbal loudest, toms and kick less so.

Advances in studio technique and speaker technology (esp low end) doesn't give the sound man the creative license to diddle the mix to hip-hop standards. I have many Adrian Belew albums, including his newest, and none of them are mixed this way.