What a disappointment the Big Blast Concert Series was last night at Old Home Week. Held in the Trade Centre building, capable of holding 4,000 people, the concert with Sloan and Slowcoaster had the worst sound in my memory.
When the music started, you could tell we were in trouble. The sound was reverberating off reflective surfaces of the metal ceiling, brick walls and cement floor. With no absorbing materials it kept bouncing around until the words were unintelligible.
The attendance was surprisingly low for those two bands which have big followings in Charlottetown.
Slowcoaster, one of my favourite bands, was a mishmash of noise and occasionally intelligible words. I’ve heard them in so many venues and this was awful. If you stayed real close to the stage it was sorta almost bearable.
The hard surfaces fostered the creation of standing waves which sucked all the energy from the low and mid sounds in the music. For Sloan that took the energy out of the music. The drums and bass sounded weak and the vocals got lost in the reverb. It sounded like the singers were coming through a megaphone or long tube.
My partner who is a big Sloan fan wanted to leave mid way through their set that’s how bad it was.
The sound guys were trying hard but no one could have fixed that. The Trade Centre is just the worst possible room for acoustics. A tent would be better.
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