If I go to one more show where the bass drowns out the vocals, I'm going to scream. Not that anyone will hear me, because the bass is too damn loud.

It used to be guitarists. They'd crank their amps so loud on stage that the only thing a sound engineer could do is make everything else louder. These days, the offender is more often the big bottom end. It not only comes off the bass guitar, but also the kick drum, the keyboards and of all places the vocals, which are "fattened up" by equalization and then put through a bit of reverb. After all that, you'll never understand a word.

I used to blame the sound system, but these days, clubs are pretty well equipped. These days, I blame it on the sound person.

Whether the band is playing too loud for them to make the proper adjustments or whether the engineer has just gone deaf from too many shows, basically it's their fault. If the bass player's cabinet is cranked, it's the sound engineer's job to tell him to turn it down. If the guitarist cranks it up so that everyone else cranks it up to be heard, then it's the sound engineer's job to tell them to turn it down.

I think it's time that, as fans, if we think the sound sucks, we walk up to the sound person and tell them. It's time to raise the bar. It's time to make our voices heard. What do you think?