I played at the office talent show this evening.
The soundman first killed my synth completely and then must have turned up the treble on his mixer. The mic wasn't also working and I found out that they gave me the same mic that the emcee for the event was using.
Horrible feedback too, like every 10 seconds.
And to top it off, their sound engineer kept coming to the front of the stage to adjust the mic closer to my face and it just kept feeding back even more.
He also kept adjusting the main volume up and down throughout the performance due to the feedback.
By the end of the performance, it was just my voice and a buzzy mess of a guitar.
Drum sounds killed, synth sounds killed. Just a buzzy $3k guitar and $2k Kemper.
The judge at the show complimented me on my guitar playing and noted that I had something like $12k of equipment on that stage (it was actually far less, because I usually buy used).
"Technical difficulties" is how he put it.
It just got me thinking how maybe having my own backline at these kinds of gigs would probably have saved my life.
Amateur soundmen. The bane of good performances everywhere.