Location over Emotion

Alan is very laid-back. I almost typed "laid-baked," which would be an equally appropriate description. It seems to me that this laid-backness, not to mention laid-bakedness, is a fine quality in a bass player.

Typically, during a performance, Alan chills somewhere near the back of the stage, kind of disappearing while holding everything together, quietly. This behavior also holds true for Alan in other circumstances — parties, at the bar, in restaurants, etc.

This is not to say that Alan is inattentive, but I was pretty damn surprised when he came over to my place one night, got up from where he'd been sitting, walked over to where the DeVore gibbons stood, got down on his knees before them, gave a sideways glance, and commented:

"You've got these things perfectly placed, all lined up along the floorboards at precise angles. Did you use a protractor?"

COMMENTS
Clay White's picture

Of course. Doesn't everyone? What else are floorboards for?

Al Marcy's picture

We imagine we can see acoustic space. Some dancers are deaf, but, push their shopping carts in intersting patterns before falling over dead from some child's baseball bat caresses. I dream of a remote control to move my speakers in three space while I listen and judge, eyes closed. In lesser reality, I put new speakers on top of the old and just let them parse random reactions.

Jim Teacher's picture

This Alan guy seems like a real dick.

Buddha's picture

Poor Alan, seems OK to me. He just noticed something that is probably outside his realm of consideration or usual experience. My initial impression was more along the lines of Oscar noticing something Felix had done.
Plus, to his credit, he did say that they were perfectly placed.

Stephen Mejias's picture

>My initial impression was more along the lines of Oscar noticing something Felix had done.Yeah, that was pretty much exactly it. I laughed at myself and admired Alan's intuition - I had actually been seriously wishing for a protractor when I was setting the speakers up. It was ridiculous - going back and forth from the speakers to a spot behind my listening position, cocking my head to the left and to the right, interrogating the angles, measuring the distance from the speakers to the tv stand (I know) between them, and on and on. It's an absurd and futile struggle. I think it left my head permanently crooked.

Buddha's picture

Crap.

Just as I master the carret," I screw up how to use the ""enter"" button.

Pardon the redundancy.

Jeff Wong's picture

Buddha - I think Wes inadvertently misled you. A caret ^ is actually the symbol you first tried the other day. The ones used for HTML are the less than < or greater than > symbols (or angle brackets.)

Jonathan Scull's picture

Let me eat my words. Although they're not very tasty. My funny bone is usually attached in the morning, but I didn't check today before posting. My comment was a remembrance of the time I spent tweaking our speakers to the millimeter with said laser. Of course, that's exactly the attitude that'll turn off anyone bopping around with an iPod wondering what good sound is all about. So... you need lasers to set it up right? Bzzzzt. My apologies to Alan and I hope he enjoyed your system.

Stephen Mejias's picture

No worries, J-10. A laser would have definitely come in handy. My eyes certainly weren't helping. And, yes, I'm sure Alan could benefit from a little aligning also.

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