Mariah Carey's many Moments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka_b9sB1GmA

I love film.

Ugh goddamnit

Some people wait a lifetime for a pollthread like this.

Fragrant Moments would be a great name for my noise project I think.

so good this poll idea

we go through a Moment and, you know, we come out on the other side

i like "and it's a deep level, and it's a Moment"

idk how to pick just one

i wonder what it's like when Mariah throws a party

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

xp surm it is a very festive moment I'm sure.

I didn't know where to put this so I picked here:

http://www.vibe.com/article/mariah-carey-struggles-vocally-elusive-chanteuse-tour?utm_source=sc-fb&utm_medium=ref&utm_campaign=MCarey

Reading this made me really sad. I had no idea shit got this dark.

http://themuse.jezebel.com/where-there-arent-rainbows-examining-mariah-careys-gli-1786645183

Lol

hilarious to watch, thinking the whole time "You're a singer, your mic is clearly working, all you have to do is sing instead of asking about monitors". then again maybe it's in the contract and by some sick twist of fate this singer would be breaking that contract if she sang for real.

I dont know why they didnt stop the tape

Pretty clear she either couldn't hear the backing track or herself, which is why she's asking about the monitors. No way any singer would be able to perform under those conditions. This was a technical fuckup through and through, including not cutting to commercial

All of our institutions are coming apart

she most likely didn't have any wedges, if her in-ears were broken then she had no way of hearing the backing track. didn't she get pilloried 3 years ago for singing wildly out of tune on live TV? live & learn

why stop the tape? this is the #1 any network hopes for, eminently viral

lmao the nonsense about this ^^^^

flappy birdleton

those dancers did a hell of a job staying in time if nobody could hear the tracks on stage

You're implying she chose to sabotage herself on live TV because she wanted something she didn't actually need?

love this Moment

i don't think you have much choice when it's live and you're on stage and you just find out things are fucked up. it's kind of a split second decision. but let's not pretend her mic wasn't working or that she couldn't hear the track, she throws in some "woahs" on time w the beat as she's walking around the stage. i don't know what other explanation there is beside she sabotaged herself. she's the singer. she can sing. she chose not to.

maybe somebody was standing off to the side operating a device that turned her voice on/off but i don't think that's likely.

it's easy to throw a 'whoa' in now and then that might be on time. your Occam's Razor conclusion is a bit bizarre.

xps how is it nonsense? no such thing as bad publicity

Every pop singer at Mariah's level has a set-up where there is a pre-recorded lead vocal track on a fader. I can say for sure that Beyoncé and Coldplay have dedicated technicians with an intimate knowledge of the singer's voice who are specifically in charge of crossfading between live and pre-recorded vocals. You could tell that Mariah's whistle-range parts on "Emotions" were just hard-wired. When it became clear that whatever issue was going on with the vocal monitors was not gonna fix itself, whatever tech was in charge of the vocal backing track decided to just switch it on entirely for "We Belong Together". But imo Mariah felt ridiculous doing an entirely lip-sync'd version of the song, so she bailed.

I've been in super-stressful scenarios where I've actually had terrible monitors and incompetent techs working them and have had to cut a set short once because the situation was making it actually impossible to perform. It's not like "she can sing. she chose not to." Having faulty monitors is like trying to drive a race where your car won't start. When I had to bail, I apologized to the audience, explained the situation, thanked them for coming, left the stage, and was called a "whiny bitch" and a "diva" on Twitter as a result. Non-musicians literally have no idea what it is like to be put in this position, it is a total nightmare, and it's not an uncommon scenario (especially if Mariah was using wireless in-ears, which rely upon having a clear radio channel to transmit the audio, and it's easy to have them fuck up especially in a dense location as Times Square). But, as my friend said on January 1, "Mariah's greatest trait is her ability to bounce back from this stuff better than any other A-list entertainer"

The network didn't cut broadcast, and the tech didn't stop the playback, likely because the techs were all trying to fix the problem, and failed. There wasn't some Dr. Claw like personality in the top of a building rubbing his hands together at the virility of this performance.

otm

fgti otm obviously.

ilxors have gotten so dumb

Not ILXors, literally everyone everywhere looked at this as something more complicated and/or embarrassing than it was, but it's not a new thing. People don't understand that for most artists: no monitors = no show. Barring coolbands with the "we don't need no freakin monitors" pose (a good pose)

I've been a part of the "should I switch to in-ear monitors?" conversation with many different bands, and my attitude is "if you're big enough to switch to in-ear monitors, you won the game, break up the band and start again", just because in-ears are necessary for most larger venues, but require a lot of jiggering around and care and fresh batteries and set-up and are more prone to having problems. And it's super unmusical! in my opinion, to have everything fed through your ear, it's weird and dissociating to hear everything dry and no audience or room.

yes ty fgti

Guys I think Adam might be HOF material after this

lotsa conspiracy theories ITT, tho to be fair, Carey's camp was also spreading one of em!

hall of dorks

might be getting a bit overcrowded

hall of dweebs just opened up a block over

o sweet is there a cover charge?

Mariah's manager (Stella Bulochnikov)'s claim of "sabotage" seems to refer to the fact that they refused to halt broadcast when Mariah claimed her in-ears weren't working. And then later refers to the producer's choice to re-air the crap performance on the West Coast.

This telling paragraph was in the New York Times report: A veteran audio producer, Robert Goldstein of Maryland Sound International, a company that has worked on the Times Square event for years, also said in an email that there had been no malfunctions with the sound equipment he oversaw. “Every monitor and in-ear device worked perfectly,” Mr. Goldstein said. “ I can’t comment beyond that and don’t know what her nontechnical issue may have been.”

A "veteran audio producer"? who has worked on the Times Square event for years? Uh huh. Like Mariah hasn't been singing We Belong Together for ten years and Emotions for twenty-five. I'm not even a particular Mariah fanboy here I just hate seeing people ridicule artists when there are technical difficulties

http://www.marylandsound.com/maryland-sound-owner-bob-goldstein-to-receive-parnelli-audio-innovator-honor/

LAS VEGAS — The governing body of the Parnelli Awards announces that Maryland Sound International’s founder and pro audio pioneer Bob Goldstein will be the 2014 recipient of the Parnelli Audio Innovator Award. Goldstein founded Maryland Sound International (MSI) in 1966, and throughout his career he’s been called on to take on the seemingly impossible.

In the early 1970s he provided the sound for a large Madison Square Garden event, and it was there he started building a remarkable reputation for doing big things really well. When asked to provide sound for the Monticello Race Track so bands could play between races in a situation that allowed for zero setup time, he was one of the first to turn a flatbed truck into a mobile stage.

He built “super boards” for arena acts, including a 42 channel one for Andy Gibb in just 30 days. In 1998, when other sound companies said it couldn’t be done, he provided audio for Times Square’s New Years Eve event where he was one of the first to used fiber optics (and he still has that NYE’s gig today). In 2009, he negotiated tight security and extremely challenging conditions to provide sound for the two million who showed up to the inauguration of president Barack Obama, the largest of its kind.

“Bob has been a longtime JBL supporter and was an early VerTec adopter who invested in VT4889 system, and then the VerTec, and now the VTX system on his many high-profile tours, festivals, and unique events such as presidential inaugurations and Million Man March,” says JBL’s Paul Bauman. “JBL considers MSI a valued development partner and enjoys a collaborative relationship that helps us improve our products. Bob has a passion for uncompromised sound quality and is always searching for ‘the next best thing,’ and in many cases, if it didn’t exist, he would develop it!”

Goldstein is a Baltimore boy, whose office today is just a mile from the first house he lived in. His grandmother bought him a Fender bass and a Silvertone amp in the early 1960s, and he was quickly playing with local bands. He was at the local Hi-Fi store so much he got a job there, and by 16, he was sales manager. There he started working on P.A. speakers and amps. Soon his talent as a sound engineer became well known and he went out the road with Frankie Valli, which was the start of relationship that continues to this day. He worked for the Clair Bros. for a short time before focusing on his own company. Through the years, he grew MSI nationally and internationally, and today in addition to supporting touring acts, they do installation, TV/Broadcasting, and even some highly specialized sensitive government work.

“Bob is one of the five or six guys who started this industry before it was an industry,” says FRONT of HOUSEpublisher and Parnelli Executive Producer Terry Lowe. “He’s always been on the forefront of providing audio for big events, and his innovative way of approaching an event has influenced many other engineers and companies.”

http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/in_profile_maryland_sounds_bob_goldstein_doing_really_big_really_well/

xpost yeah, I haven't watched it merely because I don't want to get "sucked in" to yet another internet drive-by debate, but mechanical malfunction makes more sense than "artist who has performed live on tv many a time decided to flip out over nothing". one friend of mine who was defending Mariah, I looked at the # of replies he had - 200! people get outraged over the weirdest shit, internet news at 11.

appreciate yr posts itt cos I figured ear monitor issues could be enough to make things impossible. I'm a singer myself and I've not used in-ear monitors before, but I did a two and a half month run (ugh) of mediocre-Wildhorn-crappery Jekyll and Hyde and the monitor setup this fledgling theatre used was so ass-backwards that the sound was a million miles away from the stage. every night I'd enter, then have to count internally because my sound of my voice in my ear covered up the track, and then I'd see how close to on the beat I was after I finished. a wee bit easier when it's a pre-recorded track that will be the same every time than a live band subject to arbitrary shifts in tempo.

Time to bring back conductors imo

robo-conductors

who also act as security

mecha-Boulez

@ Evan, I posted it above, here it is again:

A veteran audio producer, Robert Goldstein of Maryland Sound International, a company that has worked on the Times Square event for years, also said in an email that there had been no malfunctions with the sound equipment he oversaw. “Every monitor and in-ear device worked perfectly,” Mr. Goldstein said. “ I can’t comment beyond that and don’t know what her nontechnical issue may have been.”

imho Robert Goldstein is full-of-shit for concluding that "they tested fine before performance" negates the possibility that they weren't working in the minutes before Mariah went out on stage. In-ear monitors fail more than any other piece of audio equipment, for him to snidely conclude that the issue was nontechnical makes him a dickhole and I hope I get a chance to tell him so to his face

OH crap sorry scrolled right over it earlier.

Sounds like the guy was trying to protect his job like a dickhole, that's for sure.

Yeah I posted those links sans perspective because I had to run - people with unfamiliar careers are always fascinating to me, especially long histories like that - but I suspect he was probably nowhere near the gear and totally made the quote to cover his company's butt.

fgti otm re "an old white man says..."

the framing of this as a gender issue seems a bit gratuitous but fgti and DJP def otm. at the same time DJP also otm that this was still objectively funny

If the audio technician insists that "[e]very monitor and in-ear device worked perfectly," he really is claiming that the only other explanation is that Mariah Carey's actual ear stopped working

you can't just sing in that scenario. You won't be able to hear where you are over the sound of your own voice

i'm trying to picture this. are you saying in her ear she didn't get a mix of the song at all? or it's just her voice? i have to admit i don't understand "that scenario". what is the scenario? it seems like there are multiple accounts of what happened, what is yours?

i've performed on stage w shitty monitors plenty of times, a singer singing along to both the live drummer behind us and the reverberated echo of backing we heard from the monitors pointed exclusively at the foot of the stage. it can be done. i've seen it happen, i've watched it happen with my own eyes.

Omg

How many times you performed in a noisy Times Square on NYE

I guess you missed Breaneau Mars in 2010

oh man that is the ultimate zing i don't even know how to come back from that

i suppose everyone on this board has played Times Square NYE way more times than me

Jfc it wasn't an appeal to authority, just pointing out you being able to hear side monitors at whatever show you were doing isn't a particularly good example when compared with Times Square when the crowd noise is deafeninh.

Hey Adam is this your set list

HERP
DERP

Irl lols

tbf adam bruneau has played the ed sullivan theater

lol tombot

my life would be empty without El Tomboto constantly looking down his nose at me

when yr echo chamber is another guys nostrils thats when its time to get the help

i mean you guys have pretty much convinced me anyways. i can see how if all you heard is an echo chamber of your own voice you couldn't perform. just like how i shit up this thread. sorry.

on the upside, you got a new nickname Bruneau Mars :D

You convinced me as well! As a professional performer, if you have the easy choice to either sing anyway despite losing the luxury of your monitors (no problem) OR flat out refuse in an attempt to risk catastrophically sabotaging your own career during a live TV spectacle in the middle of Times Square on NYE simply because you're miffed that your ultimately unnecessary monitors aren't working, you would totally go with the 2nd option.

In that situation, monitors are not a luxury. They are a necessity.

http://67.media.tumblr.com/4ba3e741e3a58d0de7cb6b75cbdf52fd/tumblr_ob350trIdP1udh5n8o1_400.gif

fuck in-ear monitors forever, they're garbage

OTOH Art Garfunkel still doesn't use monitors, doesn't like 'em, just listens to the house, I saw him do it at Carnegie so if Art can pull off "Ruby Tuesday" w/o monitors then Mariah needs to get her game together

not a singer here but while learning a completely new way of doing your job is sometimes useful, I'm not sure on stage on live television is the time to go for it

didn't see, bar had Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin on, both of whom look great for 72

I'd argue that the acoustics at Carnegie are slightly different from the acoustics of Times Square, although I haven't sung in Times Square to compare (and all of my singing was done with a conductor, who is among other things a human monitor)

lmao Whiney

@ Bruneau, my semi-educated guess is that she has molded earbuds that kill all sound but her mix. I've worn those and you can't hear anything, even a person talking right next to you. Her mix would contain both her vocals and her backing tracks, everything she needs to do her job. I would guess the earbuds would be, if the pack was malfunctioning, silent. This is why she was able to sing Auld Lang Syne no problem, she could hear her voice reverberating in her head, but nothing else. Put on a song, plug your ears tight enough that you can't hear it, and record yourself singing along, then listen back and see how well you do.

better yet record it and post it

xp please put said experiment on youtube as well

actually, we should all do that. mine's going to be really good because I can't really sing.

damn darragh beat me to it

that reverberation on yr screen is me posting everything two seconds before you

But we can all agree that Mariah should get some vocal tips from Art Garfunkel

tbf that's all Art has

"Hey Mariah, you might want to try singing without monitors. I do it all the time."

"Thanks for the tip, Art, but how do you hear yourself over the noise of a massive crowd?"

"That...that has not been an issue for me."

omg

This is why she was able to sing Auld Lang Syne no problem, she could hear her voice reverberating in her head, but nothing else

I bet she still pronounced it wrong though.

that is ice cold, Tarfumes

surprised it took so long for someone to make that joke tbh

I do have to say that I will forever thank this NYE incident for indirectly introducing me to that Speech Jammer video

Imagine the applause and boundless admiration if she had informed the audience of the problem, told the band to lay down their instruments, and sung her part entirely a capella.

lay down your instruments, band

press your mute button, backing track

hahaha

whole buncha people now posting a link of Adele facing a technical issue that is completely different than the one Mariah had and handling it "with grace" and saying SEE THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT.

it's like telling an actor to go onstage and do the choreography to the big musical number when the stage is pitch black and not even covered in blue light.

There's also this one of Stephanie Mills: https://www.facebook.com/217976445150/videos/10158142302395151/?pnref=story

I have a list of new candidates

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mariah-carey-reveals-hardest-thing-being-mariah-carey-1056972

many great moments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGjwkmx9K6k

all of the posts from New Year's 2016 still crack me up ITT, but fgti was the MVP of said discussion

xpost 1:59 of video best look. everybody hates on AIWFCIY but that song/video brings back warmer memories than most from that era.