RE: HOW TO MIX A LIVE CONCERT / original music
Mixing live shows must indeed be a difficult task. Last years I've been following several bands (such like HVOB) playing at festival stages, mostly at electronic dance festivals. What I noticed, the mixers at these festivals don't know how to set things up, since most of the time the vocals were pushed away, in favour of the bass (bass is pushed a lot at electronic dance music). In a club my best friend almost got into a fight with the mixer guy when she was telling him part of the band (again vocals, and the violin) were in te background and we couldn't hear them properly while at a good spot in front of the band/speakers. Again an electronic band with some acoustic elements to it. This guy belonged to the band, even, but for some reason he was not able to bring the sound of the band into the room in the way it was 'suppose' to. Mixing is not easy, for sure!
I'm not really into electronic music that much and I didn't attend many electronic music shows as it is, but I agree that the mixers mostly don't know how to do their job. I mean, before we had our own guy doing the sound it was a lottery and you never knew who you might end up with and it was mostly bad.
You would think there can be so many good mixers in the world, so many people love music, or do they love the entertainment life more than their work maybe? :)
I think most of them just got tired doing their job so they do it bad and get paid anyway :D