By KEI DAVIS Los Alamos
Spring is here and another season of Gordon’s concerts will (hopefully) soon be upon us (tonight). These events attract a true cross section of the county population, from madly dashing children to the wheelchair bound, from education levels high and low, and apparently quite diverse ethnic groups (interesting in itself as cultural preferences in music are highly diverse).
In this resident’s opinion the performances are of highly variable quality, but there have been a few superb artists over the years and latterly their performances have been essentially ruined.
Why? I don’t claim to have the ear of an audiophile or professional musician, but I don’t have a tin ear, either. The sound system, or the speakers at least, are beneath execrable. Music in, garbage out. My distinctly low-end home stereo system sounds incomparably better, as does the garage-sale portable stereo system now in my garage, imagine that.
It appears that the speaker system at least has been significantly downgraded over the years (it was never great). Has anyone else noticed this? Does anyone care?
As I understand it, Gordon’s concert series is subsidized by local businesses – no doubt the budget is extremely tight. How about a relatively minuscule donation from our taxes, i.e., via the county budget? The county spends our taxes tens of millions of dollars at a time on facilities of extremely dubious necessity, `objects of art,’ traffic and snowplow inhibiting street popouts, and who knows what else. How about a few grand for a sound/speaker system for the concert series?
Surely it would fit in one of the spending conduits (the art category?), or they could just make one up. It could even remain county property. I for one would be willing for one one-hundredth of one percent (seems about right) of my county tax dollars to go to this cause.
I realize the LA Daily Post is not a polling site, but it does seem to get peoples’ attention and attract debate.
