Rich,the italian singer was perfectly right.Being the wife of a sound engineer,and the best friend of another veeery good one(my father indeed)she knew what she was talking about.And as I know the category quite well,I tell you there are some nasty soundguys who won't even bother listening to you and 'Cute Face' was one of them.I have two spoiled years and I'm basically unable to enjoy concerts where my father is not doing the sound.it's on the basis of the respect I have for his work that we got that argument.The problem is that Maddy Prior uses keyboards(an instrument I openly loathe)in her set.They require a clean sound that together with the usual little reverb you always use to make up voices in folk music was making the all thing sound a little bit too perfect,too cd-like.
I like the story about the small kid complaining.
The majority of sound guys wear earplugs(God bless them,i'll be nuts by now without them),that's probably what happened at those two concerts.I don't think it was a matter of the soundie being deaf(he wouldn't have been working there otherwise)or also,if you live the volume to people on the stage you'll have it as loud as possible.Firstly because they can't hear what the audience is getting,second because well,they want to be heard.
Once my dad was hassled by a music critic complaining about some obliteration of some level or frequency,and replied:"The difference between a roll of toilet paper and a sound designer is that the toilet paper gets shit from just one person at a time"