big room, little crowd

Saturday, February 21, 2004, at 06:03AM

By Eric Richardson

Getting out to Ground Zero last night to see Saucy Monky reminded me how hard it is to run a successful music room in LA. Sure, GZ may get packed out a few times a year, but most of the time it's just as it was last night. There were probably around 20 people there most of the night, in a room that's sized to accept 60 sitting or who knows how many if it was standing-room. I get the feeling GZ doesn't know if they're a big room or not. The main seating (that people choose to use, at least) is a bunch of couches, but these couches are a good 25 - 30 feet from stage. So you end up with the few people you do have sitting far away from the stage, and nobody else up front. If I were in charge I'd take those couches 15 feet closer to the stage, turn down the mains and run the place like a coffee house instead of a rock club. But I'm not in charge...

Saucy was good, as usual. The sound guy was in love with reverb, possibly wanting to cancel out the effect of the dampening tiles in the ceiling and bring out the room's natural cement qualities. The band played some stuff that I don't think I'd heard before, which is always cool. Hopefully the next time we get them back to USC it'll be under much better circumstances. I really want to see them play one of the spring noon-time concerts that we have out in front of Tommy. I think they'd really be able to catch some walk-by traffic.