^^ Well, I'm especially interested in your take on this then, since this is your actual job, and the above is just my opinion - do you find that a lot of bands bring guys with them who don't do their jobs right? Because just anecdotally, I can tell you nine times out of ten, when I'm at a venue I know well, where the house guys are people that I believe (as an end user, at least) to be very good at their jobs, and I hear something going totally wrong, or the mix is off, I inevitably see some guy that I've never seen before, who is clearly with the band, fiddling madly with the controls, followed by him either bitching at/frantically pleading with the house guy to fix it. The house guy is usually there, but he always seems (as I assume is the rule) to have to defer to whoever the out-of-town person is with the band, until that person encounters something quirky or otherwise wrong with the system.
Again, just as an observer, it often seems to me that in these situations the traveling person believes that somehow they are more expert at their job (or at least, better at making this band and room sound good) than the person whose whole job it is to make the room perfect night after night. Then they screw up and the house guy has to fix it. Obviously there are traveling guys who do a totally incredible job, especially with bands with unusual setups, and there are house guys that are lazy and/or don't have the skill to make the mix perfect. But I guess my point is, being a taper, and standing there watching these guys work, I've developed a lot of respect for what house engineers, in particular, do, including managing the politics of the whole thing.
I guess I still don't really agree with you regarding this particular recording - the PA mix is certainly not great-sounding, but I don't think it's so horribly distorted that it doesn't show something about how these two mics responded in this particular situation. For one, I'm of the opinion that one is clearly superior to the other, and more pleasant to listen to, house mix aside.