We do live and work differently. A big influence on my "period correct" theory is that I mix a lot of tribute bands, who really want to sound as close to the old releases as possible. That said, for the bands playing covers of many artists, they DON'T want to just slavishly recreate the same old same old, especially for the standards that so many other cover acts play, they want to refresh the sound and I do use a contemporary approach to a lot of it. Eg Whitney Houston, some of those songs have been absolutely flogged to death and the last thing we need is yet another corny old reverb on the same old snare sound. The kids on the dance floor mostly weren't even born when those songs came out (and honestly I have to wonder why it's even in the setlist). Then there are others that are such classics we don't want to spoil them. Yet others are modern enough that they still fit right in with the new releases.

I don't just do the retro and period correct thing, even with old songs. The bands might have to make a judgement about whether they want to update the songs, inc. the arrangements, even the lyrics ("ooh I wanna dance with some bastard... I wanna feel the heat with some putz. Ooh I wanna dance with some bastard, with some bugger what luvs me..." Oh the passion!)

I do like to do it with new equipment, mostly, but I also pride myself in not being restricted. I think the best way to operate a large analogue desk is different (obviously) to operating a modern digital desk. The equipment has to have had some influence on the music itself - pre-digital analogue consoles could have mute and flying fader automation linked to timecode. That was potentially powerful in itself, and for its time, but it meant certain limitations, and that influenced the arrangements. You could store fades and so on, but mostly it was a matter of switching between scenes - nowadays you can automate any parameter, PEQ centre freq, send levels, reverb parameters, just to pick a few at random.

I have absolutely no objection to using modern features in a digital console to mix new versions of established songs. Doing it like the old days is a special application, but sometimes that's exactly what the show requires, and I happen to pride myself in it. Obviously some techniques are more practical than others but I also like being the only one who can pull it off - one group wanted a single mic on a mic stand out in the audience, and the 4 of them stood around it singing harmonies. The usual thing would be to just give all four of them a mic each, but this is what they wanted. They originally worked with a touring engineer who suggested it and got it working for them, and they included it in their shows. Then they went to Australia (from NZ) and that engineer couldn't travel with them, and they had a lot of trouble trying to use this technique because most local engineers either didn't want to try it, or simply couldn't do it well enough (or one because of the other). When they got to Perth and I was the local engineer, at least we had time to sound check and rehearse it and got it set up with enough GBF, and they were able to include it in the show again. The audience loved it. But if the room had too many problems or for other reasons, in another application I might decide we'll just do it conventionally with a bunch of 58's.

The Sons Of The Pioneers formed in the early 30's and you can see films of the whole group in front of a single RCA ribbon mic. That group is still going (new members of course) but now they sing into modern equipment with more modern techniques. They might use the single mic technique for a broadcast, but not on stage over a PA. You adjust the production to suit the application, naturally.

Again, I know you know all this inside out, I just want to post some examples.
Because the venue where I work every week still has an analogue console I use a mixing style that suits the equipment. No automation, just hands-on manual control. And I actually enjoy it, it can be like playing an instrument, but it also imposes certain limitations. One song calls for a telephone-like sound on the vocals so I would like to be able to simply switch scenes or switch EQ/FX in and out (I haven't set up a MIDI footswitch to the old outboard FX unit and I don't think I'll bother, I never actually did this before in my life anyway). Instead I just grab the mid EQ gain knob and haul it left and right for different lines of the song. Primitive, but it works. And it's NOT period-correct becuase that's a modern song and would use automation; I haven't got that at that venue. But I still want a period-appropriate sound.

However we get there with whatever techniques is all part of what makes one engineer different from another. Some bands think I'm great and always ask for me, some don't agree with my whole technical approach and use someone else, and I don't have a problem with that. I also don't want to see the whole industry descend into uniform, no-variety operation, with no innovation and no fresh ideas. Good live engineers have to be like musicians in many ways, they have to interpret the music, the application, the technical resources/equipment and make a judgement as to how to get a *musical* result out of it. It's not just "let's get the maximum DR and lowest S/N ratio at all costs", this is music, not just technical optimisation