i recently shot a vid of my friends band, a basic jvc dv camera and the sound was overpowered by the bass. I guess I was too close. Is there a way to reduce that without compromising the rest of the audio
Try exporting the audio, or "Opening Audio" in Sound Forge. There are some audio restroration tools that come with Sound Forge that may help you. If that doesn't work, Izotope makes an audio restoration plug-in pack that does amazing things.