July 13, 2003

State of Love and Trust

It's been a while since the last entry. Just haven't been motivated to post much, either here or at the LAB. In fact, I haven't been to the LAB in several weeks.

It's been a while since the last entry. Just haven't been motivated to post much, either here or at the LAB. In fact, I haven't been to the LAB in several weeks. Better put my radio on, just heard the cue for them to roll the intro.


I'm writing this from under a stage in Mexico City, on top of a 100 amp distro. For most of the tour, I was pretty much feeder and snake boy, as well as directing the stage labor, dealing with micing the support act. It's quite a wakeup call considering during the later years of touring I was pretty much mixing only. I have a refound respect for the audio techs of the business. I forgot how much you guys (and gals) bust your asses to make the show happen. This week I'm "power boy", insuring our hastily installed store bought UPS/ surge protectors keep the shit we brought with us up and running. Still running... ;-) Why isn't the act with the fourth most attended shows this year using someone like Showpower? LOL...

Intro just rolled, fuck are these fans intense. My guess is that they'll make a DVD from this run of shows. The crowds for this gig have been intense all along, it's the nature of the beast for these folks.

I had mixed feelings about returning to touring. It was like watching an advisary drive over a cliff, but in your brand new sports car. Some things have changed, but basically touring is still touring. You take your shit out of the truck, set it up, do the big rock show, then put it back in the truck. It's pretty easy, but somewhere along the way every now and then some asshole manages to throw a wrench in the works. Fortunately for me, the assholes weren't usually part of our party, only some local not seeming to get what the grand plan was. I suppose I'll continue touring (it's not like I know how to do much else ;-) ) given the right circumstances. When I stopped touring, several people asked if I missed it. Back then, touring wasn't a job for me, but rather a way of life. I really haven't made any calls for work just yet, I'm afraid someone will give me a gig and I'll have to go back to work right away. ;-)

Well that could have sucked less. At the end of the previous paragraph, I was called on for my power boy duty. Seems as one of the stage right Elvises (Elvi?) started having an issue with his radio rig and low voltage. It likes to reboot when the voltage drops too low and the UPSes are getting hammered with spikes of up to 130 vac. When that happens, the UPS goes into protect mode and drops the output voltage to about 110 vac and by the time the load is on and the juice actually gets over there, it can be as low as 105 vac. The genset has a good paint job, though is somewhat lacking in state of the art electrical power distribution hardware. It's meant for jackhammers and such, not rock shows. While the distro was hot, under load, the sparkies bonded neutral to ground at the stage end, in addition to the neutral at the genset being connected directly to the ground rod, as well as the truck frame. Looks like some scary shit. I'll see if I can get some pix.

Back to my moaning rant (yes kids, this was written in real time at a gig). First encore time, must have taken us about an hour to sort the power thing. That means we have another hour or so left before we can power down. The third and final show tommarrow will be broadcast live to several countries in South American via a nine camera shoot. Audio will also go to another few hundred radion stations down here. At least we don't have to deal with an audio truck for the shoot (remember, we carry our own recording "truck" with us at all dates). He'll give the same feed to the TV that they sell on the Internet. The cooking of a rack of fancy mic pres and some other equipment is what prompted the UPSes.

I was often asked during my brief "retirement" if I missed touring. Did I miss the long bus rides? No. Did I miss the "glamor" of showbiz? Fuck no. Well what the hell did I miss? The people. Being a dot com weenie boy wanttabe was fun (and lucrative), but it didn't have the human interaction (for me anyway) that touring does. Touring for long periods of time starts to get on you after a while. For me, it's not so much the long hours, or even some of the more difficult work. It's more about not being home. For the first 15 years or so of my career, I really didn't know any better. I loved all the traveling and since most of my relationships were long distance, it didn't matter too much. During the last five years of what I like to call "the first round", I began to grow to hate touring, and shows in general. I stopped listening to music recreationally and started to develop a pretty dark attitiude about the whole thing.

What a whiny, moaning little piece of shit I was... Here I was, working about 30 hours a week or so, if that, traveling the world on someone else's dime, being fed, coddled and compensated very well, and I was acting as if not having the right kind of coffee bean blend was the end of the world. I was told this at the time by a colleague when we were sitting on the beach in Nice and I was bitching about how bad touring was. Nothing like a little perspective to put it all in frame. When I realized how good I actually had it I regretted being such an asshole a good part of the time. (though there were times when being an asshole was required) I came to that realization about six weeks ago.

Now that I'm a bit older (than I look or act, so I'm told...) I see things a bit differently, which brings me to the point of this whole rant. If you are going to do this kind of thing for any length of time, you need to be in the right frame of mind. Lest any of you whippersnappers (or old farts for that matter) accuse me of pontificating I'll be the first to admit that's exactly what I'm doing. For the same reasons I started the LAB way back when, I feel compelled to share some of my observations. If nothing else, it's good, cheap therapy for me. ;-) My advice, which is worth about what you are paying for it, is to keep it all in perspective and have a life outside of touring. Try to take as much time off between tours as possible.

Think about what you're going to do after you are finished touring. Because there will be a life after touring. At least you better hope there is.

Show's about to end....

'til next time...

Dave

Posted by Dave at 01:07 PM