June 29, 2006
Il Giga
Verona, IT
Posted by Dave at 03:54 AM
June 28, 2006
Le Gig
Posted by Dave at 05:54 AM
The Brutal Truth
Posted by Dave at 02:29 AM
Le Hotel
11th century town
Posted by Dave at 01:15 AM
June 26, 2006
Gear Notes Sofia, Bulgaria
Gear Notes Sofia
Venue: Bulgarian State Theater, cap 3800 (sold to about 90%) designed and built in the late 60s during the communist era.
FOH
console: PM3500
speakers: THC line array box, 8 x LA215A hung per side with 6 x SW215 per side and a few PS212 per side. It's a real "sound by the pound" rig, capable of extreme spl at the expensive of fidelity. More appropriate for hard rock than jazz. Amps were Camco V6s and Crown MA5ks with BSS Omni compact controllers.
MON
console: PM3500M w/ dbx 2231 eq
wedges: THC M115, 15" and 1", passive. Amps were Crown MA3600s. The boxes got loud, though had a tremendous amount of distortion in the low end driver and non controlable pattern control, particularly around the 800 Hz to 1.6k Hz region. While able to generate great amounts of spl, the box lacked fidelity and took excessive amounts of equalization to achieve results that were minimally suitable for this act.
The crew, though knowledgable and hard working spoke little english. Pretty typical for this part of the world. We arrived with less than three hours until show and were able to get a basic config up and going in a couple of hours, with enough time for the band to get a chance to slam out a tune or two on the rented backline that only a few pieces were per spec. Considering how late we were and how fatigued we were all in all it went well. The promoters are likely to be planning many more eastern European dates.
Posted by Dave at 11:28 PM
4 Hours Late
Flight delay into Bulgaria
Posted by Dave at 06:12 AM
June 25, 2006
Gear Notes: Baku, Azerbijian and Wroclaw, Poland
I've had a couple of requests for basic gear lists on the one off dates, so I'm going to try this for a while. It will at least give some insight to those that aren't familiar with the variables in one off fly dates.
Gear Notes Baku
Baku, Azerbijian
Venue: 2000 seat theater. Built in the 60s during the Soviet occupation. The Soviets occupied the country from about 1920 until 1991.
FOH
console: Midas Legend (small frame, reduced input show)
speakers: Meyer M2D 2x subs and 5 x tops hung per side with 2x CQs for fronts and Dynacord Cobra subs. Subs powered with EV P33000 amps using and XTA 226 controller as sub crossover and line driver/DA for the powered boxes.
MON
console: DM 2000 V2 (not properly configured for the gig)
wedges: EV crappy plastic 15" x 2" passive
sides: EV QRx 212/75
power: EV P1200/P2200 (mismatched)
Baku crew largely unprepared, weren't use to doing gigs at this level but were nice and willing to learn. Time given I'll post more details later. The entire stay was a cluster, though nice people that tried hard.
Gear Notes Wroclaw
Venue: Market Square, free show in the centrum across from the old church. Approx 10,000 capacity.
FOH
console: PM 4000
speakers: V-DOSC, 8 x tops hung per side, with six subs per side, Camco amps, XTA 226 controllers and Meyer UPA-1P front fills.
MON
console: Soundcraft SM20 w/ DN360 eq
wedges: Turbosound TFM 212 with Meyer CQ2 sides.
amps: Crest 7001
Aviom digital snaking system that was more of a pain in the ass than an asset for us. the tactical Cat 5 running to FOH was cool, but there are some implementation issues with regard to gain structure.
Good crew, world class as well as the promoter. The mon rig was a bit old and hammered but the foh rig was pretty tight. The crew could hold their own against most any crew in the world. Very quality work day.
In a few hours we'll board a couple of turbo props for a flight to Bulgaria for a late load in and a throw and go. Hope they have what we need.
Posted by Dave at 05:15 PM | Comments (2)
Polska
From the stage
Posted by Dave at 04:17 AM
June 23, 2006
10,000 Mile Week
We're getting ready to put the first week to bed. In the last seven days we've logged just over 10,000 air miles and only a few hundred bus miles. We had a Prevost take us from Toledo to Chicago for the overseas flights so we wouldn't have to schlep the gear on an RJ and do a terminal change at ORD. This morning's 01:30 airport departure for a 04:20 flight from Baku still has everyone foggy. Over at Dave Rat's RHCP Euro blog he explains a bit about the schedule and workflow of doing an arena tour or at least a tour with coaches and production. The Monsters of Jazz do things a bit differently in that most of the these type acts aren't in a position to carry production on many if not most of the legs. We do fly in dates with either rental backline or we are on a coach with a Sprinter full of our normal rented European backline. For single show headliner dates we've been know to carry mons and control but doing mostly festivals and several one off fly dates the numbers just don't make sense to carry any more than our bare necessities and get the rest locally. Some of the logistics of the fly in dates can be a bit demanding. For example, this week I started last Saturday on a 0630 out of LAS and ended up in Toledo later that afternoon. We hung and gigged the next day then departed for ORD in the bus to catch our flights Baku via Frankfurt with a six hour layover. (Lufthansa was very accomodating) We arrived thenight before the first show, did the first show a bit jet lagged, the second the next day then basicaly departed right after the gig to fly to Poland for a couple of well deserved days off making it about 26 hours flying time on five legs in five days.
There was a bit of a scare on arrival in Wroclaw this morning. Seventeen of our 34 pieces weren't on the belt, most of backline we carry and about half the personal luggage. Luftansa went ahead and sent those pieces ahead, but the baggage department in Poland didn't realize it for several minutes until we started filing the claim paper work. It had all been there the whole time. Band will have to find somthing else to be mad about I suppose. We started the morning on an A330-300 to Frankfurt, then on a brand new A321 to Munchen and finally a Dash 8 to Wroclaw (which is Breslau for all you white guys following along). We joked that the next leg would either be a Cessna or a hang glider keeping the tradition of the planes getting smaller on each leg. Lufthansa has been spectacular, we've been using them for several years over here. We deal with the airline directly and are provided services such as gate to gate transfers and expedited security and boarding access, or as it's know in the biz, "being Elvised". Not to be confused with being John Malkovich, though it's easy to confuse Malkovich and Elvis because they are so much alike. The amenities and service that is provided make these grueling runs much more managable and as fun as then can be under the circumstances.
Posted by Dave at 03:30 PM
Old Baku
Rug Shopping
Posted by Dave at 01:42 AM
First Show
If this is Weds.it must be Baku
Posted by Dave at 01:36 AM
June 18, 2006
No Relation
Posted by Dave at 05:30 PM | Comments (1)
June 17, 2006
Dinner
Posted by Dave at 06:07 PM
Wholly Toledo
Posted by Dave at 03:14 PM
June 16, 2006
More Pics From Different Roadies
It's good to see others getting into the moblog/blog/pic posting meme. Dave Rat is in Europe right now doing a gig that makes me look almost Jr Varsity with a great moblog at http://ratsound.com/cblog/ Excellent stuff, particularly the way he deploys his rig. Ratty is known for some pretty unconventional deployments (one of my favs years ago was tweeters on an aux) and doesn't disappoint on this outing. I particularly like the sub deployment. These days it's all about steering the subs for the best coverage.
Varisty corporate guy Mac Kerr is in town with a pretty nice rig. He's got pix up at the Roaddog forum in the Lobby Bar section but the URL is a bitch http://forum.roaddog.com/index.php/t/28/S=e6039bd9fb9d44906bdcac6a3b742bc0 Hopefully that will work. It would be good to see Mac do a regular blog that highlights the differences between doing bign time corporate and music gig. Two very different animals that use a lot of the same gear. Mac is so Varsity he even has two Instant Replays.
Perhaps qualifying as the oldest roadie working for the youngest bands everyone's fav Triple J, Jon Martin is over in Europe doing the big time rock fest scene. Some of those gigs are mega, the Europeans do the festival thing a bit differently than we do here. We've got Bonneroo and Vegoose and they've got perhaps a couple dozen big fests that don't tour. Over here we tour the fests, Ozfest, Lolapolooza (rip) aznd Warped among others but over there they still do the big fest thing over there. We do some of that here regionally, but it doesn't seem to have the cachet that it does over there. Perhaps Super Roadie was right when he said I was a Europhile roadie. Triple J checks in at the LAB, http://srforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/14996/5/
Mikey P has a few up from what he's been doing lately at http://blog.mikeyp.net/ and Chris Hinds has some pics from what looks like his graduation gala, http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/cjehinds. After graduation I understand we're going to lose Chris as a full time audio guy as he takes a big time gig with a world class company. Anyone with that much formal education probably has too much sense (or student loan debt) to persue a career as a sound guy anyway. Good luck Chris, keep in touch.
The car will be here in a few hours to wisk me off. It's a service I haven't used before that's really a clearing house for independents, hence if you call to confirm it doesn't exactly leave a good impression. If worse comes to worse I can schelp to the bus stop or the hard rocking hotel next door and catch a cab for my 'Muricun flight to beautiful downtown Toledo where my M7CL turned into an MH3 then turned into an LMx. It's got the makings of Jr Varsity and agony but at least I have a 21 hour travel day to Azerbijian (happens to be next door to Iran) to start the Euro jaunt the next day. Should be a gas. This may well indeed be the last extended touring visit for this old dog, but I don't want to jinx anything. I spent part of the last day in town making sure my paperwork and resume were up to date so HR could start the background checks and processing and getting some locks chopped for the manditory casino style drug test. Back in the olden days when we took drug tests we could have told you what each one was like. These days it says we're so old we haven't done drugs in years. The opportunity is pretty exciting but I probably shouldn't say to much more about it as it won't start until late summer or fall once I'm back in town.
Posted by Dave at 11:25 PM | Comments (1)
June 06, 2006
Hairspray exhausts the propellent
It's a dry heat, only 109 today. On the way back from Memphis earlier this afternoon when I boarded the plane at DFW the flying waitress, errr, I mean flight attendant said it was only 94 in my fair city. Of course I knew by the time we got there it would be almost 110.
I just got word from the "Two Way Hard Three" RSS feed that Hairspray will close next week. YIKES! The guys on TheStripPodcast.com broke the story earlier tonight. (BTW, one of the best Vegas podcasts out there, if not the best). It's confirmed, they close the 11th. That and Avenue Q closing kind of tanks my theory on musicals in LV. What the hell do I know anyway. Bummer for all those that are losing their gigs. Especially those that moved here from NY. It's not like I haven't been on any tours that cancelled after a few weeks or so. But still, and it was a good show.
The Beatles Cirque show, "Love" opened for previews a few days ago (gotta see it next week before we leave overseas next week) to rave reviews. It will probably go for the next decade or so. Reports from Cirque principals are that the next Vegas Cirque show will have an Elvis theme. It's Vegas, that's what we do. Now if it were a Meatloaf themed show, I might be able to get the lead. Apparently I resemble Mr. Loaf.
We got Phantom opening next month, The Producer's in the fall and Spamalot next year so it will be interesting to see how that shakes out. I'dathunk Hairspray would do well, but let's see how it goes with these others. Could it be that Vegas and it's tourist centric demographic more represent what mainstream American want to see? Let's face it, the Broadway audiences are pretty elitest and do half of the shows per week, in rooms that are at least half of the capacity. Broadway ain't Vegas and Vegas ain't Broadway and I've got the testicular circumference to sack up and admit I was talking out my ass when I pontificated not that long ago that Vegas would save musical theater. Vegas is going to do what it needs to do and it's the fastest growing economy in the country, and one of the fastest in the world. When something like Headlights and Tailpipes outdraws Hairspray, that basically signal either we are just about to armageddon or that people here would rather see tits than hear showtunes. (actualy I enjoy both)
For assholes like me that haven't been able to break into the theatrical or production show scene (not for the lack of trying) it doesn't mean much. When guys like me aren't on the road, we're doing big time industrials and that market is far from being tapped. Yeah, it's not as cool as mixing Tracy Turnblad in the finale but it's a constant stream of talking heads that aren't going to dry up anytime soon. And that's a bummer because I'd rather be mixing the guy with the messed up face and crashing chandelier than Fortune 50 CEOs and what little remains of my touring rock/pop career.
Always greener on the other side, ain't it? Well, in a week and half we'll be way into where no western band really goes that often.
Posted by Dave at 01:04 AM | Comments (4)
June 03, 2006
Beale all you can be
Posted by Dave at 09:53 PM