A Barking Dog

August 17, 2008

Out of the Blue and Into the Black

This post has been a long time coming and I probably should have done it a year ago. Much like Barton was interrupted while staring at the keys of his Underwood at the Hotel Earle by Charlie Meadows, I've been doing much the same but in suburban digs in Las Vegas. Next month I'll celebrate my 3rd year year in the city of sin and circus shows. I suppose much in the same way that an inmate celebrates that final walk to the electric chair. It's not quite as grim as Ben and Sera make it out to be, though in my original apartment behind that hotel that rocks hard it certainly could have been. It's a cold, soul less place that extracts a toll on many that call it home. To me it's nothing more than a company town, a place for old roadies to go and become part of the corporate machine where mediocrity and low profile are rewarded over risk, skill and expertise.

I've had a great time doing A Barking Dog for the last five years or so, however infrequent it's been over the last year. This post for me marks the end of an era, the last post of A Barking Dog. The stories were true to life, at least how I remembered it to be afterward or how I saw it those times when the posts were in real time. Some of the people weren't exactly pleased in the way I protrayed them. Bummer, I called it like I saw it. Which is one of the reasons I decided to stop posting. I'd like to keep this gig until either I retire and move to some Del Webb gated community (I'm almost old enough..) or until Ambi and I figure out how to get those couple of acres of land either in Nor Cal or the PNW and start our organic produce farm, with of course, a race shop.

My current corporate overlords, while not as hard core and tight assed as the first place I worked on The Strip still wouldn't appreciate some of my observations. On a pretty frequent basis I have a "you gotta be fucking kidding me" moment, at which point I turn to one of my colleagues and say "you gotta be fucking kidding me". It's an interesting mix on The Strip of audio types. Not a lot of rock guys and not a lot of guys that have done big time stage mons. I think there might be a dozen of us with most of those at the big time music gigs or rooms in town. The production show crews while they have bands and monitors, don't have a lot of real monitor guys. There are a couple of guys that can do it pretty well but there are also many guys that think they are a lot better than they are. The bands for the most part know the difference. They need rock mons in a theatrical production show environment and a lot of the kids on the mon desk weren't born when some of us started doing mons or playing in bands. They need real monitor guys on real monitor consoles and that doesn't look to be changing anytime soon. It's no wonder why some of the younger, higher caliber guys spend a year or two on The Strip then hit back out on the road. I don't blame them but for an old roadie like me that wants to wind down and spend the back nine of the career working with cool, high tech stuff from the creative angle (these days I'm doing a fair amount of mixing both FOH and mons) back on the road isn't really a good option.

For a quarter century I based my life on getting the next gig and getting a bigger gig. I had some success and a couple of failures along the way. I had a good run. Just like A Barking Dog. It had a good run, though belabored over the last year or so. At one point there were about 15,000 people a month reading. Now it's time to turn out the lights and go into archive mode.

Like Shakey says, it's better to burn out, rust never sleeps.

Thanks for a great run, gang. We'll see you around...

Posted by Dave at 06:24 AM

January 04, 2008

Eddie's Cryin'

Instant asshole, just add alcohol...

Posted by Dave at 05:54 AM

December 09, 2007

No Country For Old Men

Over the years I've watched many an old, or even middle aged man ride off from many, many successful years touring. Dicko, Perk, Mason and Morrison to name a few. These days I reckon I'm in that group. With few exceptions touring life has no place for old men. Either the road eats them up or of their own volition indicates they leave the road. If nothing else for the sake of their own sanity. Some though, present company included, stay past their expiration dates then wonder why what used to be so fulfilling has turned into a wasteland devoid of any enjoyment. Gotta love what you do but when you don't it's no different than being some cubicle rat in an office, counting the minutes until your release from the prison of conformity and Dilbert like ineptitude. At least Dilbert is funny.

At the front end of the career it's a competitive environment. And that doesn't change as the years rage on. There are always more people than available gigs though there never seem to be enough GOOD people for those gigs. As one gets on in years, like the seasons, things change. What was important at 25 is no longer important at 35 and things like family start to take priority over things like gigs. What do you think is more important? Making sure your TPS reports are properly filled out, or making sure your kids are healthy and happy? Lumdberg might be pissed, but those reports are a distant second, if not further down the list.

When you're a young turk in this biz you don't think about what you're going to do next year. Let alone when you are 40, 50 or 60. I know I didn't start thinking about it until Crazy Uncle Kenny's dot com entered a death spiral and I saw my six figure livelyhood disappering faster than Britney's panties. Forty years old, no college degree, years of experience in the Varsity of touring audio. Outside of touring, that and six bucks would get me a double tall, low fat, half soy, part vanilla, part hazelnut latte. For all intents and purposes in that case you don't have a pot in which to piss, as they say. It really hit home when shortly after the dot com was sold for pennies on the dollar and the operators at the time determined they didn't really need my services. No prob, I thought. While the first dot com bubble burst, it was still a boomtown in comparison to the rest of the world.

I was attending a technology job fair up in Seattle, fresh on the dole of the State of WA just ending a nearly three year run at the dot com, the heart of which I started as a labor of love not quite a decade earlier. Google was advertising a contract position for someone to maintain storage space in either the Chicago or Atlanta data center. Basically, you read a log and swap dead hard drives from clusters. Even though I'd been able to build dot com, build and run the data center infrastructure I wasn't qualified for the job as a contractor swapping drives. I was Red Hat certified, Sun certified and a former MS certified tech with commercial experience on the Internet since the Internet became commercial. No matter. I didn't have a college degree, even though most of the kids applying were in grade school and had no idea what a server was at the time I was starting to build the property. While I had the knowledge and experience to do the task, according to the search kings, I didn't have the most important part. A piece of paper that said that I was able to tolerate four years of school regardless of any real world experience.

That left a mark. And at the same time was a huge wake up call. Had I stayed at Cal Poly Pomona about a quarter century earlier I might have had the paper to get that gig, but I surely wouldn't have gotten the gigs I did, when I did had I stayed in school. As they say, when you find a fork in the road, take it. And I took this one and that was where I was at the time. The next day I confirmed an offer for a tour that would take me through most of that year. One door closes, one door opens. At that point, the dynamics and structure of touring had changed. Controlled more by the bottomline than quality in and of itself the pricing structure for most continued to decline. What was once a US$2500/wk gig plus PD, business class travel and own room in a good hotel was a US$1200/wk gig, light PD, coach travel and sharing a room with some twenty something concerned with getting the most out of the party atmosphere. Or about where I was nearly two decades earlier.

I suppose that's standard economics. Supply and demand. It's OK when you're 20, or 30. Less tolerable when you're 40. How about 50? I'll be there in a few years. At 60? The problem for many of us is we didn't start thinking of exit strategies until well into our careers. You can milk a good twenty years from the road, but can you do thirty? Or fourty? And at what cost? In the mid 90s there was a very popular band that we had a vendor contract with. They were from Austraila and were tearing up the airwaves at that point. The mon guy from OZ was a family man. He'd been on the road for sometime. At one point during the tour he called home. His six year old son answered. "Hi, it's daddy" the mon guy stated. To which the kid replied "Who's daddy?" Within the next couple of days, the mon guy headed home, to my knowledge never to tour again.

My point is to have an exit strategy so at the point you turn 50 you're running the show instead of changing RF mic batteries and shouting "climber 2 check, fourteen, one-four, check" into a french Canadian's face just prior to the show. Even the best laid plans shit the bed. Make sure you have a handle on where you wnat to go and how you want to get there. What you are doing at 30 isn't going to be what you want to be doing at 60.

Posted by Dave at 08:58 PM

July 28, 2007

No Shelter If You're Looking For Shade

Been hot as fuck here over the last six weeks or so. Exactly, Dave, how hot is fuck? Well of course that all depends on who is doing it. Opps, sorry strayed from the topic. Guess that's what I get for not having Tony give me one of them awards. I'm sure he's not the guy that gave me all these platinum colored records, errr I mean CDs. Actually, very few were "given" to me. Most of them I had the priviledge of purchasing only after I was associated with the project. I wonder if that Tony guy charges his recipients for copies of the award. Touring we did on many gigs 20k punters per night. Most of these theater gigs don't do 20k punters per month. Dave are you bitter and grinding an axe against the theatrical discipline based on your limited experience with some of those asshats? No, give me another few weeks and let it really fester. That's not how you do it in New York? Well, Sunshine, do you think it's because this isn't a Broadway theater gig is the reason why it's not like that? No, really...

It's not the heat, it's the humidity, and fortunately for us, there isn't much humidity. At least it's a dry heat... Technically, my first summer here was last summer, though two years ago when I first did the recon down here during Infocomm, it was June and hotter than hell. Hot, hot, hotter than hell, burn you like the mid day sun. Last May, like pretty much every summer for the last 30 years or so, I bailed town to chase the bright lights and glamor of show biz, or at least get a good touring gig where over the course of three or four months I could make most of my nut for the whole year. A year ago this week I was here in town for a week or so, starting my first year at Thee Swanky Dive On The Strip. We had a break between the Euro and US legs and I spent it learning the ropes at the new gig and seeing such comedy favs as Rodney Carrington and Bill Engval.

Other than the insufferable weather, plus the Strip block long walk from employee parking it's sort of like being on the road living on the bus. But not really. At least a couple of times a week on the way in (or out) of the gig I see many tour coaches and trucks at the docks of the big venues in town. I reflect fondly on the memories, but glad I'm not a passenger in one of those vomit comets. The schedules are different, and that's one thing that takes getting used to, even after a year. We have basically two modes. Run mode, where we run the show, and dark/creation/enhancement mode. Most shows do the creation mode before the show opens. Now the braintrust that runs our show, even after two years hasn't quite figured the show out. So they keep changing it. The other shows like ours (or shall I say, the other shows that we are like) don't seem to have this problem. They tweak, but not to the extent that we do. And we are some tweakin' motherfuckers. And we change the show quite a bit, too. For the last several weeks we've been on "enhancement" mode.

This week I thought I'd give you a chance to see a comparison of schedules between touring fly date roadie, touring bus roadie and production show roadie in run mode. In creation mode it's like being in pre production touring. You get there early in the morning and don't leave until late at night.

A Day In The Life....

0600 (we're doing Euro time here because I think it makes me look cool, or is it kewl?)

Fly Date: You are either at the airport, on the plane already or heading for the airport unless it's a day off.

Bus Date: Comfy asleep in your rack either at the gig or on the way to the gig unless it's a day off and you might already be in your day off room. Or in the back lounge regreting you stayed up all night with the lighting guys.

Production Show: Considering where to have breakfast after spending the night in the Artisan/Peppermill/PT's with the Drinking Club With An Audio Problem.

0900

Fly Date: At the first layover or if you are lucky (or unlucky depending on your outlook) on the ground headed to the gig in some van or minibus that either smells like shit, piss or barf (or a combination thereof) or is way too small for everything and everyone. Or if you're really lucky, or unlucky, all of the above.

Bus Date: The noise department is just getting up and off the bus to breakfast. The squints have been off the bus of an hour or so but it's not like they sleep with the amount of krell they do. Hopefully you didn't stay up with them.

Production Show: Better be in asleep by now, or at least in bed explaining to her that you've been really tired lately and aren't able to perform. Not that it's happened to me. This week...

1000

Fly Date: You're either late to the gig or at the gig. If you got in the day before you're at the gig finding that the locals either a) aren't there yet or b) there but don't have the right shit and there's no hot breakfast catering.

Bus Date: After a hearty breakfast you're on deck watching chains go into the air and decided where to put the PA so that in an hour or so, after you've got the stacks rigged, video or scenic can come in and tell you that the PA is in the "wrong place", even though it's the best place soundwise.

Production Show:

ZZZZZZZZZ or trying to convince the gal from wardrobe (or the front office) you'll respect her in the morning, even though it's approaching the afternoon.

Noon

Fly Date: Wondering what kind of flat meat is going to be for lunch and wondering if the local production can get it together in time for the band's arrival mid afternoon.

Bus Date: Wondering what kind of flat meat is going to be for lunch and wondering if the production you brought can get it together in time for the band's arrival mid afternoon.

Production Show: "All I need is two more hours sleep, honest..."

1600

Fly Date: Hopefully the local production has it's shit together enough to be able to do the scheduled band check. And with any luck the band isn't hungover, drunk or in jail and the afternoon goes as planned.

Bus Date: Hopefully the touring production has it's shit together enough to be able to do the scheduled band check. And with any luck the band isn't hungover, drunk or in jail and the afternoon goes as planned.

Production Show: Run crew call, start of the day. Hope you got enough sleep. Do your basic check. make sure all is OK, share uncomfortable silence in elevator with gal from wardrobe (or front office). Well, at least you aren't hitting on the performers. This week...

1830

Fly Date: Lounging in your room or some shitty backstage area because your rooms are in the next county, 40 miles from the gig. You don't have to deal with the support acts so at this point there is dinner. I wonder what kind of chicken they have in catering for the meal?

Bus Date: Lounging in your bus or some shitty backstage area because your bus is in the next county, 40 miles from the gig. You have to deal with the support acts so at this point there is no dinner. That's OK, they only want to give you 30 bucks a night to spend a few hours of your already taxed day dealing with them even though if they were hiring you direct it would cost them a couple grand a week, not counting PD and accomodations. I wonder what kind of chicken they had in catering for the meal? Hopefully the merch gal or production assistant will bring something to the console even if it's stone cold and last in the chaffing dish. If you're on a good tour, the touring catering goddess will bring you something hot, and if you're lucky, some food too.

1930

Fly Date: Top of show, everyone look sharp. Hope Elvis stops in a couple of hours.

Bus Date: Top of show, everyone look sharp. Hope there is a 2300 curfew, or least enough disinterest to keep this as short as possible.

Production Show: Top of show, everyone look sharp. The show runs 92 mins and 32 secs per night, though when we improvise it might run 94 mins 45 secs. We like to live on the edge.

2130

Fly Date: On an evening with we better be done by now, we've got a 0430 lobby call.

Bus Date: Headliner started about a half hour ago. Hope that 2300 curfew is still in effect and the band doesn't feel like spending the dough to violate it.

Production Show: Second show started, we'll be out of here in a couple of hours.

2300

Fly Date: Back in the hotel, and that's good because the 0430 lobby call you had was really an 0400 lobby call. Don't worry you can sleep on the plane. and by the way you got a middle seat, last row, it doesn't recline.

Bus Date: Trucks are lined up, we're loading this bitch out. Can't wait for the cold pizza/wings/chinese food in the bus in about an hour and a half or two.

Production Show: Load out? Truck? What the hell is that? We're heading to the Artisan/Peppermill/PT's for a meeting of the Drinking Club With An Audio Problem.

0100

Fly Date: ZZZZZZ or trying to explain to the business MILF from the bar that you'll still respect her in the morning. Even though you'll leave in 3 hours.

Bus Date: All showered up but there was no soap and the towel was way too small, but you're lucky you got a towel at all and don't even start bitching about the cold water in the shower. Or the backline guys, bus driver and merch guy eating most of the after show food. At least there is beer, but wait, it's warm Coors. (thought you said there was beer?...)

Production Show: The Artisan/Peppermill/PT's seems kind of dead. Shall we hit Scores, OG or Lil Darlings?

So there you have it, the differences between the various gigs.

More for Gore or the son of a drug lord?

None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord....

Posted by Dave at 07:20 AM

July 14, 2007

Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge

We've got a repeat this week, The A Barking Dog production of "The Glamor of Show Biz". Shot on location on tour in 2004 with that British soundguy with the hot wife/tourmanager (gotta love a tourmanager that will show you her tits, with her husband sitting next to her...) turned producer/keyboard player/vocalist that liked to work on "projects". Would have liked to have finished the posts giving the young turks some advice, but we are pretty busy this month at Thee Swanky Dive on The Strip that dunks 90 lb (how many kilos is that?) French chicks in water nine shows a week. Only worked just over a half day today, about 13 hours. They wouldn't listen to me anyway. Which ironically is one of the things I'm going to address (no, D Day, not you specifically).

I'd been out most of the year in 2k4. In the break between my summer camp with them sisters and going to Brit dude again, I picked up a mini DV cam and a copy of Final Cut. I was (and still do) use it for candid photography,
a nod is as good as a wink to a blind bat, say no more, know whatahmean...) Then I also stated shooting things on tour. Particularly overseas. Got lots of tape, should edit it someday. We started one fall weekend in Amsterdam, two days off (no gig in Amsterdam) prior to starting the tour. Poland, England (where we were almost deported for no work permits), Greece, Italy, The Carribean, Mexico and other locales. Took me about two months to cut and score it.

High band width version at http://www.roaddog.com/video/glamor_broadband.mov

Low bandwidth at http://www.roaddog.com/video/glamor_low_bandwidth.mov

Enjoy... We'll be back with new posts in a little while.

Posted by Dave at 04:30 AM

July 09, 2007

Digico Completes Management Buyout

From James Gordon, Managing Director, Digico

DIGICO COMPLETES MBO

July 7th was a significant date on the calendar for many reasons, not least
of which for those at DiGiCo was the completion of its management buyout.
The new management team comprises Managing Director James Gordon, Chief
Executive Bob Doyle, Marketing Director David Webster, Technical Director
John Stadius and Company Secretary Helen Culleton.

Gordon explains the reasons behind the first significant project he has
undertaken since his appointment as MD. “We’ve always been a reactive and
pro active company that understands the market place we’re in,” he says.
“However, when you have external investors, there is a need to explain the
ins and outs of decision making processes and that can slow things down.
“The management buyout removes that requirement and means we can focus more
of our time on doing what we do best, making us an even more agile and
focussed company.”

Along with a number of plans yet to be revealed, DiGiCo will be putting a
share incentive scheme in place for its employees. “It’s nice that as a
modern company we’re able to reward the people that work with us and put in
the extra time,” continues Gordon. “We have a lot of staff that work 24/7
for the benefit of this company and they will now be able to share in the
success with us fully. “The potential of what we can achieve with the
technology we have within the company, both current and future, is amazing.
The enthusiasm and drive for success that has got us this far is right back
to where it was when we started in 2002.”

Posted by Dave at 05:34 PM

May 23, 2007

Paradise..Is All That I Want.... And A Little Water....

A Barking Dog is still on hiatus but I do have plans to start posting again. I figure if Deadwood and the Soprano's can have a year or so between seasons, so can I. I mean, if the big(gest) boss at the swanky joint on the Strip can compare himself to JC (no, really) I can compare myself to Dave Milch or Brad Grey. It's a busy time at the show that dunks 90 lb Euro chicks in water. Due to the terms of my NDA I can't tell you that we just installed a shiny new PM1D for mons or that we'll be completely replacing the house rig over the next two months. I couldn't tell you that we're getting 150 plus new speakers from my hippie pals in the Bay Area. And no, not Bink or Gramps, my other hippie pals on that side of the bay. We are busy little beavers and we all love The Beaver. Gee, Wally. And I don't mean that in an Eddie Haskell sort of way, I'd love to be able to Moblog the process but my corporate overlords would shit a brick if I did.

The transition from grizzled old touring roadie to grizzled old production show roadie that used to tour has been very interesting. I'm loving it though some of the corporate bullshit sometimes is over the top. It's the transition from saying "are you fucking kidding me", or "you gotta be shittin' me" become, "well, sir, I'm not sure I see the advantage in what you just stated". One example would be when Show Boss (great guy, BTW) was first looking at the PM1D and asked me "ever used a board this big before?" Innocent question, though my inclination was "is my fucking new light on?" In corporate speak that translates to "are you not aware of my background?" Over the course of the install, programming and deployment it became rather apparent that yes, Dave's used a board this big before. It was some of the most fun I've had in recent memory. Tough work? Sure, but very rewarding. It's exactly what I moved down to this god forsaken hell hole to do. I did move some months back from Roaddog Manor behind the hard rocking hotel, just of the Strip to suburbia. I don't see Penelope or or Eric or Richard in this suburbia, just upper middle class uptight white families with some showgirls and strippers thrown in for fun. But I do have a much nicer apartment and it's even nicer when Amber comes to town.

In the meantime, Jazz Singer and his entourage are back in Moscow doing a private gig. It's been just a bit over a year since we were there last and I thought it appropriate to link back to those posts. The posts from the gig with the Russian oil billonare to the pop princess are at http://rex.roaddog.com/mt/blog/moscow_2006/ or the Moscow 2006 link on the right.

Enjoy, we'll be back soon with all new Barking Dog stories. And bonus points if you get the reference in the title of the post...

Posted by Dave at 09:37 PM

March 31, 2007

Best of or These are Reruns....

In keeping with the tradition of American television creating content and running it endless times, I thought I'd give it a shot since I haven't written since having sold, err, leased, my soul to my corporate overlords.

Here's a little chestnut that was pretty popular in the fall/winter of 2004 about a jaunt down south. It was with an acclaimed artist that started as a soundguy and later found fame in front of the spotlight working on various "projects". Really only one project, but it's lasted several years. It's a true to life tale, just as I remember it. Of course, the ultimate irony here is that currently, some 3 years later, "Mr. Friend" is now the production manager. Three years ago "Mr. Friend" couldn't find his ass with both hands and a road map. Hope he found a map.

http://rex.roaddog.com/mt/blog/mexico_tour/

Posted by Dave at 03:11 PM

February 15, 2007

Guess Who....

No fair peeking.....

Posted by Dave at 03:43 AM

October 15, 2006

Turnabout is Fair Play?

I use Apple's iTunes and iTunes Music Store on a regular basis and have since I bought my first iPod back when I was working for the classic rock grunge band. Or pretty much since it opened. I have several hundred dollars in purchases but find I still need to resort to Bit Torrent or Limewire for some things. Let's face it, compared to the other so called "legal" alternatives, iTMS is pretty much Thee Shit. iTunes is so flexible we use it at the Swankiest Dive On The Strip (tm) as an emergency pull it out of our ass playlist to fire either SFX or the whole show. Yeah, from iTunes. That is if all of our other failovers and spares shit the bed. Even on the corp gigs I do these days we've replaced the CD player with an iTUnes playlist (though we usually dump it to the IR for some things). So, imagine my disgust/surprise/anger/amazement earlier today when not only did my latest purchase not download, but all of the Fair Play DRMed music was suddenly deauthorized from my still pretty new, not too old, hellava machine, my Mac Pro.

Of course, my first inclination was to say (out loud, at that) Steve Jobs you're a motherfucker. Though this particular malady wasn't directly the fault of the man often clad in a black mockneck, technically were he to be having sex with women that were mothers, the description would fit. I suppose I fit that description as well. I had just updated my Mac Pro EFI firmware and upgraded to 10.4.8. That's when my iTunes shit the bed. I've had a hankerin' for The Cult lately. I figured I'd do what the rest of us middle aged, former (or really never were) hipsters do, and download the album, err I mean CD from iTMS. Yes, I'll never forget the time way back when I walked into the Deja Vu on Lake City Way and saw our bookkeeper on stage dancing to Fire Woman.

On gladly taking my credit card info (they store it, actually), my iTunes started behaving rather strangely. The download wouldn't complete. That's odd, I've used iTMS a bunch before and never had this problem. I go to the top of the playlist that I use the most, and the new Evanesence wants to be authorized for this computer. Shit, I played it just prior to my "update". Oh damn. I try some Peter Murphy from the iTMS. Same thing. Try some Floyd, (Pink, not Andy's barber) ripped from CDs I own. No prob. So I email iTMS support. Hopefully they'll have a good answer, but in the time since I quit iTunes, opened it again and I was authorized, though it thinks my freshly updated firmware makes iTunes think this is new computer. Never had that problem in the three decades I've been buying music.

The point of this post isn't to wax about MILFs or remember how Lori was a better stripper than bookkeeper, but to remind those poor souls (or clueless twits) that run the labels why people would rather use Bit Torrent or Limewire than online sources that use DRM. I try to buy when I can, but find me a Rik Agnew "OC Life" at a so called "legal" download site and I'll gladly buy it. Try to find one at iTMS, Real or that piece of shit Microsoft launched. It's an URGE alright. I have the urge to barf when I use it. The labels have had almost a decade to get it together and have failed miserably. You'd think with execution that poor they'd had been running the Bush White House. People use file sharing services because they are easy and provide for portability of the music. The labels have stepped on their dicks (in golf shoes) by not being able to capitalize on the download craze. The acts that have forged ahead to do their own thing, by and large have done pretty well, or at least better than when they were getting shafted with the big label deals.

When you make it difficult for your customers to consume your product or put up so many barriers that getting it and using it will become cumbersome, they're going to use other means to get it. And you really can't blame them. If I may quote the great Swearengen, "those cocksuckers got what they deserved".

And I still don't have my copy of Fire Woman.

Posted by Dave at 06:35 AM | Comments (2)

September 14, 2006

I Guess This Is Growing Up

It's been a while since the last post. A couple of weeks for the Moblogs and forever for a text post. Having BBEdit not work on a Mac Pro didn't help though it's OK on my PB. Frankly, after using a quad core Xeon Mac everything else pales in comparison. Compound that with not being able to Moblog the new gig and not knowing what I can blog about the new gig adds to the absence. And last but not least, I've finally started dating again. The last time I was doing this was about a decade and a half ago. Holy shit...

The new gig, well, is awesome. And I'm not just saying that because one of the bosses reads the blog. I'm the new guy, starting at the bottom and working my way up, though in the age and experience category I'm up there with management. In fact, of the 200 plus on the show (cast and crew) I'm one of the gray beards. And I can remember back in the day when I was the youngest guy on the gig. My how times change, particularly for us old farts. Oh well. It's an interesting environment where I'm guarded in what I say. In the touring rock biz we had a bit more latitude in what we said and how we said it. For example, where someone to do something backasswards on the rock tour, the response might be " are you toally fucking new?" Here, it might be "I question the rationality of your judgement and would have reached a different conclusion". Though in the bowels of the SOMP (the little room in which I perform many if not most of my tasks) we're still able to say amongst ourselves, "dude are you new?"

It's a good bunch that I work with at the swankiest resort on the Strip. Unlike the last tour leg I did. The leg with jazz singer and guitar player that sits (though he's not sitting these days) was an absolute pie fight. I loved my hommies (sp?) with jazz singer, but other crew was wack. So much that after the first few dates, I started riding on our band bus instead of the production bus. The so called production manager didn't really have a handle on things, though sometimes he was too hung over to make it in on the call time. I guess it helped that he was the significant other of the tour manager of other band. At times it was an embarassing display of unprofessionalism. Those that know me, know I cut much slack in this department. These guys (and gal) were so over the top it was difficult to look the other way. Glad it's over and at least the bonuses afforded me a neat new computer and pair of studio monitors for it.

And that brings me to the delima. What can I post? I can't Moblog as cam phones and cams are verbotten in the theater. They made sure to tell me during the orientation. Technically I'm not supposed to have one in the building, and if I do, it should have the cam function disabled. Blogging like I have on tour isn't going to work. The tours didn't mind it, but I'd bet these folks would. It's too bad, because I think a good tech blog would be good for the show. We aren't talking about some cheesy Vegas show, it's one of the most high profile, technically advanced shows not only on the Strip, but in the biz. And it's moving and sexy. Speaking of sexy, why is it that the last four women I've dated only share two names? Never had that happen before. Of course, the roadie side of me says that it's easier to remember the names that way. Well, you can take the boy off the road, but you can't take the road off the boy. To those that are thinking of living the show biz touring life style, don't do it too long or take it too seriously 'cause it will warp your mind.

So, what to blog? The dating is right out because it's NC17 and a couple of my dates wouldn't approve. The gig? Don't know yet what's appropriate except for general observations. Vegas in general? Yeah, sure but there are people better at that than I. I did buy a full pass for ETS/LDI and I'll blog that (manufacturer types, I haven't asked you yet, but I need another five passes for my department) It took about five times longer than I had thought to land the Vegas house gig but I should be able to blog something that works for all of us. I just haven't found that yet.

Posted by Dave at 08:01 AM | Comments (8)

August 10, 2006

Lunatic Fringe (we all know you're out there)

We pulled into the Hyatt at MCO (Orlando airport) at about 0230 from our gig in Clearwater. On this leg the crew rides the production bus when we have a gig in the morning, other times we travel on jazz singer's bus because of the better hotels and travel schedule. I don't want to get into it right now but the differences between the touring crews of each band is pretty apparent. We'd flown down to Florida for two dates with our busses and trucks meeting us down there. It's good to get off the bus, particularly when the production is stuck in an 80s mind frame. We disembarked the coach to send it deadheading back to NY for the next gig. When I got to my room, I hit the CNN for a quick update before crashing for the night. Low and behold, another terrorist plot broken up and big security changes. My room overlooked the intersection of the A and B terminals of MCO and not a soul in sight. I expected this to change in five or six hours as the airport reached peak time. I retired for the evening knowing there wasn't much more I could do, even though CNN seemed to want me as informed/panic as could be.

I woke about 8 hours later and turned back on the TV. The news cycle was in full spin. I looked out down onto the entrance to terminal B security entrance. It was packed. About 15 mins later I got the call. Our American flight had been cancelled. I was told to hang tight in my room and await further instructions. I ordered steak and eggs from room service. By then the no liquids on board directive had not only been on the news, but circulated throught he hotel with a couple of members of our party calling to remind us. The steak was good but they only had white toast. And they have free Internet. About an hour later I got the call that my passport was required (that's what we use for ID, even in the States) and we were now on a Delta flight. We met early that afternoon, only delayed by a couple of hours to walk the few hundred feet to the check in.

It didn't look too packed from the hotel, but the check in area was a madhouse. Due to how our reservations were changed, we couldn't use the self service kiosks and they were only letting computer bags on as carry on, regardless of what the CNN was saying. We lucked out that we could check in as a group with the jazz singer as he was going First Class and later upgraded our full fare coach tix to First for seventy five bucks. Well worth it. TSA was out in force and those that are regular readers will note I have no love loss for the TSA. Particularly after my run in at Dulles coming down to Florida a few days prior. Dulles is a pretty shitty airport anyway. It's one of those that hasn't been modernized and due to the economy of the DC/Northern VA/ MD area, the quality of the service and the personel are less than desirable. IOW, if you can't hold a real gig, you can get one at Dulles. This being one of two of the airports to the capital city of the self proclaimed "leader of the free world" I would think we could do better. Then again, we can't show any leadership in our own country let alone the rest of the world. We were in a priority line at Dulles due to our status on the airline when we approached the checkpoint and saw what in any other instance would be some babbling old man. Except this time he was a TSA agent, uniformed, running the metal detector at the check point. When we got close enough to hear him proclaim the following. "If you want customer service, the complaint department is over there" (he said with a gesture). "This ain't Walmart. They tell us you are customers but we don't consider you our customers."

Mind you, this wasn't addressing anything specific, he has bellowing it at the top of his lungs with no provacation. Lewis Black does a great bit on the TSA in his current act. Saw it at home during the break last week. Good stuff. After the comment about Walmart, as I prepared to pass through the detector I said to the grumpy screener "you haven't been to a Walmart lately, have you?" "Don't compare me to Walmart" was his reply. Which I shot back, "you're the one that brought it up. What I mean is that with that kind of attitude even they wouldn't hire you." WOW, talk about a chilling reception. Even though I passed the screening he insisted on giving me a full wand and pat down. As he did, I mentioned that "it's too bad you career choice isn't working for you". "I didn't choose this" he barked. "Really? You didn't apply and accept the job?" He was flustered and another screener interviened and set him away. I gathered my belongings and headed for the gate. Guys like that shouldn't be in the TSA, or any business where they have to deal with the general public. Not my fault you have a shitty life dude. You need to deal with it. The TSA is inffectual enough without without assholes like that being in the mix. If he doesn't like it, he should quit. They've got a difficult enough gig without asshats like him.

Let's get back to a few days later (which would be today), departing MCO under an orange threat level. The TSA was well prepared, friendly and informative. The check in was a bitch due to the crowds and cancelled flights, but the screeners were pleasant, professional and seemed to have a handle on what was happening. They set up info zones/ tables prior to screening to tell up what we could and couldn't bring on board with examples and people that seemed to want to really help. Due to our flight changes some of us were branded as four S (SSSS) which means we get special screening. While they took all our stuff apart (the roadie term for a full search), they were nice, professional and appeared to be interested in doing a good job. They did have a secondary screening at the gate where they again checked carry ons for liquids, much like after 9/11 when there was secondary screening at the gate. You can't even take water you bought at the concourse gift shop on the plane.

All in all, inspite of what the news outlets were saying where I was (at an airport, flying as part of my daily thing) it was only a minimal hassle. That said, if some or even any of these new rules are implemented it will impact the way most of us fly. My city and my new gig at home depend on guests coming into town. Let's hope the new rules don't impede that too badly.

Posted by Dave at 09:06 PM | Comments (2)

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)

April 26, 2006

For Josh About Subs

I was going to comment over at Josh Evan's blog, SPL140-WWJD regarding a comment he made on his current trip to Mexico. The blog doesn't allow comments or trackbacks, though. Josh is one of the good young minds entering the biz today, not as a mixer per se, but as a support guy at SIA Soft/Loud/EAW/Mackie/whatevermusogearthoseguysfromfloridawithcontrolofthepursestringshavethembuy. And of course, Crazy Uncle Kenny (tm). Josh is a really sharp kid that's passionate about the biz but every now and then he says something that makes me go "HUH???!!!!". But then again, I'm old...

Day one of two in mexico. Kenton arrived last night. We have a great setup. They will be filming the presentations, 730s sound pretty good (its hard to screw them up) sb1000 sound out, pretty good the a front loaded clam shell. Id rather have a bh760 or array of la400. That's a big problem in our industry. Not enough use of horn loaded subs. And people don't know how to demo them against a front loaded sub.

Not enough use of horn loaded subs? Dude, you gotta be shittin' me. SB1000s are the best sub EAW has ever made. LA400? Surely you jest? (can I call you Shirley?). The BH760, IMNSHO is a one trick pony and not that good at it. For killer subs, not just from EAW but from anybody, it's all about the SB1000. If you haven't heard them kill everything else, find me or my buddy Big Al at the place next to the BBQ joint and we'll show you how the adults use them. ;-)

I don't know what gigs you are going to, but in The Bigs, horn loaded subs are the defacto standard. Keep blogging Josh, it's a fun read.

Posted by Dave at 11:19 PM | Comments (4)

April 25, 2006

All in a Days Work

Let's see what we did today at the big time corporate marketing gig...

We locked the D1 up just before final rehearsal. That's OK, it only happened during the Chairman and CEO rehearsal of entire meeting. Remove laptop, reboot surface, reboot engine, all is well. Head dude was ruffled, but we blamed Windows and he seemed to be OK. Seems he's familiar with Windows causing problems. After a load in/ tech day, a rehearsal/ tech day and tech/rehearsals for a third day today, we get problems at about the time the rest of the shows on The Strip fire up. We had 15 hours or so using these 22 frequencies and now during the rehearsals with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th in command, the radio rig doesn't want to cooperate. Sonofabitch...

Rewind to yesterday, or even load in day a couple days ago. At load in, the in house hotel rigger gave me grief for feeding out my own hoists and trying to connect my bumpers and run my hoists. Like I've done for the times I've hung PA in the almost 27 years I've been doing this. Or for more perspective, he was 5 when I hung my first PA. And I'm a lot fucking quicker than he is. House AV rule, we can't run our own hoists or attach our shit to our own grids. The local hands are from a local (well, national) labor company and are quite good> The sparky and riggers are from the hotel AV company who to me seem two steps removed from high school AV washouts. Kinda set the tone for the week. Our guys are all Varsity. Video, lighting, A1, production, content creation. In fact, I'm the newbie here and they have taken a shine to me. Yesterday, we start to run parts of the show, a Fortune 50 CEO guesting for this Fortune 100 company giving a presentation about marketing. About 3 mins into the first roll (we have a 16 box M2D rig in a 30 meter square ballroom, yeah, we thump, because we are paid to) some AV lackey comes over and says we are disturbing the management meeting of the resort chain which has rented our clients the space. The venue aren't newbies. It's the 2nd largest resort owner in the state. Our production manager's response is priceless. "Sounds like you need a better airwall buffering system" he tells house AV guy. Except for that room our client is renting that entire wing of the convention center (during one of the most in demand times in Vegas) and several hundred rooms. Plus catering.

All that for this. Earlier today, we shit the bed with the radio rack. This morning, I noticed they were reconfiguring the room next door and went over to find the house AV guy and coordinate frequencies. The deal was, they had a hotel list and we couldn't use those, but they wouldn't coordinate outside freqs other than the inhouse freqs. That's not really a frequency coordinator, is it? AV boy in the next room that gave me attitude came over with a list to our room. Yeah, he was blown away. We've got the platnum shit. All I wanted to know was if we could get 22 clear freqs for our show. late in the afternoon, someone (or something) parked on 688 MHz and a few of our channels shit the bed. It was a big fucking deal. We had to go offline for me to find some clean air. I suppose that's why they call it work.

The gig went without a hitch. We worked through dinner and got it up and running.

All in a day's work...

Posted by Dave at 11:45 PM | Comments (2)

March 30, 2006

We want to rent it, not buy it...

I wanted to take a bit of a break from the wedding tale with the guys with big furry hats and Cossacks to offer a bit of advice to a young chap on the other side of the pond. Chris Hinds has been posting on the LAB for a while recently attempted to broker a gig for a kick boxing event and was surprised when he told the promoters it would be about the eqivalent of about US$35,000. It would be difficult to get that at a high end corporate in Vegas for that package. There are events that go for that, but this particular event isn't that. Chris' blog post is at http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/cjehinds/entry/you_dont_do/ . Go over and check it out yourself but in part he says...

For that the promoter was getting:

* 12 Stacks of D&B C7 covering the majority of the audience (a system with small fills was going to cost more to put together)
* 12 Martin MAC700s on the ring for audience and ring use
* 8 Mac 250 Entour for the entrance and dancers
* 8 Mac 250 Wash for the Dancers and Entrance
* 72 Pars trained on the 600sq.ft ring.
* 2 Juliat Follow Spots with Ops
* Avo Pearl 2004 and ART 2000 Dimming
* Smoke Curtain
* Trussing for entrance with drapes
* Central lighting truss flown with 1 ton motors
* Distro from CAMS to the necessary
* 15 Crew setting up the venue from totally bare to rigged and back again in just under 24hrs.

I started to post a comment there but a few hundred words into it I figured it would make more sense to post it here and do a trackback. Here is the comment, read his full post for all the background.

Chris, the lighting guys are out of their mind. You want to rent the gear, not buy it. The fact that they were willing to half the price when it looked too high is the first sign that they aren't really serious about working with you. This is show biz, "unsocial" hours are the norm. You pay for the time you have the gear. It doesn't look like your vendors took you seriously and you should have shopped the bids anyway. A better way to do this is offer your services as a production manager and then bid directly to the producer. Anything you get on the back end from the provider is between you and them.

Trucking: Looks a bit high. Are you renting trucks or hiring someone like Redburn or EST? For that price I could go from Dover to Glasgow. How far is it? If it's a truck each from each of the vendors it's not so bad but still this should easily fit in an 18 ton if not a 7.5 ton due to the way y'all maximize the packaging of your gear over there.

If I ever saw insurance as a line item it would be a big red flag. Insurance needs to be covered not as a line item but factored into the rental.

The hourly rate for labor, (sorry labour, we almost speak the same langage) ;-) looks good but do you really need 15 crew for 24 hours straight? Use staggered and split calls to maximize the value. A crew of 15 should be able to wack this out in six hours or less given an arena config something like the NEC. Riggers = 3, 2 up 1 down; 1 electrician doubling with lights, audio = A1 and A2, squints = LD + tech programmer with the rest used as truck loaders, pushers and deckhands as needed. Not counting you as prod/stage mgr. For 15 @ 8 pounds/hr that's 720 pounds for the in. Lets say four on the show call for 4 hours and its another 128 for the show call. If a 15 guy call can't this this out in 4 hours or so, they need to be looking at another line of work or call some pros that can. My labor is about half of what yours is not counting taxes and all the other fun stuff that comes with hiring people. Still though, you don't need 15 the whole time and I bet you might be able to save a kiloquid by better labor management.

Lighting: Tell them to fuck right off, chap. ;-) That's what us septics would do. They aren't providing truss, rigging, trucking or labor and they still want that much? They want to charge you a week for a one day one off then magically halve the price when you grimace. If they can't get the gear to you the day or night before or have it at your gig that morning, that's a cost they should eat, not you.

On a side rant, not to offend the good men of tea on that side of the Atlantic but that sort of attitude is why some English production companies have taken it in the shorts over the last decade or so. In the olden days you had to use a Brit company to get acceptable results. The Germans got pretty good at it, as did the Dutch and the French, well, they're French, but they're pretty good at it. Lately the Spaniards and Italians are getting pretty good at it. It used to be that you didn't go to Spain or Italy without a Brit or German production. Not so anymore but there are some Brit production companies that seem to still be in the olden days and not able, willing or both to compete with the newer companies in the EU.

Rigging: I don't know the exact quantity so it's hard to say but having a head rigger involved is always a good idea. Why aren't the vendors providing the hoists and rigging?

Audio: There are a lot of different ways to skin this cat, but that seems a bit steep, considering no rigging, operators or transport. Certainly you weren't getting cut a break. The audio design (and the lighting design for that matter) had a lot to do with the price, considering the promoter gave rough expectations and not a rider or gear list. I'd knock it down to 1000 just because it's so bare bones and they aren't including a guy or truck.

Let's recap using Dave numbers as target budgets or negociating points.

Lights/FX: I sure you could either trim the design or find a vendor to do it for a couple thousand pounds. For four or five grand in the states I could get a package like or identical and they'd likely bring it to me and staff it. Let's say 2000 GBP. Might be a bit low when the market or quality of the provider is factored in but the lighting guys already pissed us off so screw 'em. ;-)

Audio: You don't need d&b or Meyer for this, though it would be nice. A nice little K&F rig distributed on a truss grid over the rig that houses both audio and lights, a Venice, some playback a couple of radio mics, a few wired mics and "Robert's your father's brother", as you chaps say. 1000 GBP

Rigging: If we do have use outside rigging, I can't see costing that much other than that's what they wanted to try to get. It's a 50m x 30m room so I can't see how you're going to be overboard in points or truss. Worst case you have 160 m of truss and drape and 40 m of light/audio grid. Let's say another kiloquid.

Labor: Manage it better, pay a fair wage for a fair days work. 8 GBP/hr sounds a bit low, let's budget 10 GBP/hr and kick the budget to 2000 GBP total. Another way would be to work bids with a guy from the PA company and a guy from the sound company and knock the crew call down to 10 or 12, plus you.

Trucking: If you do have to do the trucking, I can't see it's going to take more than a couple (or even one) of a 7.5 ton Iveco from Sixt. Maybe one and a transit van. I'm going to target transport at 300 GBP but would see about the vendors doing thier own.

Lighting 2000
Audio 1000
Rigging 1000
Labor 2000
Transport 300
Chris prod mgr fee 400
Total 6700 GBP and that's still pretty steep for this gig.

What I didn't see that you did was qualify the client. That's why he was surprised with the price. Find out who he used before, and how much he expected to spend. Design the production accordingly. Approach several vendors and get a few bids. Be fair but firm. I think his 3000 GBP target he could probably get, but with what vendor? Depending on the venue and complexity, I could do this for around US$5000 all in for something respectable, about US$10000 for something pretty good.

If nothing else though, you got a learning experience though it may have come at the expense of not being able to work with the promoter because your bid wasn't realistic.

Posted by Dave at 03:46 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 15, 2006

Happenings at PSW/LAB

As you have probably noticed, the entire PSW family of sites are down. There is an issue with the hosts and the hosts inability to properly defend the forums from phishing link attacks. Burbee, the upstream provider for Broadjam, the skilletheads that host PSW (that's right kids, I don't think too highly of Broadjam and really never have) has decided to block traffic to the PSW servers in response to Broadjam's inability to deal with what is a pretty basic issue. Currently access to all the content is unavailable and it is likely to be a few more days before there is a resolution. It's good that I'm new mellow Dave, on BP meds and calm or I'd likely have my boot so far up Roy Elkin's ass I'd need a proctologist to tie my shoes.

In the meantime, I've reactivated http://forum.roaddog.com/ as a backup. I'm still very supportive of Mark, Lucy and the whole PSW crew though at this point, I'm only a spectator.

Posted by Dave at 10:38 AM

March 06, 2006

The Garden to Move

According to reports late last week Cablevision, owners of landmark venue Madison Square Garden will move the venue as part of a new project at the Farley Post office location on Ninth Ave. No official comment from the involved parties but it appears to be further along that previously thought. It's good news and at the risk of pissing off any of my pals on the island, the place is a bit run down and not up to modern standards. I don't want to call it a shithole because, well I don't want to find a horse head in my bed. (But at least it's not Jones Beach...) The infrastructure is dated, the load in is a bitch and there isn't enough parking to accomodate the size shows they have in there. For those that haven't gigged there, an army of forktrucks driven by locals that appear to have kamakaze pilot training race up and down the venue shuttling the gear to and from the trucks. There is the hold over from old skool union days where the IBEW are the crew for FOH stacks and control, and Local 1 IA does everything on deck. Local 1 is pretty good when I've been there but some of those IBEW guys are real skilletheads. Another fav story was regarding the merch cut that borders on extortion. Once upon a time, a big time touring act declined to set up merch in the building on a multi night run, opting instead to rent a ballroom in an adjoining hotel and sell the merch there announcing it from stage and by distributing handbills outside the venue. The act was made a much more favorable split the next time through.

While I doubt there will be any changes in the work rules (or ethic for that matter), the place is in big need of getting into this century in terms of a facility that size. While the plans won't be available until later this summer, let's hope that it's at least on a par with the other venues of that size and stature. There is one little jewel in the MSG complex that sits atop Penn Station. That's the theater formerly known as the Felt Forum, now The Theater at the Garden. I haven't been in the theater for a while but do have fond memories of the joint. No word yet on if the theater would move with the arena though with modern arena designs, they can reconfigure the room to accomodate smaller shows as long as the building costs aren't through the roof.

Posted by Dave at 01:53 PM

March 03, 2006

RIM Job

According to Blitzer, Research In Motion, the folks responsible for the Blackberry communications device have just settled a suit with patent holder NTP for a reported US$615.5 million dollars. I think it's an annoying little device and wouldn't mind seeing them at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I understand the need that some people have for the device, just not the obsession that some have with it. I was an early adopter of mobile email in the early years, but opted to start leading a less plugged in life.

Considering the way RIM bluffed through the original trial, at one point fabricating a demo (much in the same way Microsoft did in the anti trust case) they should feel lucky they didn't get hit harder. Then the bluff of the so called "plan b" which they threatened over the last few months was mearly a smoke screen. If they did have an alternative plan that worked they would have used it. They didn't and were hoping to last until the USPTO could invalidate the patents and let them off scot free. That wasn't meant to be. If anything, perhaps this will cast a light on other patents that are lodged and granted with little or no forethought. In this case NTP did try to make a like device predating the Blackberry by several years, but failed. The founder died a few years ago as this was working its way through the court. Still though, there are many broad and in my opinion over reaching patents and if nothing else at least this has brought the isssue to light, if only for a short time.

Posted by Dave at 02:37 PM

February 09, 2006

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

Online preregistration for the Interop Las Vegas show is open. This is the show for networking, data center and general IT types. I've been a few times over the years. What impressed me most is a feature/display/real network called Interop Net. Interop Net not only serves as a showcase for the latest in networking technology but as the real world network providing services to the largest networking show on the planet.

Some years back at my first Interop I got the idea that the pro audio world could do something similar to Interop Net. At the time audio networking and control had been out for a while, but was slow in making significant inroads to the market. The idea is that at a major trade show, AES for example (though Infocomm might be more appropriate), we showcase the latest and greatest in audio networking and control technologies. Imagine a network where booths were sharing audio tracks from a high speed network, controlling equipment in demo rooms or on the show floor from remote areas. Where we could see real world deployments, but in an environment controlled enough to get a chance to play a bit with the technology. The offsite technical tours are cool, but it's not likely that a running show or facility will let one experiment too much with the technical bits. Put aside for a sec the gigantic task of deciding what tracks to use or what tracks to make (for example simulating airport paging or sport event announcing) and the related licensing issues. There are other reasons that this likely won't come to pass anytime soon.

That's because there is no real interoperability off the shelf with pro audio networking solutions. One can shuttle digital audio over a network pretty easily given the proper implementation for the application. It's when we get into the monitoring and control that the idea shits the bed. There are all these fifedoms of proprietary protocols to control devices on a variety of interfaces. Some are still using serial interfaces. Gang, it's 2006 why the hell are we still using RS422? Five years ago I bought the "slow adopter, backwards compatable" excuse but that dog don't hunt no more. Also way back then, was the argument of not being able to get enough, or afford the right kind of programmers. That's what contract shops are for, kids. You don't have to do that sort of thing inhouse. If your core competency is to develop software based pro audio solutions it makes sense to have that inhouse. Otherwise, if you're a box house that makes some equalizers or system controllers, it may make more sense to contract that sort of thing out.

I also don't buy the "nobody wants those solutions" meme. True five years ago, not so much today. All the big installs and shows are using network based technology. It's even made its way to portable SR and touring. If I have a system controller/matrixer/DSP, equalizers, amp control and console control they should all be able to at least share the same wire. And preferably on a hunk of light transporting several audio tracks as well. The most egregious offenders are the multinational conglomerates of the pro audio biz, or the Walmarts as I like to call them. In marketing and in public they portend to have the exact right product in every part of the line to be a one stop solution. In private they realize that the designers will design solutions where they might not be able to offer an appropriate tool. I'm not Pollyanna (or Nomi Malone) enough to to think these companies will abandon better than a decade of work in some cases, to support some digital tree hugging, utopian society where the specs are free and interoperable. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

Instead, acknowledge that your products will be used with others and may need to coexist on a network with other products. Stop using antiquated interfaces. There are very few reasons (if any, really) at this point to use anything but IP over ethernet. Maybe USB at the local device level while not crippling or not offering at minimum of 100BaseT port. That should really be GB ethernet I'll cut some slack to support a 10 year old standard. I should be able to run my entire network control topology on a single segment of CAT6, from a mid level host computer controlled by an entry level tablet. Better if I could do it down fiber and include a bunch or audio along for the ride. Make sure your clients are as thin as they can be and don't hog the host machine or the networks resources. Those apps should be optimized for minimal latency and maximum graphics response for real time events like meter movements.

Those are all pretty realistic suggestions. Those that design and build those sorts of products are likely saying "well no shit Sherlock". Here is the part that some of them kats may not like. Either build or support third parties who wish to make devices that bridge and interoperate disparate pro audio control and audio transport networks. That alone will be more advantageous to pro audio networking in the long run. The reason the Internet got to where it is today is due to one thing. And that thing is...wait for it... interoperability. In the realm of pro audio networking interoperatbility is far and few between.

To channel Fred Rogers...

"Can you say interoperability?"

"I knew you could..."

Posted by Dave at 03:55 PM | Comments (2)

January 31, 2006

Alas Poor First Amendment, I Knew You

Well at least I thought I did. The menace might be the terrorists, or perhaps the economic might of the Chinese. Or maybe it's a middle aged woman grieving and protesting the case of her fallen son. Cindy Sheehan was arrested at the State of the Union for wearing a tee shirt that protested the policies of those in charge. Letterman said it best, "for the love of Christ, how can you not have any sympathy for this woman". Let's forget about how we each feel about the issue of Iraq. This country was built on being able to question the status quo. It might not be popular, but that's how we do it. We piss and moan and try to change things, because, well, that's the way we are. It's our nature. Riddle me the irony in this Batman. Dude, self proclaimed leader of the free world says that we are spreading the cause of freedom, liberating the oppressed and spreading democracy to formerly totalitarian dictatorships. But then, we bust a mother of a fallen soldier for "unlawful conduct" 'cause she wore a shirt to a speech of a guy that she didn't agree with. Well you say, it's against the law to demonstrate in the House of Congress. Exfuckingcuse me? The same place where millionare blowhards that claim to represent the citizenry spout bullshit on a regular basis and some mom who's kid got killed in a war she didn't agree with can't wear a shirt expressing her opinion. That ain't right. Dude starts the speech by fetting the late Mrs King for civil disobidience but they bust a mom for wearing a shirt. What the hell is up with that? To add insult to injury, Dude goes on for the better part of an hour expousing the benefits of "freedom" and "democracy". I guess democracy and freedom are cool. If you agree with the powers that be. The terrorists are dangerous and need to be killed. The Chinese economic machine needs to be handled in a way that is beneficial to both parties. The real danger to our freedom and liberty doesn't live offshore.

It lives on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Posted by Dave at 10:38 PM | Comments (8)

Tour Manager to Plead Guilty to 100 Deaths

Dan Biechele, former tour manager of Great White will plead guilty to 100 counts of manslaughter when he detonated the pyro display that resulted in the fatal fire. Initial press accounts of the case are stating Biechele as the band's manager though he was the tour manager. Biechele, acting as an unlicensed pryotech was responsible for setting up and operating the effects that caused the fire. Club owners Jeffrey and Michael Derderian are still set to be tried on involuntary manslaughter charges.

Posted by Dave at 11:49 AM

January 12, 2006

End of the Road for Windows Media Player for Mac

Microsoft announced they will no longer support or upgrade the Macintosh version of the Windows Media Player. Right, like they were upgrading or supporting it for the past few years. The Mac version sucked. And that's being nice about it. I kept a copy around because I needed it for, errr, well comparisons sake. Yeah, that's it. But fear not those that visit WMV only sites like Ultra MILF. MS has passed the torch to Telestream's Flip4Mac plug in for Quicktime. Seems to work as well as WMP Mac did in the few times I've used it. There's a free version and enhanced version with import and many other features not found in the MS version. Like the ability to encode WMV files from Final Cut or iMovie.

So, what's the big deal Dave? It's not a big deal for Mac users. It's a time to celebrate. We got a better player from it. What's going to suck is that vendors that are lining up behind MS for the latest versions of the WMP DRM for their pay for play music download sites are basically ditching the Mac users. That's not going to suck for Mac users, we've already got the best, most trafficed online music store with iTunes Music Store. There other offerings coming online, some already online like Rhapsody, the new Yahoo store and Urge, the Borg's attempt to out do the guy in the black turtleneck and rumors of others. What's happening, to steal a comparison I heard in a podcast, is that all these vendors will be selling the same thing, for pretty much the same price, in the same mall. There is very little differentiation. There might be some exclusive content, but I really don't need to see Flavor Flav banging a hammered Bridgette Nielson or Vern Troyer naked and drunk on a mobility scooter peeing in the corner of his room. Been there, done that, got the shirt though I'm not sure what the stains on it are. With the lackluster demo of WMP 11 that I saw at CES (which isn't due for a couple more months) there's really nothing new that iTunes doesn't already have, right now. The lockout from the WMP DRM is an issue, but not for Mac users. If the people using WMP DRM don't want our money, we'll find another place to spend it. And be happier for it.

Posted by Dave at 11:49 PM | Comments (2)

January 11, 2006

For Don

A great man passed away Jan 9th. Don Pearson or Dr Don as he was known. I got to know Don a bit in the late '90s as we worked on a couple of projects and he participated sparatically at the LAB. Most importantly he was responsible for mending the silly feud I had with Sam Berkow a few years earlier. In a couple of private talks he made me see another position, without being preachy or condescending and it lead to me getting to know Sam, who is one of the most outstanding humans I've met. I hadn't talked to Don in maybe five years. Here is Sam's tribute to Don...

====================================

Don Pearson was a great inspiration, teacher, friend and guiding force. Don
loved playing the role of "Dr.Don - audio guru" - and after years as a
road-rat, he recently found position that offer a way for him to teach
others. He was thrilled to be able to share his insights into audio.

He was also stubborn as a mule. Don was relentless in is passion for finding
the 'better or correct' way to do things - not just audio. He looked for
ways to improve almost any thing he did. From audio system tuning and
grounding, to making coffee or even toast, or the way he tended his garden.
Don strived to find the method that yielded the better result.

Don did not suffer fools. Don was really touched by the fact that so many
important and active people in audio industry (many of whom do not regularly
speak) gathered together one night a few years back, after the L.A. AES
convention to celebrate his 60th birthday ! It was a great party, and Don
considered it is 'award for years of service'.

For me, Don was a friend, older brother and unceasing voice, urging me to
elevate my game - no matter what I was doing! Last year, I was honoured to
have Don be the best man at my wedding! I can not count the number of days I
spent at Don and Fran's house - always working on a project two or planning
new ones or just sitting watching the grass grow!

For those of you who didn't know, Don had a secret weapon - Don's wife Fran
is as wonderful a person as you'll meet. Fran (who we call Fran-eeeee) was
Don's personal support team. Few people knew Don before he and Fran we
together - Don and Fran we married just after I was born! I spoke to Fran
yesterday, and was happy that Don didn't suffer, or survive in a compromised
state. Even after he passed, Fran-eee was supporting Don!

Last week, Don and I started a new project, and we spent a long day in the
wine country north of San Francisco - in meetings in the morning and
drinking fancy grape juice in the afternoon. Don was a bit nervous about his
up-coming procedure, and we took a few hours to laugh about all the times he
pushed me hard - always to improve a design or change some software. I think
it is no secret that Don was a major influence and a major inspiration for
the development of SIA-Smaart!

One of my favourite 'Don moments' was the first time I sent Don a pre-beta
sample of what was to become SIA-Smaart software. This fragment was able to
perform a simple transfer function in real-time. It was late at night in
NYC and I was really excited. I was pretty sure this was the first time a
transfer function was running in real-time on a PC without a DSP. I emailed
Don a copy, then called and asked "whata think?'. I was expecting some
encouraging words..... Don rattled off 20 reasons why this was not useful -
"there's no phase trace, your can't store the traces, you can't change the
scales 27 different ways, the cursor needs to do XYZ..." and on and on. I
was almost in tears - "Don, we just finished the transfer function less
than an hour ago - we'll get to these features, but what do you think about
the transfer function", Don just repeated his "wish list"! I wanted to cry!
Over the next few years, Don's wish list never seemed to get smaller no
matter how many items we included. Over the following years, Don and I
talked about measurement, software, audio, and life in general almost daily!
- I was very lucky to have him in my life!

I feel privileged to say that Don was a great friend. - and the sadness I
feel today is really lessened by thinking about how lucky I have been to
have Don in my life for so long! Add me to the list of those who loved and
will mis Dr Don!

Sam Berkow,
SIA Acoustics

Posted by Dave at 02:31 AM

January 08, 2006

In and Out, That's What a Lawsuit is All About

The recollection of my first In and Out burger was in the early '70s. Perhaps after the Sylmar quake in '71. I remember my parents taking me to the San Fernando store just off I-5. One of the things I did crave when I lived in the Northwest was a Double Double. On my many trips to locales down south, one thing I would always try to do was to have a Double Double, fries and a shake or other refreshing beverage. Now down in Sin City, I have seven of the tasty burger joints in the area, including two close to Roaddog Desert Manor. My fav these days is a 4x4, light tomato, grilled onions, animal fries and a Choco-Van swirl or perhaps a Dr. Rootbeer or Pepperbeer. Yummy. You won't find those things on the menu, but order them as I described and you will be provided with a special culinary treat.

Trolling the 'net like I do, I found this today at the LA Times. An In and Out exec, Richard Boyd, has filed a lawsuit claiming the only grandaugther of the remaining co founder is trying to oust her own granny and expand the company in a manner which is dangerous. Natch, this has caused some turmoil in the company. The company mouthpiece, err I mean counsel says there are "numerous innaccuracies" in the suit. The target of the suit is 23 year old trust fund baby Lynsi Martinez that will inherit the company over the next 12 years in the terms of the trust. This is a result of Martinez' grandfather and co founder Harry Synder dying in '76 with his son Richard taking over and being killed in a private plane crash that also claimed the lives of some sr execs in '93. The older brother Guy took over but died in '99 after an overdose of pain killers.

A couple of thoughts. At 23 it's likely you don't know that much about the biz and it's time to sit the hell down, shut the hell up and wait until you learn the ropes. I can hear a lot of you kids rallying around the young folk but hear me out. At that age, I too was a young up and comer. The best thing I did was to listen to the graybeards no matter what my inclinations were. You guys have got a great thing going. Don't blow it by being too greedy.

Posted by Dave at 01:36 AM

January 06, 2006

Booking Mr. Page

Convergence, video on demand, content anytime, anywhere, on any device. 24/7/365 always on, anything you want. Unless of course it's one of the most anticipated keynotes in the biz. Among the thousands of display pieces jamming the Las Vegas Convention Center with the so called always connected digital lifestyle it's hard to escape the irony that one of the largest conventions in the world is not able or willing to broadcast one of the most anticipated keynotes of the session, if not the industry. That would be Larry Page, co founder and President of Google. If you don't know who Google is, Google 'em and find out. A lot of the reason that I attended the 2006 CES show is to get a chance to see these sorts of keynotes in real time. That and the fact that now that I live here it's a good way to kill a week for cheap. As long as you don't eat in the LVCC concession area.

Friday, the second day of the show not only had the afternoon keynote by Page, but Terry Semel, currently the chairman and CEO at Yahoo. If you don't know who Yahoo is, Google 'em to find out. Semel had the morning keynote and I'm only a good morning person in the early part of the morning. Say from midnight to 5 am or so. I was interested in hearing what Semel had to say but not so much to get up and mobile by the 9 am start time. I figured I'd get up just before, make some breakfast, do some email while watching the keynote streamed to me then hit the show late morning. Except I couldn't find it online, convergence, video on demand, content anytime, anywhere, on any device, 24/7/365 always on, anything you want. I knew that some kids would blog it and there might eventually be some sort of Webcast so I was OK not getting it for a few hours.

The Page keynote, I really wanted to see though I would have to settle for the overflow rooms at the show. Only a couple of thosand people out of the estimated nearly 150,000 would be able to see it live, in the theater of the man who writes the songs the whole world sings in the hotel named after the waify blonde chick with the little dog. Or is that a monkey? (technically Bruce Johnston wrote the song, but that would bummer my reference) The Page appearance had quite a buzz. Everyone was talking about it all week. CES even sent me (and 150k of my closest new pals) a reminder at 10 am, day of to remind me about it and inform me of the locations of the overflow room. When I found my way to that part of the show, about 10 mins prior to the start time it was assholes to elbows. Nothing in the advertised rooms and a line out the theater, through the casino and down the hall. And that was just people wishing to get in if there were noshows. The supposed overflow rooms were being set for other events. I did happen on staff member saying that said the only overflow was in a tent in the parking lot that was temporary home to some hospitality areas. Which happened to be about a 1/4 mile back in the direction from which I just came. The guys running this show are pretty good, particularly for the scale and magnitude of the show so I have no idea how this got so screwed up.

Several hundred of us were headed that way. When I got to the tent, it was already packed. There were four or five TVs in the Intel lounge, and a smattering of TVs in the Freescale (they used to be the Motorola chip division) Lounge area across from the AOL booth. Just after start time and it hasn't started but the tent was getting packed. We can hardly see the Google Zeitgeist rolling preshow with what I'm ASSuming are real time depictions of search terms. There are several other realtime reports of what happened after the event started. I'll refer to Engadget's real time transcription (with pictures). What happened next in our little group, now with too many people to really see or hear what was going on wasn't a fun time. We were packed in the back of this tent and the position of the displays made it such that the majority of people in our group had to stand in the aisle to see. Apparently some sort of fire code violation as they removed us from the asle. Err, then why did they put the displays there in the first place? It started and we couldn't hear anything. The audio in our area was provided by what looked to be a couple of JBL Control 1s on some truss in the AOL booth behind us. They did however, adjust the audio within the first 30 secs or so to bring it to a listenable level, though the distortion was into double digits at that point. At least we could hear him. About 10 mins into it, we lost video but not audio. Then the hard rock band in the Gibson tent next door started. At least those that ran the sound had the fortitude to adjust it again, alas more distortion. Someone in the crowd yelled something to the effect of "it's ok, they're showing video clips and don't have clearance". Well, no. We still had audio and Page was just going through some standard dog and pony. Besides, we had a feed of the IMAG from the room, not a program feed of the included vids and slides. And at times when that does happen, the vidiots usually throw up a bumper or at least bars.

After a minute or two of audio only, we got the picture back. It continued along through some more dog and pony ending with the announcement of Google Pack. At that point I thought, you gotta be shittin' me, that's it? Up until this point the presentation was pretty lackluster. I kept thinking there has to be more than this. Page said there was one more announcement, that Sergy always wished that Google connected directly to your brain. The feed ended abruptly, with a bumper stating that due to the proprietary nature of the content, they were suspending the feed and it would return in a "few moments". WTF? This was an international product rollout with a couple of thousand journalists watching live, many of them blogging and shooting pix in realtime and the rest of them ready to post stories minutes after the session. What the hell was proprietary about that? There are currently several stories on Google News detailing the event. They WANT people to know about it. I waited for several minutes before I got all Cartman about it and thought "screw you guys, I'm goin' home". There had to be another reason for the blackout.

The Inquirer over in the UK attributed it to Robin Williams making some disparaging comments toward the French as the reason for the blackout but it happened several minutes prior to that. TG Daily is reporting that the spots were blacked out due to issues that CEA (the promoters of the show) had with the prescreened content of Williams' routine. I don't really need some balding, fat, old bastard to determine what I should or shouldn't see, particularly when they used that event to drive traffic to the show. I'm old enough, fat enough and enough of a bastard to determine on my own what I think is or isn't offensive. Thankfully, I still have a lot of hair. CEA did a disservice to Page, Google and the attendees of the show by trying to play Big Brother in determining what was or wasn't offensive. Plus they bullshited us with that "proprietary info" line of crap. At least have the balls to make a bumper that states WHY you're censoring the content. Off color? This from a location where the largest porn show in the biz runs concurently, sharing one of the same venues no less and mobile billboad trucks advertising "Strippers Direct to Your Room" are circling the venue all day long.

Convergence, video on demand, content anytime, anywhere, on any device. 24/7/365 always on, anything you want. As long as CEA doesn't find it offensive.

Posted by Dave at 10:53 PM

January 05, 2006

Urge Underwhelmed

Apparently CES stands for Convergence Every Second. In the lastest and greatest round of the fabled show looks to ring in the year where they'll finally ram "convergence" down the collective throats of the buying public. Every booth seems to have the latest and greatests phoneorganizermoviemusicplayerinternetviagradispenser. I spent into the wee hours of the morning prior to the show welcoming my pals that are working for the breaking big time rock band in town for a gig. I got a bit of a later start on the festivities making the show floor by mid afternoon. I wanted to catch Intel's announcement of what was known as Yonah, or now properly Centrino Duo the new dual core cup for laptops. As I couldn't get tix to the keynote, I decided not to watch in an overflow room and catch it in the Intel booth. There was some time to kill and the mega booth of the Unholy Borg of the Northwest was across the aisle just getting ready to demo Windows Vista for Music.

The demo started a little late, but not near as late as Vista by the time it ships. In reality it was a demo of Windows Media Player 11 running under Vista. To me it looked like the latest in ill fated attempts at catch up to iTunes. I was surprised by the lack of some features and how far behind iTunes the product was particularly with regards to device integration. Vista though, looks pretty cool particularly on the latest group of tablets that are on display in the booth. More on the tablets in a few days after I spend some more time with them. The recently announced deal between Bill's Kids and Viacom in the form of "Urge" is gearing up to take online music world by storm but may fall flat on it's face. The service will specifically make content unusable on iPods by using the bundled Windows Media DRM. The reason the iPod (and as an extension iTMS) is so popular is because it's hip and cool. The kids dig it. The integration between the player, computer and the online store is excellent, even on Windows. Microsoft, Windows and even MTV are anything but hip and cool. The media player is less capable, the integration to all the different players is problematic and we have no idea what the price point will be or how easily the store will integrate with the software. There is also no real data to point to that consumers are willing to "rent" their music collection by subscription though that may be more of a generational issue. Even then, that's a pretty big leap of faith to think those kids are going to buy new devices only to use that service or hope that the myriad of device makers that support WMP will be considered better devices, let alone be percived as hip. Way too early for me to predict failure but at this point it seems more of a hamfisted play to gain marketshare rather than provide music fans with a pleasurable experience. We'll see...

The keynote by Intel's Paul Otellini introduced what had been widely known and anticipated, Intel's mobile dual core CPU. Not only for notebooks, expect to see this chip on other so called "personal devices". This also fuels speculation that at Macworld next week will rollout the first Intel based Macs, starting with iBooks and Minis. Otellini invited Micheal Dell on stage to demo a 20" laptop, with 8 speakers no less. In one seemingly unscripted moment when Dell was comparing side by side the 20" to a current Dell laptop, Otellini joked asking if Dell was planning on having a two for one sale. Without missing a beat, Dell shot back "well, are you going to be having a two for one sale?" With rumors coming out today that Dell may start using AMD processors in some lines, Otellini might want to think about giving that sort of deal to keep him in the fold.

Lotsa handheld gadgets, the Motorola Q looks cool. It's like a RAZR meets Treo meets Windows Mobile PC. I'll take a better look at it in the next day or so.

The stage in the Sony booth powered by Nexo Geo S and a new Yamaha M7CL.

LG was showing the "V" phone specifically for Verizon's V-Cast service. It's sort of a portable entertainment center that opens to a QWERTY keyboard and nice little (operative word being little) video display. It's been out for a bit, surprised I missed it until now.

Posted by Dave at 09:04 PM

January 01, 2006

Ringling to Ditch the Rings

Perhaps the best known touring circus on the planet and self proclaimed "Greatest Show on Earth", the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus has decided to try a new format this year. The "blue" company is abandoning the traditional three ring format along with some other pretty significant changes. The "red" company will continue with the traditional format at least for the time being. Part of the reason is a sort of changing of the guard with Nicole Feld, daughter of longtime producer Kenneth Feld in an co producer role. Other changes include adding IMAG (that's video screens, for you civilians), moving the circus band from the arena floor to a landing, or bridge above the floor. Other changes include getting rid of the "ringmaster" role and adapting the format to more of a story encompassing the whole show and incorporating ringers in the audience playing wannabe circus performers.

It's good to see the old circus get a facelift to compete in the entertainment market of today. I haven't been to see them in several years. Might just have to go check this one out.

Posted by Dave at 07:24 PM | Comments (2)

December 27, 2005

When the Only Tool You Have is a Hammer...

The first few times I read David Berlind going on about Apple abusing monopoly power over the refusal to license the Fairplay DRM I responded the same way that my friend Manuel from Barcelona would with a perpelexed "Que?". I blew it off as just another one of these tech pundits trying to play music biz exec or even perhaps the more charitable passionate music fan with an opinion on the subject. Music ain't tech and tech ain't music and as much as the Valley would like to think it is, it sure as hell ain't Hollywood. Conversely, so it seems, that the music biz is rather slow on the uptake of new technology and doesn't quite have a grasp on the future. The two are coming together and with any luck the best parts of the two will merge and start offering some services and a means to enjoy music that not only provide value for the consumers but also so the artists and perhaps the labels or whomever is distributing it can make some money.

As I'm trolling the blogosphere (can't y'all come up with a better name?) for the latest dish on Spitzer subpoenas for Warner, Sony and Universal with regards to alleged (wink, wink) colluding to price fix music downloads, kinda like what they were indicted for with brick and mortar CD sales a couple years back, I noticed Berlind's most recent piece.

Berlind does have a few really good points though there are a couple of Que? moments in there as well. One such Que? moment is he likens Apple to an abusive monopolist that has some sort of stranglehold on the music biz. Maybe in Jobs' wet dreams. Say what you will about DRM but the iTMS is just another way to get music onto your iPod. I'd agree that the current DRM strategies are pretty limiting and in some cases, downright dangerous. I don't know that I'd be too concerned about the future of DRM right now as thanks to Sony, the whole DRM debate has been turned on its head. Possible outcomes of this could be something like a less restrictive DRM or some sort of compuslory licensing that eliminates the need for DRM in the first place.

Another such Que? moment is when Berlind says...

"Down the road, when there are no more CDs and all music is bought online". (emphasis mine)

I agree that at some point CDs will not be the prevalent physical form factor for retail music just as cylinders gave way to records that gave way to tape that gave way to CDs. Nothing new here that hasn't been happening for the life of the music biz. It's the addition of DRM that has the potential to throw a wrench into the works. The current problem, for the labels, anyway, isn't a format change per se, it's that they are losing control of the format and distribution. Will there ever not be any sort of physical media for retail music? Maybe, but it may be about the time I finally get a date with Jane Jetson and start working at Spacely Sprockets. To think that music will only be available online as we know it today is the sort of tech tunnelvision that has led to other wild pronouncements that didn't quite pan out.

Music is enjoyed (notice I didn't say consumed) in many different ways in many different places by many different people. Working out with an iPod, listening to CDs in the car, rocking out at home on the computer. Not everyone is always connected or always has a computer when they want to enjoy music. One of the big selling points the tech wonks use are "on demand network", broadband, yada, yada, yada. I've had some form of "broadband" for about ten years but not everyone does nor does everyone want that (though most can get it if they want it) to be the only way they interface with other people or products. While I think it's possible and highly likely that some form of digital distribution will shake out of all this, eliminating point of sale retail for music would be foolish. The market is too big not to sell music in a traditional retail setting. There a need for some sort of media (USB flash, SD,CF?) to carry music from one device or network to the other. You can't tie music to a network or computer. Music is it's own thing and needs to be as portable as the people that are enjoying the music are.

One thing in the piece I thought rather poignant was how are we to personalize music gifts in the era of DRM downloads. Giving someone a gift card to buy "our song" is about as romantic as having the Fed Ex guy show up with a certificate for roses from 1-800-Flowers. I'm sure that some industrious chaps and chappettes will come up with a solution but that sort of underscores my point. Buying and listening to music is a human thing. It's about emotions and feelings. And that is what I think many on both sides, Hollywood and the Valley are missing. We aren't mearly consuming a data stream or Soundscan numbers, we're humans enjoying music.

Posted by Dave at 01:25 PM | Comments (7)

CES Bound?

In a couple of weeks geeks and suits from near and far will converge on our quaint little desert town for the annual running of the International Consumer Electronics Show, or CES. Not quite as hazardous as the Fiesta de San Fermin in Pamplona (unless you get caught in the rush for free AVN tix or free X Boxes) but still good fun all in all. You have until Fri (Dec 30) for no cost passes to the exhibits if you register online. You can find it, I know you get Google. I'm going to hit a few of the panels as well.

I'll post anything that interests me and likely comment on it as well. For those of you that can't make it this way for the show (if you haven't booked your room already, good luck) let me know if you want a specific booth or item checked out and I will do so.

Posted by Dave at 01:00 AM

December 18, 2005

EV DO Doesn't

One of the things I miss from The Digital Forrest is the availability of excellent data connections, both wired and wireless. And the killer beans from Caffe Vita. From atop the former Roaddog Manor on Capitol Hill, I had a bevy of data choices. We had fiber into the building, I had one of the first DSL connections in the building way back when. We had Comcast. There was free WiFi at the laundry/arcade around the corner, free WiFi across the street at Online Coffee (who serve the killer bean from Caffe Vita), a Starbucks (or "thee enemy" as my pal Super Roadie, who happens to have a Caffe Vita endorsement calls them) that has T-Mobile for a price. That's just in the 100 yard radius of the house. And doesn't count the 8 or so WiFi nets that my fellow tenants had. A few of them open at any given time.

Just prior to moving down, I moved the services that were being hosted at Roaddog Manor to a rent-a-box in a colo with better infrastructure and pipes than what I had, though my machines are a bit more robust. One of the things I was looking for down here was a place with the sort of connectivity of which I was accustomed. I rented on the Monday after I arrived, I moved in the next Friday. In the meantime I was surfing with Thee Enemy on my twenty dollar a week T-Moble card. Since I was only going to be in this place until March (the hard rocking casino next to us bought the property and is turning it into condos) I didn't want to get into anything long term. I was looking for something where I could have at least 768k both ways and not have anyone freak when I moved 20GB or so across the network and would impose any service restrictions on what was basically a jr. varsity data center. I found the big ISP in town, emailed them. Heard nothing. Called a couple of days later, left message. Heard nothing. Talked to the ILEC but they wanted year long service commitments, dynamic IPs, limited TOS (as in no servers) and wanted to me install a land line though I could get it unbundled. I haven't had a landline for voice in almost 10 years. The CLECs, the only one I could find couldn't offer anything different than what the ILECs did as they were basically reselling the circuit. What I'm doing, hosting my own Internet services, is pretty common in a tech haven like Seattle or the Silicon Valley but back in regularville (if you can call Sin City regular) people just don't host their own services. I then decided to leave the services at the colo. Hell, in bandwidth and electricity/cooling charges I'm actually saving a bit of money. So I took the introductory offer of 6MB/256k cable for forty bucks a month to tide me over until the minions of Peter take control of the property in March.

I've been looking for a while at the new (new to the US) 3G sort of data services and was pretty interested in the EV DO offerings from Verizon and now from Sprint. It's pretty much low speed broadband available in many places where you have mobile phone service. Touring this has been a consideration for several years. I can remember in the early days of the LAB having to direct dial from France into a modem connnected to a box in my apt so I could log into the server at the colo. I also used Compuserve and AOL to get on the network however I could. These days it's not that difficult. Most of the hotels I stay in now offer "hi speed" Internet though the good hotels still charge 10 to 20 bucks a day. At one resort in Austria over the summer they wanted (and we paid) 30 euros (about 36 bucks, kids) for 24 hrs of access. Since my slotting into a big time house gig down here is going to take a bit longer than anticipated, I've got a couple of small tours on the books after the start of the year. Though I'd rather stay in town to be available when that elusive slot opens, but I can make as much on a short run than I can doing local gigs in the meantime. Here's where the EV DO comes in. I need data services at home. I need data services when I tour and it can get pretty spendy if they don't have it at the gig.

EV DO seemed to be what I wanted. It wasn't blazingly fast, but it worked, was better than dialup and best of all I could get it in many of the places we were gigging. No more expensive WiFi, no more hunting hotspots if the gig or hotel didn't have them, no more paying premium in the airport for an hour or so use. Just plug and go, using the same account that I use at home for primary access. It's too easy, right? Depending on the plan, it was 80 to 100 bucks a month. More than I was paying for my broadband but it wouldn't take too many 10 or 20 dollar WiFi charges to equal out or even come ahead in the game, particularly if I was on an extended run where I was paying for service at home that I couldn't use. I mean, it's too easy, right?

I got ready to bite the bullet but at the Verizon store they didn't seem to be too up on many of the details and were pretty insistant on bundling another wireless account to the package to get the good deal. Since Google is my buddy I jumped on to see what Cingular and others were offering and ran across EVDOinfo.com and EVDOforums.com . Both great sites run by a company that sells Verizon and Sprint EVDO gear and services plus provides the Mac support the telcos don't. This was too cool. It looked like I was going to get portable US broadband though at a premium price. As I started poking around the site I noticed a thread from a guy that just received a termination notice due to overactivity. At first it appeared to be a gamer downloading games and I didn't think much about it until the discussion turned to the TOS and AUP from Verizon. And this is where I think they completely miss the boat on the best use for the service. Under the TOS, you aren't allowed to use it as your primary means for connecting to the Internet. Huh? While the service is geared to road warriors of Fortune 500s (and priced like it) I don't think they understand that guys like me could be gone for months and it will in fact be the primary means of Internet access. Anyway, that's easy enough to get around if your data transfer requirements aren't that critical. And that is where they really blow it.

Additional terms are that you aren't able to use the service to download movies, music, program files, use a Web cam, VoIP. Not just copyrighted material, ALL material of that kind. That means no visiting the iTunes music store or listening to NPR streamed to the desktop.

From the VZAccess TOS doc

"NationalAccess and BroadbandAccess data sessions may be used with wireless devices for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force and field service automation). Unlimited NationalAccess/BroadbandAccess services cannot be used (1) for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games, (2) with server devices or with host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, Voice over IP (VoIP), automated machine-to-machine connections, or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, or (3) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. NationalAccess/BroadbandAccess is for individual use only and is not for resale. We reserve right to limit throughput or amount of data transferred, deny or terminate service, without notice,"

You gotta be shittin' me. This is 2005. Has anyone at Verizon seen the Internet lately? Full motion video ads are pretty normal. I'm not talking about downloading movies but everyday normal stuff. iChat with your kid? Not if the "can you hear me now" guy has anything to say about it. Remote video conferencing would be a great way to pitch this expensive mobile networking solution, seems like a no brainer to me but they don't want you to use it for that. Automatic data feeds? Like RSS feeds? Sorry. Automated machine to machine connections? Has anyone explained to those guys what an SMTP server is and how it works? From a post at the forum, it was stated that the limits were 5GB a month for three months then you'd get sent a form letter and possibly disconnected AND charged the early termination fee. Considering an ISO of a CD is about 700 MB, that's nothing. The OSX autoupdate is at least 35 or 40 MB each time. Those of us that work on the network a bunch can do 5GB a month without breaking a sweat.

I understand concerns with the use of the bandwidth or piracy concerns but this is over the top and the reason you won't see me being a Verizon customer anytime soon, if at all. This is a premium service, perhaps over priced even and many of the killer apps that could help float this or other basic apps that are a daily part of the Internet are forbidden by the TOS. It's as if the policy wonks at Verizon are stuck in a mid '90s AOL centeric sort of Web model. I think that if those guys broke away from bundling services and concentrated on offering pay as you use services it would be much better for the users. If users want to video conference, fine, charge 'em. If I want to listen to Keillor and it churns more data, charge me. If the kid wants to download Lost to his iPod, charge him. I don't see that Verizon has anybody setting policy that knows what the Web is about these days. The potential to turn some of these verbotten apps into revenue generators that large companies will gladly pay extra for in the form of VoIP and remote video conferencing is pretty good. You lower the basic price or make it pay as you use. The users that didn't think 80 bucks was a good deal now get in at a lower price and pay for what they use. Conversely, the users utilizing more of the pipe pay more. To make up for the revenue lost because users aren't roped into flat rate accounts they don't need is made up by more users using less per user, but more overall. There are a lot more out there than the big spenders and having a pricing model that better serves all the users will go a long way toward making this the service to have.

Posted by Dave at 06:34 PM | Comments (5)

December 16, 2005

Birth of a (Live) Nation

Not a sequel to the D.W. Griffith classic but Live Nation is what the the soon to be spun off Clear Channel Entertainment is to be called. On Weds Dec 21 CCE Spinco, the holding company for the divestiture, will rename as Live Nation. Holders of Clear Channel stock will be issued one share of Live Nation for every eight shares of Clear Channel they own. Also on tap is moving the HQ from Houston to Beverly Hills (and has pretty much already happened) continueing the blood letting in the form of 400 jobs, or 10% of the workforce and slimming from fourteen operating units to six, music, theatrical, sports, venue management, marketing and interactive tech.

It'll be interesting to see if this will be a new face in the concert biz, reviving the spirit of the old days or if this is just another makeover for what is likely the most hated company in the touring business.

Posted by Dave at 12:28 PM

December 13, 2005

The Graduate (no Mrs. Robinson)

This is my recollection of the second and final day of breakfast and lunch with Yamaha punctuated by using a PM1D. The first day was pretty productive. We learned new things and got a great deal of free time on the console. For this second day we were going to go over the hardware ans setup config as well as get a tutorial of each of the menu panels and after lunch a more indepth look at V2. I'd come to listen to the new mic pre amps and to see what V2 was all about. And also for the free food.

I was looking forward to the hardware portion, though in hindsight it could be folded into the feature portion from the first day to save time. On the gigs I've done with a PM1D there has always been a tech that set it up and helped me program. I figured I should know how it goes together just in case I turn up at a gig to find a pile of parts and no guy or if the guy abandons ship prior to the gig. Once you see the topology it's pretty easy and more advanced configs are available like mirrored consoles, consoles sharing input devices and DSP engines and consoles sharing input device with separate DSP and scenes. They also went over a bit of the troubleshooting procedure and what to be able to provide when you call Yamaha for support. One neat thing was 24/7 emergency support if your console tanks late at night at a gig and an applications support line open during the week for general operational questions. I thought that was pretty cool that during the week you can call and ask them how to do something relevant to your app if you can't figure it out.

Of the questions I had one was regarding the use of fiber for longer distances. There is a box called the Artist 1D that Yamaha commissioned from Riedel to add fiber capability to the PM1D. It's 80 channels each direction and integrates pretty easily into the system. The trainers didn't seem to know too much about it in detail and I would suspect not that many have been deployed in the field. For example no one knew of any portable apps using this piece or how the connector configs were deployed though one of the theaters that had a person in the class had one deployed though he did not know the specifics of how it worked. When I asked about the connector specifics the marketing guy replied that they were "mil spec" connectors. Well, OK but what format? "Mil spec" again was the answer. That's not a format, that's a buzz word. When I asked if it was single or multimode fiber a similar confusion ensued, with one person saying yes you could operate the snake both ways. Persons that work with fiber, and this will become more and more common in our little world, need to be familiar with the various connector types as well as the difference between multimode and single mode fiber. The Riedel comes with LC fiber connectors (and operates on multimode fiber) but in a portable app LCs aren't something you'd like to haul around. They aren't made for repeated portable connections in harsh environments. You'd likely have to come off to a Stratos or other type of rugged use connection which would add a non trival amount to the cost. That's one area where I think Neutrik or Whirlwind could clean up is a lower cost, robust fiber connector for portable applications. Whilrwind has a fiber conenctor though I'm not sure of the pricing. Whirlwind is making a mult specific to the copper based PM1D config taking the SCSI type D connectors that connect the engines and frames to a circular mult, a la W3 though it's not listed on the Whirlwind site.

Next up was the software overview portion where we stepped through every menu on the surface. While the overview was handy I think that doing it on the first day would have been more appropriate as we had already covered most of the options the day before in the excercise. Still though, it was good to get a walk through. One thing that I hadn't fully understood prior was how the various panning modes operateded. This is a pretty critical thing when doing discrete ear mixes. Some players want either different spacing of panning or completely different, aysemetrical pans when compared to the other players. It's something my first couple of times on the console I stumbled on as the techs weren't used to doing ears and in one case, the tech didn't have a grasp on speaking english. The three modes are linking the mix bus pans to the L+R pans, linking all pans for that particular mix bus, separate from the L+R pans or individual mode where all pans operate independently. It's not very obvious and if you don't know about it or have a tech that knows about it you will spend some time trying to figure it out, if you are able to at all. One thing I'd like to see in fader flip mode is that when the pan is set to individual, the pan on the strip on the surface becomes the mix bus pan. The way it is now, you have to SEL the input and set the mix bus pans which is a bit more time consuming. A button to center the pan would be a nice addition as well.

After another fine lunch we were able to get a demo of the new FX and dynamics plug ins. They pretty much knocked off 1176s and 160xs as well as a Pultec eq and tape saturation device. They sound pretty good, better than stock dynamics units but that's the whole point, selling esoteric plugins as part of the upgrade. While the new plug ins are part of the V2 upgrade, I wish Yamaha would go the extra distance and either open up the API to third party developers of TDM or VST plugins or develop a stand alone plugin engine that interfaced with the system. I suppose one could do something like Plugzilla and interface via a DIO frame but I think it would be more advantageous, not to mention user friendly to incorporate it into the system. We were able to finish off the day with another couple of hours of lab time with the system but I had already completed my list of things I wanted to do and thought I'd get an early start dealing with the traffic back to Vegas. Prior to that I shared some of my PM5D settings on the demo piece in the lab as it didn't have any scenes populated. I had several configs of the mon gig I've been doing this year as well as an FOH gig I did last year. At the completion of the class, we were issued surveys of the class which we filled out and returned in exchange for a bag o' swag that included a PM1D branded hat, nice polo shirt, certificate of completion and Yamaha Commerical Audio branded mini mag light. Not a bad haul.

This was a very informative couple of days and I can't recommend it enough. My hosts were hospitable, informative and entertaining. The one thing that did stand out in my mind is how the PM1D went from industry leader on the release, to also run, long in the tooth status. While certainly functional and useab