'Twas the night before Christmas; the deadline was tight.
The tempers were flaring; there was no end in sight.
The ground plans were hung on the walls without care,
While hundreds of box truss were flown in the air.
The Clients were nestled all snug in their beds
While us in production were banging our heads.
The script had revisions; the computer had crashed.
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On a perfect Las Vegas evening, a recordbreaking audience gathered in a Venetian Hotel Ballroom to pay tribute to the very best of the year in our annual "Oscars of the Live Event Industry" affair.
"When you think about it, it's against our very nature to attend an event like this," observed master of ceremonies and president of Timeless Communications Terry Lowe during the ceremony's opening moments. "We tend to be the kind that shuns the spotlight. We'd rather be pointing it. We'd rather EQ than speak into a mic."
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Chris Raboid and Brad Blettenberg are a good team. Covering FOH and MON plus production for Southern rock jam band Widespread Panic, they have become "part of the family" with a band known for going through sound guys with almost Prince-like regularity — Chris has helmed FOH for five years, and Brad has been camped out at the side of the stage for a decade. FOH caught up with the daring duo on the band's Halloween show in Las Vegas (you can't tell, but the singer is wearing a chicken suit in the pics) and got a glimpse of a crew that has both the chops and the balls to hang with a band that regularly takes things to the edge of the musical abyss without ever falling over. And this band that has never had a radio hit was touring with one of the most cutting-edge and best-sounding systems we have heard in a long time. Here's how they do it.
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In the relatively complex audio world of live performance theatre and non-touring based performances, Meyer Sound has emerged as the loudspeaker of choice. But in the late '80s, it was a different story. In the late '80s, CD players were just taking hold, iPods were sciencefiction conceits and the Rolling Stones were the biggest touring act out there. OK, so that last one hasn't changed, but just about everything else in the world of live audio has. Got digital?
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Produced over the course of the Halloween weekend, the Vegoose music festival in Las Vegas, Nev., featured jam bands, punk bands, fringe bands and mainstream headliners spread out over three days and the city of Vegas. Bands such as Widespread Panic and the String Cheese Incident played out in late night gigs at clubs closer to the casinos [Interview with Chris Raboid And Brad Blettenberg of Widespread Panic is on page 26 –ed.], while the main show was concentrated on the grounds of Sam Boyd stadium in the city's southwest corner.
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SLS 8290 Dual-Purpose PA Box
How many times have you been shown a vaguely trapezoidal box and then been promised that it can serve as a mid-high box or a full-range monitor? And how many times have you actually dared use the "multipurpose" box as a monitor and then as a house box? And how often do you keep using it for two different applications? The point here is that, multi-purpose or not, a box will generally end up only getting used for whatever it's best at — no matter what the manufacturer says. So let's say we are skeptical when we take a multipurpose box out on both MON and FOH duty.
Read More »Hey, friends, if you are reading this article because you missed church last Sunday, you've come to the wrong place. Even though I attend church regularly, I cannot offer any absolution for your sins. However, if you want to create better sound at your home church or get some valuable insight into the mechanics of house of worship installations, you're talking to the right guy.
In this particular issue we will be looking at personal monitors (a descriptive term for monitoring headphones that fit inside the ear canal) for the worship team (that would be a descriptive term for the musicians/singers that lead the congregation in worship songs). There are a variety of PM products available on the market, and certainly PMs are by no means new phenomena. So I am not going to explore the different manufacturers or the pros and cons of wired versus wireless systems. You get out there and do your homework on what products will serve your particular client, and I will try to add some insight to the rest of the process.
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Any sound person who has been in the biz for a while usually has a GFCI tale of woe to tell. Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters (GFCIs) are those pesky receptacles found in bathrooms, kitchens and outdoor locations to prevent a shock hazard when water and electricity could mix. Unfortunately, the National Electric Code (NEC) requires GFCI circuits if the public (read: musicians) has access to outdoor electricity. There are exceptions on GFCI usage for carnival vendors, sound and lighting gear and other utilizations where the public normally is not likely to engage electrical appliances directly.
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Already a classic children's book and animated television program, Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas! also became a hit movie with Jim Carrey and a popular musical theatre production that has run seasonally in San Diego for eight years in a row. Now, Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical is tantalizing Broadway in its first holiday run. The Grinch team does a great job of replicating the look of the book, collecting a good ensemble cast, and delivering a charismatic Grinch (Patrick Page). Sound designer Tom Clark, one of the powerful triumvirate that is Acme Sound Partners, took on the show without having been involved with the original production. He treated The Grinch as if it was a brand new show. The 70- minute production moves quickly but does not overwhelm the audience, nor does the unobtrusive, but well-layered, sound design.
Read More »You can tell you've got a growth sector when more people want to sell services and products around it. For instance, there's a business in iPod accoutrements that's almost as big as iPod sales themselves. If the education sector is any indication — and it is — then live sound is a bull market.
Several key college and universitylevel media technology operations have been ratcheting up their live sound offerings. Full Sail in Orlando has a training area about the size of an airplane hangar to support the show production and touring courses that they upgraded in 1998, from a component of the audio engineering path to its own 13-month degree program.
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HELSINKI, FINLAND — 50 Cent performed two nights, in front of 17,000 fans, at Helsinki's largest venue, the Hartwall Arena. Since 50 Cent was not on tour, the Hartwall concerts were a one-off event, so his production used local services, calling upon Akun Tehdas, Finland's leading equipment rental provider, to supply all 50 Cent's sound requirements. "This was a typical large scale event for us," said Timo Liski of Akun Tehdas.
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BERKELEY, CA — On this year's "Gigantour 2," Megadeth's tour with opening acts Lamb of God, Opeth, Overkill and Arch Enemy, the central philosophy was clear: loud is good, but louder with clarity is better, and with that in mind, tour sound providers Thunder Audio turned to Meyer Sound's MILO curvilinear array loudspeaker to do the job. Thunder vice president Paul Owen reports that, initially, not everyone realized what MILO could do. But Owen, who has mixed monitors for Metallica and worked on tours by AC/DC, Disturbed, Slipknot and Mudvayne, was quite confident about his specification.
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