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Jersey Boys

Jersey Boys

One of the hottest tickets on Broadway is Jersey Boys, which tells the mostly-unknown behind-the-scenes story of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons; their rise from a working-class New Jersey town, where they were connected to the Mafi a, up through their staggering pop success and eventual dissolution. What's impressive are not just the dramatic performances, multiple set changes, live musicians and two-tiered stage with projections, but the quality of the lead actors' performances and their musical abilities. Audiences really buy them as the Four Seasons, and John Lloyd Young, making his Broadway debut as Frankie Valli, brings down the house every night.

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Who's Driving This Bus?

The live concert/touring biz pulled a rabbit out of the hat in 2005. Mid-year, Pollstar's data indicated that concert attendance had declined in North America by nearly 12% despite the fact that the cost of tickets had experienced their first drop in a decade. Fewer warm bodies in cheaper seats produced a drop of more than 17% in overall revenue. However, by year's end, a tour schedule back-loaded with big names such as the Rolling Stones and U2 pushed the year's total take to $3.1 billion, up 11% over 2004.

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Perk or Problem?

I so hate to use a line I have used before in a column, but sometimes there is no getting around it. Remember that TV show, Hill Street Blues? (For you pups out there, it was way back in the dim past in a time called the '80s.) Every show would begin with the crusty old Sarge doing the daily briefing for all of the street cops, and he would always end it the same way–"Be careful out there."

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Do the Right Thing

While sitting at a bar, a man noticed a good-looking woman and tried to engage her in a conversation. "Excuse me," he said, "would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"

Not knowing what to make of this, she looked him over, and after a moment or so, answered, "For a million dollars, I would sleep with you."

He thought a moment, and then asked, "Would you sleep with me for $1?"

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Mary McFadden and Chicago

How much abuse can a traveling analog FOH console take before it expires? Mary McFadden knows the answer. The sound engineer for the national touring company of the hit musical Chicago dealt with that issue recently after spending two years on the road with a faltering analog board sandwiched within digital gear.

The Tony Award-winning Chicago is already a challenging show with its concertstyle production where the bandstand with full band onstage, also the centerpiece of the scenic design, is a substitute for the traditional pit orchestra. A little over a year ago, McFadden and Chicago's sound system designer, Scott Lehrer, decided to remove a badly limping analog FOH console for Yamaha's digital PM5D desk. The touring show's production package was a more modest adaptation of a system designed for the 1,587-seat Schubert Theater in Manhattan. At the start of the national tour in May 2003, a Yamaha DM2000 sidecar was substituted into the system to replace an analog board, and it was joined to a smaller mainframe analog desk, to shrink the mix-position footprint in the smaller venue. But within two years, the analog desk began to develop problems that eventually required its retirement.

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Winter NAMM 2006

FOH was well represented at Winter NAMM with as many as six of us on the floor at times (OK, that six includes the ad folks, but ours are not weasels, so we can include them). While there was nothing really earth-shattering, there was some cool stuff, and some of it in unexpected places. Each of us had our favorites, but a couple of things caught everyone's eye. I have yet to talk to a soundguy at any level from regional on down who wasn't jazzed by the Peavey Distro, and their line array created quite a buzz as well. A couple of us saw some not-yet-released EV stuff that we can't talk about without an automatic contract going out on all of us and our families, but it will be worth talking about eventually.

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But Will It Sell in Omaha?

"Omaha, somewhere in middle America…"

When Adam Duritz of Counting Crows fame penned these words in 1993, he probably didn't know that we'd still be hearing them on the radio more than a decade later. And yet, for many people, this chorus may be the first thing that comes to mind when we hear mention of this Midwest city. David Lemke is one of many people working to change all of our minds.

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Regional Slants: Guest Engineers: Their Toys…and Their Riders!

A little history about HAS Productions: I started this company about 10 years ago as a "small club/anklebiter"-size house. As time progressed, I realized what a gear whore I was! I wanted bigger, better toys, and with that, you need bigger, better gigs to pay for them. At this point, this seems to be a FULL-TIME TREND! Every time you get that next toy, you need another.

But with all of that, in the beginning, the issue of a guest engineer never came up, or it was never an issue.

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SPROING!

About 1986, I was working a multiple- stage event at Marineland (which is now closed). We had six systems up and running at any one time, although mostly it was two or three with everyone else on break. It was during one of these periods when I was at the main stage (the Dolphin Show arena). We had a 30-bottom three-way system up and running, and Robbie Edwards was mixing FOH on an older Tangent console. What Robbie didn't know was that this particular console (from circa 1980) had an INTERNAL spring reverb! We weren't using it, and he didn't ask.

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A Revolution of Sound and Spirit

As most people will acknowledge, we live in challenging times– fraught with obstacles that can cause even the most steadfast among us to stumble. In its ongoing effort to help today's youth "face and defeat the everyday 'giants' they encounter," Christian organization Dare 2 Share, in association with Focus on the Family, is sponsoring the Revolution tour–a 10-city circuit spanning the continental U.S. that includes motivational speakers, skits and musical performances by artists Danny Oertli and Starfield.

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Mid-Market Digital Consoles

Call it a testament to just how much mind-share has been gained by makers of digital consoles for live use, but this is the third time in 25 months that FOH has done a product gallery dedicated to this slice of the market. The first one in Jan. 2004 featured 14 models from six companies, and the prices ranged from less than $5,000 to nearly a quarter of a million dollars to "if you have to ask, you can't afford it."

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