Industry Leaders Tip Fedoras in Tribute to Patrick Stansfield
Nearly 300 friends and members of the live event industry gathered at PRG’s facility in San Fernando, CA on Dec. 7 to send off one our own, Patrick Stansfield. Stansfield was a tour manager who worked with such acts as Santana, the Rolling Stones, and most notably, Neil Diamond for 25 years (Diamond and many from his organization attended the event).
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What’s Wrong with Live?
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This is supposed to be the season of hope and good cheer, but I’m troubled about certain events related to our industry stemming from NBC’s December 3rd live broadcast “Christmas in Rockefeller Center.” Sure, there are far more pressing developments in the news, ranging from freaky weather to racial tensions to the general state of the world. However, as live entertainment is our world, it bears discussion, as this could have some serious ramifications about the future of live performance. Read More » Garth Brooks is BackWhen F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that there are no second acts in American lives, Garth Brooks wasn’t around to refute that assertion. After officially “retiring” from recording and performing in 2001 — with periodic, strategic breaks to drop a few new singles and one-off shows — he came part of the way back in 2009 with a five-year performance-in-residence at the Encore Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Now, with a new deal with Sony Music Nashville and the release of his catalog in digital — something he resisted doing for years — Brooks embarked on a three-year-long world tour in September. Read More » Five Finger Death PunchGlobal rock heavyweights Five Finger Death Punch (5FDP) quickly rose to fame after the release of their first Album The Way of the Fist in 2007. Since then, 5FDP has sold more than 2.6 million albums in the U.S. and a new single, “Wrong Side Of Heaven” (on the plight of veterans suffering PTSD) has racked up more than 10 million plays on YouTube since Aug. 11. Read More » Making the Leap: The Realities of Room TuningPerhaps you are the owner of a regional production company, the sound guy for your band, or the production manager for a venue. Over the years you have purchased better microphones, switched from an analog console to a digital console, added a DSP to your system and maybe even moved to self-powered loudspeakers. Every once in a while, you’ve had a band mixer or system tech show up with SMAART, or Systune, or SpectraFoo to “tune your system.” Sometimes the results have been impressive, other times, not so much. Either way you see that said sound person has well over $1,000 invested in software, computers, microphones and interfaces to enable them to do whatever they’re doing, and you decided it is not worth the money for your business, band or venue. Read More » From Where I SitTraveling around the world and performing in a different city each day, it’s somewhat difficult to establish a lasting sense of continuity within one’s daily professional experience. We consecutively encounter venues that vary in age, size and architectural design — with each structure presenting its own unique set of physical and acoustical challenges. One of the few constants on a world tour with a major artist is the presence of those few pieces of essential gear that we carry everywhere with us. For example, I have been mixing on the same DiGiCo SD5 console since this tour began last May. It is both the cornerstone and the centerpiece of my mobile office. Read More » When It Comes to Trade Shows, Sound Reinforcement Has a Lot of Choices
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