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Unearthing A Performance Gem

As I was making my way to North Las Vegas to check out this room I have to admit that I was a bit torn. On one hand, I had recently met the technical director and A-1, and they were the kind of production guys I like to hang with–dedicated, down-to-earth and without any "don't you know who I am?" BS. Other production folks in town that I had talked to described The Club at the Cannery as an "A" room in a local casino in the "C" part of town. The important part, they stressed, was that it really was an A-level room.

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Deal Or No Deal

As I have mentioned here before, my wife is the queen of reality shows. I give a nod of gratitude to whatever power controls such things, as I am fortunate in that she has not gotten into the really bad ones. No Swan or Bachelor or Date My Dad or whatever the true dreck is. But we do get plenty of Survivor, The Amazing Race and American Idol. What can I tell you? Her latest thing, more of a game than a reality show, is Deal or No Deal. If you have missed it, there is a big, tiered stage with a bunch of hot model chicks, each with a briefcase that holds a placard with a dollar figure on it. The player picks one case which becomes theirs, and then starts having the models open cases, hoping for low numbers and that their own case holds the big money. After every few cases, the host calls an offstage "banker" who figures the odds based on the cases already opened and offers to buy the contestant's case for an amount somewhere between the lowest and highest numbers still in play. The host tells the contestant the amount the bank is willing to pay for their still unopened case and says "deal or no deal." Hence the name. The contestant has to decide if they want to take the amount offered, or chance opening more cases and finding out that their own case holds a buck. (Side note, the host is a comedian named Howie Mandel who is, these days, a pretty big deal. In the late '70s, I saw Howie Mandel at the Comedy Store in Westwood, CA and he was way weirder than his current image would suggest. Weird–and funny–enough that I still remember it.)

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No Soundcheck, No Headroom, No Problem

Live music is already a challenge in the modern world of multimedia concerts. Dealing with a new venue every night, multiple crews, gear issues and the requirements of different artists is certainly not easy. Now imagine you're on a tour with the Black Eyed Peas, a hot hip-hop crossover group that in concert features four singers, four live musicians, backing tracks, samples and a variety of instruments. Then imagine that there are almost no soundchecks ever.

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Who's Driving?

Think of recent history as divided into two archeological time periods: the craft-driven epoch and the market driven era. The former goes back many, many, many eons–at least to 1970–and was characterized by technology-based connections between parties in the live sound continuum: artists, sound companies and mixers chose each other almost solely on the basis of how good the technical fit was between them (with allowances, of course, for economics). The market-driven era, which we're in now, still has a technological dimension to it, but it also takes other factors into consideration. For instance, the kind of musical instruments used on a tour or in a music video is a function not only of what the musicians and technologists on the project want but also of what kinds of cross-marketing deals might have been made at levels above the trenches. The kinds of microphones in a venue might depend on which company has paid to banner that place. Those sorts of considerations only increase in importance and pervasiveness in a market-driven environment. That's why I thought that a new company, Guesthouse Projects, which launched earlier this year, fits the zeitgeist so well. Founded by Greg McVeigh, former vice president of touring sound at Meyer Sound, Guesthouse Projects takes the conventional relationship between touring artist and touring sound company and creates a multidimensional object by bringing a tour sound equipment manufacturer into the picture in the earliest stages of the relationship. Instead of a deal being struck between the first two parties, and then the manufacturers of the equipment leveraging their presence on the tour by following up with press releases, Guesthouse Projects proposes to have the equipment manufacturer become a dynamic rather than reactive participant in the process of putting sound systems together for artists and tours.

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The Tacklebox

Back in the early 1980s, when I was still in college chasing my electrical engineering degree, I volunteered to be a stage hand for a 24-hour charity dancea- thon at the college field house. Being a reasonably good musician and a novice sound person, I did not vie for the coveted Front of House mix position, as every wannabe techhead was already competing to "hang-out" at Front of House and hoping that the hourly change in bands was not accompanied by band engineers. But I had a blast practicing change-overs onstage, calling out new patches on a new-fangled wireless intercom and keeping the less-than-reliable racks and stacks working around the clock.

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Broadway Bites

Moody backdrops. Exotic locales. Brooding characters. Vicious vampires. They're all part of the dark drama that is Lestat, the musical inspired by the novels of Anne Rice and set to music by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Despite its epic story, the production finds a balance between over-the-top showmanship and intimate performances. FOH engineer Simon Matthews juggles a lot of audio for Lestat, and he has been with the production since its preview run in San Francisco prior to its Broadway debut. Here he talks about the transformation of this horror tale, which includes classic Broadway numbers, a gothic showstopper ("To Kill Your Kind"), and even a New Orleans dance number.

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Brands and Riders–A Rose By Another Name?

I am finding myself in a frustrating situation. I've been doing sound for my friend's band for about a year, and some other local bands have approached me to do the same for them. My dilemma is that these other acts want me to provide more equipment than I currently have. I'm willing to make the investment, but the brands of equipment that fit the budget don't meet my expectations of quality. How can I provide what these clients want, and do it with respectable equipment?

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Gear Lust

You have to be insane to own a studio or an audio rental house, or, if not crazy to begin with, the insanity will slowly overtake the unsuspecting entrepreneur as they realize the money pit they've fallen into. For audiophiles and providers everywhere the lure of the next piece of equipment is not merely a vanity, but a necessity when trying to compete with and stay ahead of all the latest breakthroughs in audio technology. Digital technology has made access to great sounding gear much easier than it was even five years ago and any engineer will attest to the fact that with all the available options, one's dream studio or sound system is only limited by one's budget.

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Regional Slants

Your mission, (should you choose to accept it) is: Get a gig in Mexico (preferably on the Baja Peninsula); transport yourself, a rig and a crew to the gig; do the show; get paid, have fun and go home. Or, better yet, start up a sound reinforcement company in Baja, around the Cabo San Lucas/ La Paz area and work there a few months out of the year. Actually, this has been my mission or dream for the last year or so. It all started when I went to Cabo San Lucas for the first time in 1991. I immediately fell in love with the place. Soon I found an outdoor bar that made excellent margaritas, and within a few days I got a gig there playing acoustic guitar and singing. I had that gig for five years, traveling down south once or twice a year to play music, lay in the sun, boat, eat, fish etc. During this time I never made any real money but I got free trips and had a ton of fun. And more importantly, I planted the seeds for my dream of having a viable sound company south of the border. The following writings are my experiences, subjections and observations with regards to the pursuit of live sound in Baja California. However, I believe you can use this information for a variety of business ventures not to mention general travel. So, let's go:

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Making the Leap from FOH "Boy" to FOH "Man"

Balance is a tough thing. At FOH we are constantly being bombarded with requests/ideas/suggestions for sound guys to interview. Lots of good guys out there and who gets in is as much an issue of timing as anything else. But sometimes we will have to choose between a couple of interesting candidates. Like this month. On the one hand, we've got a young guy by the name of Kyle Chirnside who has gone with Fall Out Boy from clubs to arenas in a year. On the other, Brian Ruggles–who has been at the desk with Billy Joel for 35 years and who is one of the really great live engineers still working–was going to be in town. What to do? How about both? Call it a generational thing or a passing of the torch or just a cop-out on our part but we decided to talk to both of them. And, age and experience notwithstanding, they both had some interesting thoughts on the current state of live event audio.

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The Wedge Between Us

The Pastor wants them, the choir wants them, every musician in the worship band wants them (drummers like two), and the FOH person frequently wishes they didn't exist at all. We are talking, of course, about stage monitors or wedges. They are on my "Three Evils of Church Audio" list for several reasons, and unfortunately in this case evil is many times tangible and audible. Let's take a brief look and listen…

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Ego Check

The best disruption repair I ever saw didn't involve any human problem, but an electrical one. It was a blazing hot day at the Philly Folk Festival a while back. During an afternoon round robin at one of the side stages, among the performers was a "name" who obviously was none too happy to be playing to a bunch of hicks (comment: "If I knew I'd be doing workshops, I would have brought my knife so I could show you how to whittle.") and a fairly newly-established Susan Werner. Name brand had just finished a song, and Susan stepped up to the mic and launched into "So Heavy (When You're Holding Up the Ceiling)." About a minute into the song, something apparently shorted out in the amp, resulting in a 60Hz blast at about 120 dB. The soundman, after a brief attempt to correct the problem from the board, tore down behind the stage and pulled the plug, eliminating the noise, but leaving the stage 100% acoustic. When we could all hear again, we realized that Susan had waded out into the middle of the crowded hillside and was leading the multitudes in an a cappella chorus of "So Heavy". A minute or so later, the sound restored, she strolled back up to the stage and finished the song with amplification. She got a twominute screaming standing ovation. Name brand got polite applause and was not invited back.

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