It’s been quite a while since I last posted anything on my blog. There are some very good reasons for this, which I will now explain to you.

Work

Work has been stupidly busy over the last few weeks. There are plenty of lowlights. Dance schools, corporate work, and days of paperwork that backs up on my desk while I work on shows. These are just a few of the annoying as shit jobs that have been taking my time.

There was one highlight that became a lowlight. We had Dr Hook, the hit makers from the 70’s at our venue. I was looking forward to that show. It’s not often that I get to mix for honest to goodness legends of Rock and Roll. It’s also not often that I get to really crank up the volume of our PA system and really put on a Rock show.

I received the tech specs from the promoter and it was a big show. Seven sends of foldback monitors, requests for extra subwoofers, the list goes on and on. Unfortunately the promoter didn’t want to pay for any of the additional equipment that was required to meet the spec. I told them that a dedicated monitor engineer was needed to cater for the performers needs during the show, they told me I had to do it from the front of house position.

Now this is fairly normal for smaller shows. On this show however, we were talking about a lead singer who is in his 60’s, has spent the best part of 30 years in front of very loud bands, has two, count them, TWO hearing aids, and requires extremely loud monitor volumes to be heard over the drumkit and band amplifiers that are no more than five feet from him at all times.

Add to that the fact that my console is up three flights of stairs at the very back of the room and there are 800 people between me and the stage and you can start to get a picture of the problems that can occur.

And of course, they did. Part way through the show, Ray Sawyer’s foldback wedges start to cut in and out. He complains to me over the PA, but I can’t fix it. I send my guy on stage to go and figure out the problem. He can’t find it. It seems to be an intermittent issue that he can’t track down easily.

The show went on but it suffered, and I got the blame, even though I said it could happen and said they should have had a monitor engineer on stage to do it. Sometimes it sucks being right.

Games

I’ve been playing a lot of Eve:Online lately. It’s a space based MMORPG and is possibly the most addictive game I have ever had the fortune/misfortune of playing. This game sucks me in for hours at a time, and, although I know I should be writing a post on my blog, I always forget until midnight when I must sleep in preparation for work.

Sleep

The final and possibly most important reason for not writing. Any spare time that I can find between work, Eve, and general personal maintenance (food, bathing, toilet stops) is filled with sleep. That doesn’t mean that there is a lot of it going on, but all spare time is definitely being occupied by it.

And now, the weather.

While the Northern Hemisphere sits wonderfully cool and wintery, we here in Australia are one day away from the official start of summer.  For those of you who have never experienced and Australian summer, here is a brief overview.

By mid spring we have reached daytime temperatures of 30 degrees celsius. Night time temperatures are starting to rise and blankets and heaters have long been traded for a single sheet and a fan or air conditioning. (If only I could afford air con I’d be fine)

By the end of spring, such as today, we here in Ipswich have hit a midday high of 38 degrees celsius. You walk outside and the heat hits you like a giant wall of warm molasses. You sweat. Constantly. The breeze is hot, even in the shade. Tonight it will probably only get down to 22 or 23 degrees.

I’m sitting here on my lounge, with my laptop burning my legs, a fan on high pointed directly at me. I probably won’t move for the next few hours because to do so would mean more sweat.

I can’t wait for my holidays to start in a few weeks so I can go home to Hervey Bay and sit in cool ocean breezes while I drink on the back patio of my Mum’s house. Until then, I actually look forward to going to work, just so that I can sit in the air conditioning.

That’s right, it’s dance school season at the theatre. What does this mean, you ask? Picture this.

10 local dance schools
Multiplied by
an average of 100 kids between the ages of 4 and 16
Multiplied by
one rehearsal and one concert each
Multiplied by
the 10 or 15 Top 40 songs that will be overused by each dance school

What does it really mean? It’s the nightmarish screams of small children running (or attempting to run) riot in a theatre full of  dark corners, small hidey holes and things that if the wrong lever is pulled can kill you. It’s a run of shows where the teachers (for the most part) have little or no concept of how to present a quality performance.

Little things like accurate cues from a stage manager disappear completely. In professional theatre, cues are generally called in a specific manner. e.g.

“Standby CD Track 12″
“Standby Lighting Cue 15″
“Lighting Cue 15….GO!”
“CD Track 12…GO!”

It’s simple to follow, it’s very specific as to when the cue actually is meant to happen (in fact I once got yelled at by a stage manager for going on the “G” in go and not waiting for the “O”) and there is prior warning so that everyone is ready.

Instead with dance schools we get the following.

“Music……..”
“Music…….”
To which I reply “Is that a go?”
“YES MUSIC GO!!!!”
“Bring the lights up! Pick up Sarah in the followspot!” (Remembering that we have no idea who Sarah is, and if they mentioned that she is the one in the pink leotard while everyone else is in purple it might be easier)

And so on, and so forth, for the next 4 weeks.

Now, while some male readers might be thinking, “Wow, hot girls in lycra who are so flexible that they can bend over backwards and lick their own ankles. That sounds great!”. Take a second to really think about what we watch each night. First there are the dancers who are obviously too young to look at. That’s easy. Then the senior classes come up. Now you have 10 to 30 girls on stage. Some may be old enough, some aren’t, most of them you can’t tell either way and therefore end up avoiding looking at any of them lest you be considered some kind of pervert.

And just when you look on the run sheet and see the adult class coming up, you realise the true disappointment that awaits you. You see, when young girls really want a career in dancing, they tend to stay fit and trim, and they also go and find jobs as showgirls, professional ballet dancers, or strippers. (Don’t say that strippers aren’t talented dancers, they work hard for the money)

Meanwhile, back at the dance show, the adult class is populated by middle aged women who, lets face it, have had a few kids, are not quite the gorgeous young things that they were 15 - 25 years ago, and are really only dancing for something to get them out of the house one night a week.

And so, a potential hottie fest is quickly reduced to the 3 girls that you know for sure are over 18.

Yes, the truth hurts. My job for the next 4 weeks is to not look at women, listen to music that I generally hate, get frustrated over every missed or miscalled cue, attempt to show amazement at the terrible attempts at scenery that the schools arrive with, and to dream of the Dr Hook show that I am mixing mid way through the dance season that will get me my rock and roll fix.

I would still rather be doing this than working in a bank, though. I can take some solace in that.

Two days off in a row. A luxury in my line of work. So, I spent last night drinking with friends who are down here working on the U2 concert in Brisbane. I got to bed around 3am, looking forward to a nice long sleep in this morning.

7:15am - the trainee from work rings to check what time he needs to come in to work today. I ask him if he checked his voicemail for the message telling him not to come in today. He says he has no credit on his phone so I get pissed at him and hang up.

7:21am - had a smoke and went back to bed

9:06am - office girl from work rings, apologises for calling me on my day off. My brain says, “Well why the FUCK are you calling me then?” Someone from Council needs a portable stage for an event at 6:30am on Saturday morning. I tell her all my crew are working from 10am to midnight on Saturday and there is no way I am calling them in at 5am to lug 4 stage modules to a cemetery in the middle of nowhere, for a 30min ceremony, and then have them work all day.

9:15am - had another smoke and went back to bed.

9:30am - it’s now too freaking hot to sleep so I get up and lie out on the couch and watch TV all day. A few beers, some nice food for lunch (Reheated lasagne), and a good fan and my day is improving. Now I can look forward to another night of beer and bourbon and tomorrow I am definitely sleeping in.

I had 60’s legends, Herman’s Hermits, at the theatre last night. It was the first time that I was able to use the Digico D1 with a live band. The show we just finished was a musical which let me test the snapshot stuff but it wasn’t really a good test of the full capabilities of the desk.

The Hermits are a 4 piece with drums, bass, guitar and keyboards. 4 sends of foldback were run from front of house. Continue Reading »

My first ever blog I’ve been meaning to get around to this for months now. We’ll see if I’m able to stick with it, I have a tendency to get bored sometimes.

Anyway, I had a really good show on Thursday night. I’m a sound engineer for a regional theatre near Brisbane, Australia. On Thursday we had Aled Jones, a well known singer from Wales, performing at our theatre. Normally an international act like his would be touring with their own production crew and equipment, but on this tour he is doing whistlestop shows all over the country back to back so he is using in house engineers and gear to save on the logistics involved.

For me, this was a bonus. Most times I set up the PA and mics, assist the touring engineer with anything they need during soundchecks and then I head backstage to watch the show and then pack it all up. I probably get to mix about 10 or 12 decent acts a year and the rest of the time it is community groups/schools and corporate events with 2 lectern microphones and a CD player.

On this show I got to spec all the equipment we would need to hire in, organise the crew we would need and mix front of house sound. To be honest, I had never heard of Aled prior to the show being advertised for the theatre. I didn’t know what his music was like, whether he would be a prima-donna, or if I would hate every minute of it.

To my great joy, Aled and his crew were great to work with. He and his musical director were perfectionists, but that is to be expected in this industry. I guess deep down I am a perfectionist also when it comes to live sound, because I know that when a crowd walks out of a great show they give credit to the performer, when it’s a bad show they credit it to the venue. I’ve always tried to do the absolute best that I can so that my venue keeps a good name. The better the punters think of the venue the more tickets they buy. The better name we have with touring crew and promoters, the more shows that come to our venue. Both things keep me and my crew in work and helps me get new and expensive toys from the Boss

This was the first show on the tour so we had a few hassles getting their gear integrated into our rig and figuring out how the show would run etc. The biggest problem was fitting a 75 person choir onto a stage that already had a harp, a string quartet, a grand piano, Aled, and 11 foldback wedges on it. We eventually added extra risers and stood the choir around the string quartet. The choir director wasn’t overly pleased with the situation but I left it to the Tour manager to solve that problem. Sometimes it’s nice being able to handball the nasty stuff up a level.

We had a really long soundcheck/rehearsal due to the musicians being new to the music, and never having performed with Aled prior to this show. As with most professional classical musicians though, the MD gave them music and they played it as though they had been playing it for the last 10 years. It amazes me to this day that people are that talented. It also makes me wish I’d stuck at it when I started learning guitar instead of getting lazy and playing everything by ear. We started sound check at about 4pm and finished at 7:25pm, just 5 minutes before doors opened for the audience.

That gave me 20 minutes to chain smoke as many cigarettes as I could before I needed to be back at the FOH position. I don’t know why but I always smoke more just before a show than I ever do any other time.

The show started with the choir for 20 mins which was a pretty easy mix. Just 2 shotgun mics on the choir and the piano. Aled came on and the job got interesting. I had originally thought that this was going to be set and forget for most of the show. Instead I found dynamic changes throughout the performance that kept me on my toes, watching the musicians, spotting the person who just started playing the main melody, keeping them all balanced and most importantly making sure that every single member of the audience could hear Aled clearly over the top of it all. In our venue, which for that show was set with seats on the flat auditorium floor and seats in the balcony it becomes an interesting exercise in guesstimation. I was set on the floor at the back of the audience and so I knew what I was hearing was pretty close for the 3-400 people downstairs. The 150 or so in the balcony meant I had to guess how loud it was upstairs, and how loud I could get downstairs without annoying the crowd while still ensuring it was loud and clear in the balcony. At interval I had a few punters come and do the standard, “We can’t hear this, we can’t hear that”, comments. I just didn’t have the heart to tell them that most of the times they couldn’t hear the harp was because she was miming to a backing track and wasn’t actually playing.

At the end of the show I got great reports from my manager, the tour manager, the MD and Aled about the sound. It’s always nice to hear from the people who actually know what it should sound like that you got it right. Even better was the tour manager delivering a 30 pack of beer to our crew for a job well done. Now that’s the way to show your appreciation!

All in all this gig went from one where I expected a standard senior citizens entertainment evening, to a gig where I was challenged at every turn, and even more surprisingly, I enjoyed the music.

So that ends the good gig story. Fear not that bad gig stories will follow, and in fact will be more prevalent than good gigs. But, I figured that this gig was worthy of a first blog because it shows that my job is fun, and reminds me why I keep going back for the 14 hour days