Mercury Rev completes touring “All is Dream” with shows in Australia. Always a pleasure to visit Australia with the exception of the long flight there and back, though the flight wasn’t too bad as I slept most of the way. Three festival shows for the Livid festival and four club shows to end the tour. The club shows were a mix of stuff, though mostly old desks in need of some loving care, that or the trash! 😉

The Livid festivals present a mix of line arrays. We played on the main stage before Oasis, well, that is the second main stage, as they had two “dome” stages right next to each other. This made for a very easy changeover, and more prep time for me at FOH and Oliver at MON to get our desks set up. From the audience point of view its also a nice set up as there is nothing blocking the view of the stage, as the mix position was set up in between the two stages. Though while good for the audience it wasn’t the best for me, as I basically listened to the center line array, mixing in mono per se. And with Powderfingers desk in front of mine I was a bit secluded in the FOH tent, I couldn’t even see any PA at the show in Brisbane. So I spent a lot of time on headphones and hoped the local crew would tell me if anything was out of whack.

The first show in Brisbane was with the EAW line array, and I can’t say I was too impressed. Didn’t seem to have the dispersion and sound quality of many of the other line arrays. Though the dome stages were working against us. The roof came out a to about the barricade, so if you were in the first 20 rows or so you couldn’t even see PA. The Brisbane rig didn’t have any front fill, but the Sydney and Melbourne sights did. The ceiling at the mix position was too low, and a basically couldn’t hear any of the PA directly. Oh well…

In Melbourne it was the Vertec rig, which is pretty good, still sound a bit like JBL but carries for days, and If your going for a rock NS-10 sort of sounding mix, they will do the trick. In Sydney it was the V-dosc, and here I was happiest. While the Vertec was good, a go for a bit of a high-fi mix with Mercury Rev and the V-dosc gave me what I asked for. So our tour ended on a good note for me. Now the boys head into the studio to work on their next masterpiece, and hopefully I will be around for the next go round.

Big thanks to all the Australian crews, and especially to Al our local Tour Manager who did a great job. Will be a pleasure to experience Australian hospitality in the future.