Here’s the view of Tokyo from my hotel room window. At the bottom of the tube shaped building on the left is a Starbucks, and luckily, grande latte is the same in Japanese as it is in English, you just need to add “kudasai” at the end, and your being polite.
The day after we arrived it snowed, which is fairly rare in Tokyo. It’s a game of frogger trying to walk around Tokyo sometimes as there are so many people, and then add umbrellas into the equation and it’s Supper Frogger.
All the venues in Japan are pretty sick. At least if your doing the Club Quattro tour (as most major cities have such a named club.) Places fit from 500 to 800 or so people, the smallest clubs you would play over there as a national touring act. Normally such a tour in the states would have you mixing on some allen and heath or old soundcraft, through a slightly too small PA. But in Japan the S*#t is tight. For example…
The First show at Club Quattro Tokyo – Capacity 700 – 56 channel Midas Heritage 2000 , XTA, Arcs and SB-218’s. There’s even an Allan Smart C-2 comp across L/R to protect the pa, and the Midas desk caddy or whatever they call it tops it all off with a bow.
So they don’t have the traditional snake that other places would have, and all the clubs pretty much have the same set up, the back of FOH wheels out like a huge door and reveals endless patch possibilities. The snake from the stage ends in the XLR “patch bay” below the desk (as well as all outboard) and each show they start fresh and patch things as ever you like.
Here’s the house PA, 3 arcs on top of 3 sb-218’s, for 700 people in a deadish, low ceiling venue, heaven…
Oh what’s that? You say, that looks like 6 Arc’s? But no, to get the pa higher, and look pro doing it…..
They have dummy boxes. (as we see from the rear)
The monitor desk was a 48ch XL-3 and in monitor world there is the same “however you like it” patch bay set up.
We ate so well in Japan, always do really, the promoter takes care of taking everyone out to dinner each night, and it doesn’t get much better, just watch out for the nato (or however they spell it, it’s fermented (read “rotten”) soy beans, ug! And they also eat Horse, which is a bit odd, to each their own.
All the shows are over before 10:00 PM if not earlier, locals crews have your shit packed in no time, and out to dinner you go, and the best place we ate was a place called By the Sea, a more “homey” looking place then many of the other places we went, but the best, best, best food I’ve had in a long time. And just cool as all hell.
From city to city you just hop on the bullet train, nice smooth ride, no hassle with having to go through security and all that jazz, just hop on and off, always on time.
And you even get a good view of Mt. Fuji on the trip from Tokyo to Nagoya.
The last gig in Hiroshima, my second time there. First time there I went to the memorial museum which is quite a heavy experience. Another Heritage 2000 and Arcs and SB-218’s, but this is the newest club quattro and the room was also custom designed for sound. An absolute pleasure to listen to a CD at FOH. You put on your normal stuff like your going to EQ the room, and then you just stand there and listen…… ahhhhhh……..
So there is Tristan Prettyman on stage who I was doing sound for. Never heard of her? Me neither till I started working with her. Singer songwriter sort of stuff. Small drum kit, some percussion, acoustic guitars, and banjo (and, Jesse on Banjo, just a stock fishman pickup, a really nice old banjo, and you know how you normally bring up a banjo and then contemplate where to start EQ’ing it to somehow make it pleasing? Well this was the first time I just brought it up, and things were just about golden, probably never happen again 😉
Audiosquid 