No ones or zeros today, was a pleasure to mix on the classic XL-4 and not have to hit a “select” button or change banks. 🙂

Another tour with eX-Girl from Japan on the record books. This time a short trip down the west coast of the US. Seems it’s near impossible to rent a 15 passenger van in San Francisco now. There is Bandago, but the insurance options made that more expensive than renting two mini-vans. So Brendan and I grab a van in SF and head up to Seattle. Next day in Seattle we grab another van, pick up the girls at the airport, and head off to the first show, supporting Quasi at Neumo’s in Seattle. The band surprises me with a last minute request to take care of some video projection for the intro. They have the intro on DVD, but upon closer inspection to the DVD player they brought to play the disc on, we find that it’s really a VCR. DOH! Luckily my mac has a DVD player and an s-video out, so after a quick trip out to buy a cable, we are good to go.

The next day a short drive to Olympia for a show at a small bar called the China Clipper. Not a well attended show, but it was Easter Sunday. None the less they put on a good show and I have some fun projection some screen savers and whatnot during the show.

Another short drive the next day to Portland for a show at Lola’s Room, which is right below the Crystal Ballroom. Here I find a little Midas Venice, and learn that you really need to make sure the projector is high enough to get over everyones head…

Then we had a couple of days to make our way to San Francisco, so on the way we made some stops around Mt. Shasta is the girls could reconnect with the God Mountain.

Right before we finished the trip to San Francisco we made a stop at the Marine Headlands, where they could get a great view of the city, a trip to the beach, and a look at some old WWII bunkers.

An evening off in San Francisco to rest from the past two days drive, and we play yet another show at the Bottom of the Hill where the Allen and Heath is still kicking, though I’m not sure the eq’s actually do anything…

The next day we drive down to Hollywood, and with not too much traffic to deal with we find our way to the in-famous Hollywood Motel 6. Not all that bad really… Next day we make our way to Spaceland for the last show of the tour. Ken Samurai opens the show with his movie inspired comedy act

The next day is off in LA as I hang with fellow Tön Meister, college class mate, and now grammy winner Greg Collins (congrats to him on his work on U2’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”). Early early early the next morning we take everyone to the airport for their trip back to Japan, return one rental van, and then Brendan and I make our way back to San Francisco, and with little traffic we have a smooth 6 hour trip.

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 😉

One last trip through Europe with Mercury Rev. First a couple of shows in Belgium (seems like Belgium really likes Mercury Rev this year), and a show at the Crossing Border festival in Den Haag. Definitely no complaints when ever we get to play Holland.

On the way to Portugal we first make a stop in San Sebastian where we get to be tourists for a bit. As the usual tourist routine goes for me, find a high point, go to the top of, look around. And San Sebastian provided a nice hill with a church on top that provided a great view of the city.

The a long jaunt down to south to Portugal where we find ourselves in a concert hall and I find myself behind an XL-4. It’s just a whole other level with the XL-4. The sound of that desk is just a step above anything else out there.

Next off to spain and a run of shows with the Dirty Three and the Decemberists. First a theater/restaurant in Bilboa, and then the Aqualung Madrid, and then on to Republica in Valencia where I find a Midas XL-2… Who knew such a thing existed? First time I’ve seen one, and the same for everyone else. Seemed like something halfway between an XL-3 and the XL-250. Sounded pretty good. There was a Aero line array here to, and, I don’t know if it was set up wrong, or that just how the thing sounds, but it doesn’t really sound like a line array, sounded different all over the place, could be the room, could be the cheap knock off line array…

Our last gig in Spain is at Razzmatazz 1 in Barcelona where we find a real line array, and my first go on the Kudos. Seems Razzmatazz is looking for a new speaker system for the room, so they are demo-ing a bunch of stuff, and while I was there it was the Kudos turn. There was a very cool tech from L’Acoustics who was there (sorry I’ve forgotten his name). He had the room all programed into SoundVision, down to each individual pillar.

How’s it sound? Pretty good, not quite like the V-Dosc, sort of something inbetween the V-Dosc and the dV-Dosc.

Brand new speaker system and already it’s covered in dust. A dirty business this live sound thing.

Here we a shot looking up from the bottom showing the movable plates, or wings, or whatever you like to call them. I was thinking, with the boxes close to the wall, you might do something like angle the one side in, but as you can see they are in the standard con-fig.. Nothing really too fancy science about this stuff here, pretty basic.

Next we head out to the eastern block. First stop, Croatia, and a club called Aquarius in Zagrev. It was quite cold that day, and the gig was right on a lake, basically sitting in a park. There was a bar at the front that was enclosed, and then the room where the stage was had tent walls basically. It would be really nice in the summer with it all opened up. Sadly, while we were there it was about 30ºF. They had one of those gas powered blowing heaters, but I think they were trying to save money on gas, as they couldn’t or wouldn’t start the thing up. The PA is a bit makeshift. An Allen and Heath at FOH and a Yamaha GA32 at monitors.

Dig the PA. Someone’s rendition of a line array. They actually even flew a couple of feet off the ground, and you know what? It actually didn’t sound too bad, it definitely had some nice qualities to it, though it would only give me so much.

The amazing part about this gig, was the crowd. The place was packed, and it was definitely the most pumped up Mercury Rev crowd we’ve ever had. They sang along to just about all of the songs, including allot off the new album. And this was the bands first visit there. Who knew? Amazing.

As we get ready to leave we get some directions from the promoter on how to get out of the park and make our way out of town. Here we can see me showing these directions. Lets see, round and round in circles, and you will eventually get out.

Next we head off to Belgrade, Serbia for a gig at a place called Dom Omladine. We have to park the bus at the local bus station, and do a cross load. And then at the venue, there are 3 flights of stairs to tackle. Lucky for us, there was a very hard working local crew that made it easy for us. Another amazing crowd in a new place. Seems the eastern block is hungry for some music.

Next we head off to Greece, having to pass through Macedonia on the way. We heard all sorts of horror stories of border crossings, and possible hassles and long waits, but all in all for us everything goes smooth and easy with fairly short waits.

Our first Greek gig is in Thessalonki, at the Mylos club. Last time I was here I think they had a crest time, but this time I find a Midas XL-250, which normally makes me very happy. Sadly, this was not the case today.

I plug my headphones in, go about some other work,put my headphones on, wonder why the left side isn’t working, and then wonder why my left ear is feeling very warm. I get the clue pretty quick, but it’s too late. I pull out a meter, and sure enough, there’s i can’t remember how many volts DC on the one side. The headphone amp is shot. That’s the second time this has happened to me. Luckily I carry a spare pair of headphones for just such an occasion, and a spare headphone amp from the band takes care of the rest.

Since this has happened before (with a Crest) I had a pair of half blown Sony’s, so I took the two half blown pairs and made one good one… Hopefully this doesn’t happen again for awhile.

The next day we head off to Athens, and we have a day off here, so as per the usual tourist routine, I find the nearby high point and make my way to the top of it. This time a large park on a hill behind the hotel. On top I find an amphitheater, a church, and a great view of Athens, including a view of another hill I climbed on a previous tourist adventure on which sits the Acropolis (as you can sort of make out from this picture).

It’s not Greece if everything doesn’t take twice as long as it needs to eh? Oh well. Our cross load finds us enjoying a bumpy truck ride with our gear, and some loader helpers that were probably twice our age.

I hear the Rodon Club doesn’t exist, or has moved, and it doesn’t bother me a bit not to be in that stone hell sounding room again. This time we play Gragarin 205, where there is a wonderful Arc PA with a Midas XL-250. During the check I find a sub with a dust cover that has come off, making a very annoying buzzing noise as it vibrated against the grill with every bass hit. As we “fixed” the sub, I noticed that though the sub boxes looked allot like SB-218’s, I don’t think they were the real thing. Worked fine though.

My second trip to Tel Aviv with Mercury Rev, this time with a show at a recently converted warehouse. Another gig with the Kudos, and my impression of them is still good.

I feel sorry for sound companies here, this was the dustiest Heritage 3000 I’ve ever seen.

The show goes well, and we have another great time in Tel-Aviv.

Back to London for one last show at Shepherds Bush Emprie. They have upgraded to an enormous 52 channel Heritage 3000. Still the odd sounding room with the big EAW 850 rig, and an old dusty patch bay below the desk.

Finally back to the states, and after a short break we have one final “home” show at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock. As there house PA is a bit lame, I had a rig from Firehouse in Red Hook brought in. Nothing too fancy, some EAW 850’s and the new Yamaha mc7 digital desk. I was trying to safe some money and mixing space and the Yamaha did the trick. It’s doesn’t seem all that different than the 5D, sounds the same. Sort of odd that the offline editor for Studio Manager only runs on a PC when the 5D runs on the mac. In a road case the mc-7 is barely smaller than a 5D, so you wouldn’t be saving too much space in trucking…

The show goes well, and we all get to see friends and have a bit of a party to close it all off. Back home to San Francisco I go and on to the next adventure…..

My good friends Caron and Slouch hook me up with some work mixing FOH for British Sea Power, opening up for the Killers and a short run of east and west coast north american shows. The Killers are carrying everything but stacks and racks, and James who mixes house for them is kind enough to let me loose on the Yamaha PM-5D. Not too bad a desk, I give them credit for having a mac based editor. It sounds ok, fairly well laid out, though still a bit ugly with all that tan.

Here we see FOH at Jones Beach Amphitheater, with my mac happily resting on top of the Yamaha. I had some fun here, as the console desk lights were fully dimmed (read off) when the house lights went off for the start of the show. Couldn’t see a thing. I knew the dimmer knob was somewhere on the upper right… if I could only find it without giving the lampys behind me the idea that I can’t see a thing….

We played the Across the Narrows festival, and Firehouse brought in a massive Vertec rig with new Crown I-Tech amps. We had more than enough to satisfy the half full stadium. The wind didn’t make things fun, but the fact that Maria with Eight-Day had the 5-D up and ready for us to use for our set did. With this bonus I didn’t have to make a new mix on the PM 1-D that Firehouse had brought.

Looks like they did well in the foliage department, but the bands setup looks a bit small on the massive stage at Shoreline Amphitheater, where we played the Download festival. I get to see my friend Paul with the Doves again, and watch as he puts together a mix on the fly with the SOS provided XL-4. Me, I’m lucky again, and Maria has the 5D up and running and ready for my use.

After Mountain View we head up to Portland for a show at Doug Fir, and then Seattle for a show in their hockey arena, and finally up to Vancouver for the last show, and one of those moments when you really think V-Dosc certification is a good thing, and wonder if those providing the PA have such certification….

Mercury Rev takes off for Europe again, this time driving ourselves around in a van for 3 festivals. Our first stop, the Lokerse Festival in Belgium. I get another look at the Digidesign Venue desk here, as the Cure are touring around with one. Seems pretty cool watching it in action.

I was pretty set though with an XL-4 supplied locally for the rest of us.

Next we hit the road for a longish drive to St. Malo, France. It’s my first time driving in Europe, and it’s not much different than here. You’ve got to know how to work the traffic circle, and think about things metrically.

On the way we stopped Mont Saint Michel, which is a Benedictine abbey on top of a rocky islet in the midst of vast sand-banks exposed to powerful tides between Normandy and Brittany . When we were there the tide was out, but we could imagine (and saw pictures) of how it looked when the tide was in.

On to a small hotel out on in the country side and a night of rest before playing the La Route du Rock festival.

The festival as a Nexo Geo rig, and  subs spaced out along the front of the stage, delayed to create an arc, and just like the demonstration I saw at AES earlier that year, the low end was the same, everywhere. No power alley and dead isles, just the same. The festival is set at an old French fort, and the day goes well.

The next day we start an early drive back to Brussels to return the van and hop on a plane for a flight to Aarhüs, Denmark. We get to the airport with time to spare, and then struggle to find a place to eat nearby on a saturday afternoon. A short flight to Denmark and some rest at the hotel.

The festival was set in a really nice wooded area outside of town. There is a permanent dual, side by side stage there, so it’s easy work for the changeover. Just one Heritage 3000 at FOH for both stages, though the last two acts bring in a Digigco and a PM5D to eat any remaining space.

After a break for the rest of August, we once again hop a plane for Europe, this time for a one off at the Electric Picnic Festival outside of Dublin, Ireland. Nick Cave and the bad seeds is on after us on the main stage, and it’s good to see some familiar faces a year latter.

A couple of more weeks off after Ireland, and I take my first trip to South America, down to Curitiba, Brazil for a one off with Mercury Rev. We have amazing food, everyone (including myself) drinks to many vodka, fruit, and sugar drinks, and we have a great time.

We are playing a club that fits about 2000, and I knew in advance that there would be an inovason SY-80 at FOH. I thinking, great, I just mixed on one of those, I like it, and I can just dump in my mix from my USB stick.

Turns out, this SY-80 has DOS installed, and could care less about the desks USB port.

I try every trick I know, but no luck. So I have to start from scratch, not too big of a deal though we are pressed for time. Remember how I mentioned that the headphone jack on the desk was weak? Well the house engineer has a small stand alone headphone amp to take care of just such a thing, how clever. The show goes well, and the packed crowed seems to like it. Hopefully I’ll return to Brazil in the future for more.

Australia is definitely in the top 5 for countries to be a citizen of. I always love visiting down under, and as long you survive the long flight you are pretty much guaranteed to have a good time. Mercury Rev starts their longest tour of Oz with a bunch of show opening up for The Finn Brothers. And we start things off with 4, count them, 4, nights at the Sydney Opera House. Two shows, a day off (!), and then 2 more shows. With the venue a short walk from our hotel, and beautiful Sydney Harbor, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Here’s ground control, on the far end the XL-4 for the Finns, then the Midas Verona that Jands sound provided me, and then lightings whole hogs. The Verona is not too shabby. Sounds like a Midas, and who really needs VCA’s anyway?

The Sydney Opera House is not really the optimum place for a live rock show, with acoustics made for unamplified instruments, though while it is quite reverberent, its one of the better reverbs you have ever heard, and for some “psychedelic” rock it works out pretty well. The V-Dosc PA helps out allot too.

The Finns crew is really cool and treats us well. Big Show sets up the PA each night, and I help out by taking care of my own FOH set up, so he can concentrate on the Finns. A very casual tour indeed. We play nice theaters throughout the tour. Very casual tour with tons of time to hang out in Oz.

Here we see Giles mixing the Finn Brothers on the Jands provided XL-4, with the TC Icon remote. High class!

Next we head off to Japan for the Fuji Festival. While not at Mt. Fuji, it is nestled in the mountains of Japan at the bottom of a ski resort. The weather was cloudy and rainy while we were there, but still beautiful none the less (as seen above there was the rare sunny moment).

Everybody stays in the same hotel, bands and audience.

The PA are usually awesome here and our show in the red tent is no exception, Midas yet again, and a Vertec rig I think. And besides a tiny leak in the roof right above the lead singer, the show went off well. And you’ve never seen so many stage hands….

Fellow tour manager and friend Matt Johnson hooks me up with a tour of the US with the UK band Embrace. A great bunch of gentlemen to work, the tour went well overall. The band carried their own in-ear system, which made all of the shows much, much easier in many ways, especially as we were playing the smaller clubs, most with monitors from FOH, which in this case worked out just fine, as the bands mix requirements were fairly simple, and I didn’t need to spend time working on some crap wedges, that would only sound so good anyway.

Embrace at the Troubadour in Los Angeles

Matt, our tour manager, had a vacation scheduled the same time as the last couple of days of the tour. He was going to have another tour manager come out and take care of the last bit, but then convinced me in the end to take care of the tail end of things.

He gave me his US cell phone, and as I got tired of keeping track of the two of them, I taped them together into one SUPER PHONE! Brain cancer twice as fast…

And since I wasn’t necessarily prepared to TM, I didn’t have my printer with me… So back to the old school hand made day sheets.

The 4th of July was spent as a day off in St. Louis. I think I was the only one to go out and see fireworks. Can’t say I blame an English band for giving a rats ass about Independence Day!

After the fireworks we head off to Kansas City for a quick show on the 2nd stage at the Verizon Amphitheater, and then I send them all off to fly home and go right to Live8. Meanwhile Brendan and I ride the bus back to it’s home in Atlanta before flying home to San Francisco.

Off to Europe again, our first stop this time in Barcelona, Spain to play the Primavera Festival (seen above). The show went well, with a Heritage 3000 and a dv-Dosc rig, but no where near enough subs for the size of the audience. Oh well.

It just so happens that the AES convention is going on right next door to the festival, and it just so happens that we have some time off here in Barcelona, so on the day off, Oliver and I go to the convention. Our first stop was a discussion by d&b on subwoofers, and adjusting the dispersion pattern by facing subs the opposite was and messing with phase and delay. A cool little presentation. They should have had their demonstration at the festival, the stage I mixed at could have definitely made use of the lessons taught.

Next we head for the convention floor to check out all the gear and talk some shop. I stop by the Empirical Labs booth to check out their new eq, the Little-Freq, and I was very impressed. I t could do freq conscious compression, and as a de-esser it was superb, the best I have ever heard. I talk a bit with the owner/designer, who was very cool. Told him how much I like the distressor, I’m sure he hears it alot. Sadly with digital taking over live sound, and the fact that these units are 1K plus, I doubt I’ll be using them soon.

Next mission… check out all the digital live sound desks, first stop, Digico. Having just used and being impressed by their D5 I check out some of there other offerings, some smaller versions, some sort of ugly looking buttons/labeling on the new desk, but seems cool.

Right next door, Digidesin, where I get a great demo of the desk by Placebos FOH engineer, and this thing looks cool. The ability to use TDM plug-ins is a very big plus in my book. It still looks a bit space agey up close, but not as bad as you think looking at pictures, and it all feels fairly solid.

Didn’t bother with Yamaha, or perhaps they didn’t even have a booth, cause if they did I probably would have thanked them for the mac native interfaces, and ask why it’s only for certain desks and not all…

Last, a trip over to Inovason, where I get a good, though grumpy, demo on their SY-80, and this thing is pretty cool to. It comes out in the conversation that I am on the road with Mercury Rev and that we are about to do a run of shows in France, and when he hears about the show at Olympic in Nantes, he asks if I would like them to bring a desk by for me to use that night. Hell ya, I’m game, so he hooks me up.

Out third french show into the tour, and true to their word, inovason brings their SY-80 by. Using the desk for the first time definitely slowed things down a bit, but overall I liked the desk. The eq’s and comps sounded good, it was cool how you could layout the faders in basically any way you liked (though that could also get confusing). I had a couple of things I didn’t like, that may or may not be possible, but the fact that I could only control the eq and especially pan of one channel, and the headphone amp on the desk was weak, and I couldn’t quite get it to solo matrix and groups like I wanted.

Overall a slight thumbs up.

I got the offline editing software to work just fine through Virtual PC on my mac. Speaking of offline editing, everyone I spoke to at AES seemed to have no interest in making a mac native offline editor. Thanks for nothing..

The Olympic in Nantes also had a new PA since I was there last, a Nexo Geo rig, I think the Geo-T, they also had those huge weird looking subs, and those things were absolutely amazing. Only one cabinet a side for a club that fits 800 people, and it was more than enough, especially really good in 30-40hz subsonic range.

We had a festival show in Saint-Beurac the next day which went fine. Sonic Youth played after us, and was doing fine till the power went out, but they played on, destroying the DJ rig.

Next day we head to Reims, France to rest and do some sightseeing.. —>

Another show of note on this tour was our show in Skopje, Macedonia. A bit of a rough/poor looking place on our trip from the airport to the hotel. The area around our hotel seemed to be a very small oasis.

Just one local sound company I think, and they aren’t doing too bad as they bring me a Soundcraft Series V and a Meyer Milo rig. Worked out quite well. The audience was amazing, and we sold the show out at around 2000. Not too bad for a country the band had never been to before.

The meyer rig worked out well. They had one of those fancy Meyer processors with the humidly/temperature adjustments. Amusing and scientific, but not a must have.

Now the locals just need to make some nice multipin snakes for their outboard gear (compared to a selection of all sorts of cables) and maybe we should break it to them gently that those SKB cases don’t really save you any money in the long run…..

Also, note to self: don’t check in your FX rack as luggage on a flight, ship it, or leave it home. Thanks to some kind baggage handlers somewhere, I need to replace the rack ears on my TC-D2, yet again…. ;-(