Audiosquid

After a successful tour of the UK, we move on to Europe, and I like to call the first half the midas tour, as the first 4 shows had me running through the whole line of Midas consoles.

The first show in Amager Bio in Copenhagen started with the Midas Heritage 1000. Not a bad desk, has a feature I wish they had in the 2000/3000 (aux send on/off part of memory).

And amazingly, though brand new, it was as dusty as there old Soundcraft K2 that they got the Midas to replace. Is it really all that hard to dust a console? I think they even had a brush at FOH to dust it. Just couldn’t find the time…… 😉

Next we moved on to Rockefeller in Oslo, and they have also replaced their desk since I was here last, and went from an XL-3 to a Heritage 2000. They also had a new EAW 750 rig with fancy computer control, that really didn’t impress me.

We move on to Burns in Stockholm, where we find a 5 star restaurant taking up the audience area, we have a really good lunch at such said restaurant, and then got to set up and sound-check in-between lunch and dinner. Once dinner concluded our show began.

In Stockholm I end up with the conclusion of the Midas Heritage Line with the 3000. (yes, there’s the 4000, but that’s for monitor engineers who have too much time on their hands 😉

The room was quite ornate, with a Nexo Alpha rig hung for the occasion. I think they had an in-house Meyer rig that wouldn’t have been to bad, but who am I to argue. I think I sat for most of this show….

Yet more Midas (back to a Heritage 2000) in Berlin. They were going to give me an allen and heath or something, and then we see them roll in the Midas. I ask where that’s going and they say it’s for monitors. Hold your horses and send that thing to FOH. Luckily this didn’t annoy our monitor engineer as we still had the inovason out with us. One disaster nearly averted. 😉

Our roadie (and my roommate) Brendan gives the signal to say that the show is going well.

Our next gig at Grünspan in Hamburg breaks the Midas tradition, and I find myself on a 32 channel Soundcraft Delta. Somehow, I make it work, and it works out allright.

But the next day in Dusseldorf the Midas returns, this time with a favorite of mine, the Legend 3000. I could totally due without the extra monitor faders and channel EQ, and the stupid looking meters, beyond that, a great desk.

And that was the last Midas I would see this tour. Oh well, the next gig in Frankfurt had me working a Soundcraft MH-4, which I like almost as much as the Midas. The glowing phantom power button (even when you aren’t the one suppling phantom) is very cool.

Our last gig of this run was at the Elysee Montmartre in Paris, and here they have a Crest X desk. Crusts I like to call them. And they used to have a PM-3000 (which was just as crusty), lets hope they can replace it soon…

I also mixed a couple of support acts on the tour, in the UK I was mixing …bender, Steve Gullicks band, and in exchange I got him to snap a couple of pictures of me in action for the web page, a good exchange I think.

In the EU I mixed Timesbold, which was a real pleasure. They had a small harp with them that sounded really good, it was a good change of pace.

For our last show in Paris …bender came back, and I found myself mixing all three bands that night, busy busy busy.

Here we see …bender getting bent.

They always seem to short, the good tours….

Mercury Rev hit the road in March for their headlining tour in support of their new album “The Secret Migration”. Lucky me, for this short run of the UK we are carrying all PA, and our Tour/Production Manager hooks me up with Skan, and I’m mighty happy he did.

Skan (out of Reading) was able to supply my wish list for the tour to a T. Scott was my systems tech and a fine tech he was. Wish we could have done this for the entire tour…

Midas Heritage 2000 48chn

Control:

(3) XTA Stereo 31band Graphic EQ’s – house L/R, downfill L/R, support main graphic.

(5) XTA Processors – main L, main R, subs and front fills, and 2 backups

Sony CD Player

Laptop PC with wireless for XTA control and Smart.

Powerbook G4 for set list notes, recording/playback, and MIDI program changes.

Effects:

PCM-81, TC D-2, Antares AVP, TC M-3000, PCM-91, SPX-990, SPX-2000

Inserts:

(2) dbx 106xt Compressore, dbx 160sl Compressor, BSS 402 stereo comp/de-esser, (2) Distressors, (3) Drawmer stereo gates, (2) FMR Audio RNC Compressors

Support inserts:

(2) dbx 1066, Drawmer quad gate

Here we see Oliver, our monitor engineer at Barrowlands. He made use of an Inovason rented from Goldfrap (who he had also worked with). All the band were on IEM’s.

Oliver used a PCM-91 for vocal reverb and the bands Sennheiser G3 system with Future Sonic ear pieces.

Some d+b wedges and amps for the support acts and there’s monitor world for ya.

The PA for most of the gigs:

(6) or (7) dv-Dosc per side

(3) dv-Sub per side

(3) SB-218 per side (on an aux send)

(2) Arcs per side for downfill

All of the shows with this configuration were ground stacked.

The two pictures below are from the Manchester Academy. I’d been in here before, both times with the Martin W-8 rig, and needless to say, this time with the dv’s was by far the best.

Scott tells me your not supposed to stack more than 6 of the dv’s….. but the coverage was perfect in the venue, and it worked really well at keeping things off of the low ceiling.

For our last two show in the UK we flew the dv’s and had 14 per side. In aftersight we probably should have had some more subs too, but we made due.

On the right we see Scott getting the rig ready to fly at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. And the picture directly below is from there also. The rig worked out really well and at the Hammersmith we could fly more dv’s than v-dosc due to the weight limits of the hanging points.

The picture below and to the right is from our last show in the UK at Guild Hall in Southampton.

The end of the year found me working with The Fever playing venue across US and Canada, great bunch of guys, and the tour went well concluding with one very flat tire on the way home from our last gig. Thanks to a Mass State Trooper, AAA, and a cranky tow truck driver we finally make it to Cracker Barrel, and then home.

After the tour with the Fever I found myself on the road in the US with the Secret Machines. Cruising around the east coast crammed in a van again. They were great to work with, and with in-ear monitors very easy to work with in the small clubs we were playing that didn’t always have the greatest monitors.

The parking angel saw us through it all. Everyone needs a parking angel.

After the US tour we went off to Japan for 2 shows at the Summer Sonic festival in Tokyo and Osaka. Yet another smooth and well organized tour of Japan.

Mercury Rev started things back up again, with a couple of headling shows, and a bunch of shows with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds throughout europe and the UK. I was tour managing and mixing house sound. A crazy hectic time it was for me, but all in all a good tour. For the shows supporting Nick Cave I had the same desk every-night,, a trusty Midas XL-200. EML from Belgium provided a good Adamson line array, which worked out fairly well for all of the shows. With the exception of a broken multi-core in Switzerland, everything went smooth, though I was beat in the end, with merch, accounting, mixing, tm’ing… Whew!

We joined Nick Cave and the bad seeds at the Brixton Academy in London for a couple of nights. A sort of grand looking room, with a bit to grand of a sound, though when filled up with people it wasn’t quite so bad.

There’s my FOH rig for the tour (with Nick Cave’s XL-4 in front). The above pics were from a sort of cool hall in Leipzig called Haus Auensee, an old German hall converted into a sort of disco/show room.

The Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam.

The end of the tour found us at Pontins Holiday camp at Camber Sands for the All Tomorrows Parties Festival.