Audiosquid

Two nights at the Liquid Room in Tokyo. A fantastic venue that holds a bit over 1000, but has a PA you’d find in most places that fit 20,000. A Midas XL-4 at front of house. Flying faders on the VCA’s. Though I think it may be getting a bit old as the faders didn’t always make it back to the exactly same spot each time. Like you have time to program any automation for a one off show.

Among choices of compressors they have Two 1176’s, 4 dbx 160’s, 6 Channels of BSS Comps, 8 Channels of Drawmer Gates, and 4 Channels of KT Gates.

And to the other side more effect’s and house EQ’s than you could shake a stick at. 2 SDE-3000’s, a PDM-70, SPX-990, SPX-90, a ATL parametric EQ/Compressor and a KT 31 band on the house.

On stage a Midas XL-3 with meter bridge handles monitors. Here we see Ernie at the monitor position. Ernie was with Clair Brothers Japan and did a fantastic job of mixing monitors for the tour.

For about three years I worked at the Maritime Hall in San Francisco. We had the only ATL desks that we knew of in the states. Finally I meet another version of our monitor desk at Club Quattro in Nagoya. ATL (Acoustical Technical Laboratories) distributes or at one time distributed Meyer in Japan. Really good sounding desks, though the faders in the middle were a bit weird on the monitor desk, and Ernie said that this particular model was in the need of some repair.

Today our hotel was on the 3rd floor, a mall was on the 4th-8th floors, and the venue was on the 9th floor of the same building. A large music shop was one floor down from the venue. How convenient! If only more touring was like this!

Front of house in Nagoya, another great collection of gear in a small club (though I really don’t care for the PM-4000). The house engineer saw on our rider that we need more channels of compression than the club has, so from his own collection he brings the Amek/Neve and the Tube Tech shown. Very nice thing for him to do. On the far left you can see the rack I carry with me containing a TC D-2, a TC Fireworx, and a 2 channel SPL de-esser. On top of the rack is the Audiosport Quattro USB Audio/MIDI interface I use to record the shows onto the powerbook and change programs on the D-2 and Fireworx.

The view from front of house during sound check. Hiding in the darkness is an EV MT-4 rig, ready to roar into an area that fits 500 at most.

Bayside Jenny in Osaka…

A PM-3500 tucked in the corner driving a Turbo Sound rig. While still a good set up, not quite as top notch as some of the other clubs. The show was absolutely packed, not fun squeezing through the audience while sick, but somehow I survived the night.

Tonight’s show at Club Quattro in Hiroshima. A brand new club, and they cut no corners in its construction. The club (like many of the others) was on the top floor of a mall, with a music store one floor below.

The room holds up to 500 or so people, but has a pa better then most US rooms twice the size. A 48 Channel H-2000 feeds an Allen Smart C-2 stereo comp for system limiting, XTA;s for processing and a L-Acoustics ARC rig. I remember working at a club of similar size in Berkley, Ca. where I mixed on a 24 channel Soundcraft spirit. Maybe I should move to Japan.

The more I use them, the more I like the Midas Heritage series of desks. The H-2000 (seen here) being my current top choice for front of house.

I guess I’m settling into the one update a month pattern. So much has happened in a month! The shows in France went really well, though just as all the bands were getting friendly it was over. We had a great time playing with Lift to Experience and Elbow. The show in Toulouse was supposed to be at Bikini, but due to an explosion in the town, the show was moved to another venue with some of the sound system (which survived) coming from the roofless club. Hopefully they will rebuild, it was a really nice club.

As we bid farewell to France, we moved on to Spain for more fun, and believe it or not, really good crews and PA’s. We seem to have been blessed so far on the European tour, no grumpy or lazy local crews. Our finally show in Lisbon went over extremely well, which made up for the extremely lame load in up a very small lift.

Finally we flew home to NY for a couple of days to catch up on laundry before heading off to Toronto for a show on Thanksgiving day. No turkey that day, though I did at least get a small piece of pumpkin pie.

Our first show on our US/Canada tour started in Toronto at the Phoenix Concert Theater, where they have the oldest Midas monitor desk I have ever seen. Dig the font on the meter bridge.Back into the US for our next show at Magic Stick in Detroit. A small club with a fairly lame PA, but a friendly and helpful house sound engineer, a bowling alley, and some classic neon signs in the front window.

We picked up some lighting equipment at our show in Detroit, only problem was, our bus driver hadn’t gotten the trailer when he was supposed to, so…. Our gear sat on the street with nowhere to put it until a trailer showed up, which was on it’s way, but didn’t arrive till 4 AM. So we sat and waited, well, that is our Tour Manager and Lighting Tech waited as our Roadie and I got some shut eye. Next morning our bus driver asks for a trailer repack to distribute the weight a little better. I guess we couldn’t expect the guys to do a great job at 4 in the morning 😉

On to Chicago and a run of shows opening for Wilco. The beautiful Riviera Theater in Chicago was our first stop, where our soundcheck gets cut short as db Sound tries to figure out why the XTA units wont let them control the subs. Got to love all this computer technology. After Chicago the band and myself took a trip to LA for the Late Late Show, and then hooked back up with the bus in Missoula, Montana.

We beat Wilco to the gig, so with some free time as we wait for them to set up, I took a hike up the nearby hill with a giant M at the top. The building in the middle was the gig and if you look hard enough you can pick out the two tour busses in the parking lot.

.A long drive to Seattle was our next task, and some great weather we had on the way. I woke up to find us traveling down a road that wasn’t really there, I was amazed the bus driver could see where he was going at all. As I sat down in the front lounge to do some work on the computer I suddenly hear the bus driver yell “Everybody hang on to something!” I look out the front window wondering what he is shouting about, and see not the road, but the mountain next to us. In the time it takes for me to wonder what I will do if we flip over, we go from sliding sideways, back to traveling straight down the road. Whew! Seems a transmission line broke and at that point the Jake break gave up, and lost control for a bit. We safely arrived at the next exit, where we sat for hours as a mechanic tried to get us on our way again. A big thanks to that mechanic who spent those many hours under the bus in windy rainy crap weather.

Our show in Seattle with Wilco was a bit of a mess, as the crew couldn’t seem to patch anything to save there lives. Luckily to make up for it, our headlining show the next night in Vancouver at the Commodore Ballroom was excellent. The venue is a “House of Blues” though that isn’t too obvious. A beautiful room, and some really nice dressing rooms with the best showers you could ever see in a venue. Can you say heated tiles on the shower room floor?

A great crew and a really good PA rounds out this fine venue. A Soundcraft series V resides at FOH driving a V-Dosc rig that could do a room twice the size. The only down side (as you can see from the picture) is front of house is way off to the right side close up to the front, so you get pummeled with one side of the V-Dosc rig, but I guess this might help from some folks mixing too loud.

We hooked back up with Wilco in Portland, and then on to San Francisco and a show at the Fillmore. Luckily the Fillmore is only a couple of block from my house, so I got to have some time at home to catch up on mail and things.

The Fillmore’s new house desk, a Crest X, is OK, nothing special. Show goes well, and good to be at home among friends.

We say goodbye to Wilco and continue our tour with a sold out show headlining the Troubadour in LA. Here another Series V in a lame mix position greets me. Nicolai Dunger opens up for us, and it was good to see him again (he opened up most of the European tour with me mixing sound for him as well). Another great local crew gets us through the night.

Next morning a show at KCRW for Morning Becomes Eclectic which went really well (always a pleasure to do the show).

Back on the bus and a long drive to Austin Texas…

Been quite awhile since the band has been in Austin, so we aren’t sure how the crowd is going to be, but luckily we sell about 70% of La Zona Rosa.

Another Soundcraft here, a Series IV. I’m starting to like these “new:” Soundcraft desk quite a bit, plus these meter bridges look great.

Yet another great local crew greets us here. So far we have been really lucky in having some great local crews. How long will it last?

There was a note on the desk – “Anything above Zero will clip the amps”. Hmmmm. How about you turn down the amps, so when the desk clips the amps clip? I find I turn the amps down with a lot of sound systems, get some meters moving on the desk without being excessively loud or damaging anything.

Our next stop was Dallas for a show at Deep Ellum Live, the show went well, though I must say that those Yamaha M series desks are crap.

Another long drive, and we find ourselves at the fine 9:30 club in DC. A nice EAW rig, a great house crew, and a Crest desk that has seen better days.

Up to Philadelphia and our third show at the Trocadero in the past couple of years. a nice surprise to find that they have replaced their top speaker cabinets with some EAW 750’s. Definitely an improvement.

We have some fun here watching the locals grab some bits of crumbling ceiling out of the net that protects the audience from such bits falling on them.

Our US tour finishes out with a sold out show at Irving Plaza in NYC. It took me awhile, but I finally convinced the house engineer to move the house EQ from being inserted on the mix bus to in-line. Weather that made or broke the mix is of question. I think the last time we were here I wasn’t able to convince them to do it. And here is yet another Crest desk showing its age. Luckily there is a can of Deoxit near by.

After the show we try to hang out with a plethora of friends before heading upstate to the bands homes, and some days off before we make our trip to Japan….

Extremely busy tour… and finally an update! On tour with Mercury Rev for over a month now and it’s been very very busy with days off eaten up with recording sessions, promo, or just trying to catch up on computer work. So now a quick update on how things have been going.

Ireland – The tour started off in Ireland with long load ins as the bus can get nowhere near the venues, so everything has to be transferred to a van first. The first gig at the Savoy in Cork gives me a difficult mix position half way up the stairs to the balcony and all the way to one side. Where no one else is watching the show except for me. One of those “I hope it sounds all right down on the floor” sort of affairs. All goes well and the tour is off to a roaring start with a sold out show. Our show at the Ambassador Theater in Dublin goes as well and I get more of a proper mix position. What was supposed to be a day off in Dublin turns into a recording session of “Lucy in the Sky” for a possible movie soundtrack. So the day is spent running pro tools.

Scotland and UK – On to the Barrowlands in Glasgow and a fine rig supplied by EFX. There’s that Heritage desk again. The show in Manchester gets bumped up to Academy with a boxy Martin rig from Adlib Audio. Finally a show at Newcastle University and a John Peel session before heading off to….

Norway – Cool clubs, great gear, a Midas desk in every club, can’t complain. And a JBL rig that actually sounds all right at our first stop in Bergen at Kavaretet. A Midas desk in every room and all the shows are close to if not sold out. Big thumbs up to Norway!

Stockholm and Copenhagen – a really small club in Copenhagen with a small but good PA. They even have a pair of Tanoy near fields at the desk. Can’t hear them over the blast of the PA, but I have some fun jamming out to tunes in my own personal world before the show. Copenhagen gig is really really good. Best crowd yet.

Germany and Italy – Germany starts off with a bang and a monstrous Meyer rig at the Grunspan in Munich, but its all downhill from there. A bunch of old Soundcrafts and other junk awaits me at the rest of the shows. At least the crews are friendly and helpful. I must say, we have had really good local crews everywhere, usually there is some bit of grumps here and there, but so far everyone has been really cool.

Amsterdam – Nothing better to cure the German PA blues than a couple of days in Amsterdam. Show day is a bit insane, though the show goes really well. Day starts off with us waiting at the bus for a truck to pick up the gear to take it to the Melkveg as getting the bus in would be a bit tight. So our tour manager arranged with the person responsible for transport, for a vehicle to come and pick up our gear. So we are sitting in a large parking lot on the outskirts of town. And we wait, and wait. Our tour manager gets on the phone and tries to find out were the truck is, and a bit of confusion arises as to where the truck is meeting us. After our location is sorted out a vehicle shows up, an 8 passenger Mercedes with all the seats. We give a good laugh as we point out that there is no way in hell our gear is going to fit in the van. So we give Mr. Transportation a call and explain the situation. We wait another half hour, and a 12 passenger van shows up…. with seats all the way to the back. Seem Mr. Transportation is in idiot. So we head off to the venue in the bus, pull into the middle of the street near the venue, meet a fellow in a yellow jacket who sees how fucked up the situation is, and gets a large truck to come get our gear to load in. A supper fast set up, sound check, and tear down as Supper Furry Animals play before us. After all the madness the show goes really well, and the next day is a day off my favorite city in the world.

Back to the UK – Back to the big shows, a Heritage 1000 in the Anson Rooms in Bristol. Saw allot of these desks on the tour so far, and I like them quite a bit. Best “budget” desk around. Next comes two sold out nights at Shepherds Bush Empire in London. These shows go really really well, as I tire myself out running up flights of stairs to check the sound in the three balconies. Next off to Wulfren Hall and another Heritage 1000 in a big shit sounding room with me at the very rear, at least it’s nice and quiet back there. Finally the Leadmill in Sheffield and a good EV rig that has just been beat on too many times with disco. Another great crew makes up for a disco load out.

In London now for a day off, well… a day spent in front of the computer. Off to Belgium next and then the challenges of keeping under the French SPL limits. I don’t like to mix louder than 100db SPL-A weather the venue has a limit or not, but the French can push it a bit far with limits such as 95db SPL-C. Can you say “no booty and I guess I’ll just turn on the vocal mic and be done with it”?

A Busy Month. September comes to a close and we prepare to depart for London tomorrow. Fall is just starting to edge it’s way in here in NY, too bad we will miss all the trees when they change color. It’s been a very busy month. Getting things prepared for the European tour, rehearsals, and recording some B-Sides for an upcoming singles release. We recorded 3 songs, and did it all on my powerbook with Digital Performer 3 and the MOTU Firewire 828 interface. The interface is very, very cool. It was a bit of a rush project, and I was re-patching to record rehearsal during the day and record b-sides at night. DP3 was pretty cool, some nice touches to the new version. The only problem so far is some crashing while bouncing to disk in certain situations, and I can’t go back to the finder while a project is open, or it crashes. Otherwise it worked out as well as could be expected.

Now onto the tour. It will be good to settle into the bus. A couple of days of rehearsal in London before our first show in Cork, Ireland, and the all so fun “disco load out”, I’ll have some gear from SSE to supplement what the venues have or are providing, along with some new gear that I and the band have purchased. I will also be mixing the opening act at most of our shows, Nicolai Dunger.

Catching up! So long since the last bit of news and so many things that have happened, but now all is dream. Currently hanging out in upstate NY, getting things ready for the next tour starting in October in Ireland. Also some recording for some B-sides and a movie sound track. Delving into the world of Digital Performer 3. I wont be going back home until a couple of days before Christmas. Fun fun. But I am enjoying myself here in NY. As Jim Donnely said, in his fantastic book of writing entitled “Ass”, “Enjoy a city, but know some woods.” Show reports follow. Oh yea, and I’ve posted some new pictures, and an updated schedule for September into November.

Osaka and Tokyo. Best crews in the world. A wonderful time in a big reverberent room. Same gear at both shows, and charts for recall from a sound-check. I was not impressed with the Turbosound rig, but all sounded well. Spied a Clair Brothers I-4 rig on the main stage, though they had some wind flanging there mix outside. Hat’s off to the Cult’s sound engineer as he had it sounding awesome none the less. While the big stage dealt with wind, the second stage dealt with big reverberant rooms. Dave Fridman joins the Rev on stage for these two shows. Playing some keyboard and noise parts, even some very cool background vocals, kept me on my toes figuring out what was coming from where, in the end, I think the hum was coming from him…

Belgium – Pukelpop. Fun in a tent. An XL-4, TC M-3000, M-5000, TLA and Summit Compressors. You’re thinking awesome right? Well, it was, though the BSS Opel gear and the JBL HLA rig had me scratching my head. Can’t really tell its coming off a Midas XL-4 with some phat effects through the JBL rig. Oh well.

Leeds and Reading – A great Nexo rig supplied by SSE. Good crew. Soundcraft Series V which I like, though the Matrix section on the Leeds desk was being really strange. The tent at Reading was larger than the tent at Leeds, and with duplicate gear at each site, the Reading stage was a tad light on PA. Nobody bothered telling SSE they were going to have a larger tent. But all was fine, I watch the other acts throughout the day take it to it’s max and could tell it would be fine for me. Staind plays in our tent for some reason at Leeds while they play the main stage at Reading, and they bring there own monitor rig and monster drum riser, play early in the day, make the show run late, burn out the local crew, and give us, playing last, a 45min set compared to the hour we were supposed to have. For a four piece metal band. Drums, bass, guitar, vocals……. Oh well. Monitor engineer at Reading tells me the keyboard players in the Rev had the loudest mixes all day long, beating out many of the metal bands that had preformed earlier. Guess its time for a “you should try to protect your hearing / this is not going to work when we get into small clubs” talk. Band sounds damn good though, and the two new keyboard players have taken the trip up a level.

Gig On the Green – Great EAW 850 rig with a Heritage 3000 supplied by Perfect Beat. Too bad the acoustics’ of the tent sucked. Great crew, though I half of the time I had absolutely no idea what they were saying. Craig at FOH as system tech makes for a smooth ride, and while I thought he looked bored catching a nap while we were on, he replied he was happy not to have to “babysit” for a change, which I think I took as a compliment.

Black Sessions – Paris. A prerecorded radio show, an hour long concert in front of 300 or so people in studio. While there was a Europa and enough outboard gear to kill a horse at FOH, I spent my time in the control room assisting on mixing the show on a Neve. They sure did like spank the level on the console, and compression, lots o compression. We had a good time, the show went well, and the mix sounded pretty darn good. The real work was happening in the studio itself where I’m sure the house engineer had quite a challenge with a loud stage and a soft vocal. I hope he enjoyed himself.

Hello from European airspace. On the way to Japan, and only 10 more hours to go!

And hello from Osaka Japan. Got in a bit late today, so luckily we get to skip the production meeting that they always like to have right when you get to the hotel. Not too worried about the top notch crews that are here in Japan. The electrical bills must be insane here with all the neon, though Osaka isn’t quite as crazy as Tokyo. Will be good to get some rest tonight after the days sleep deprivation project as we hop from plane to bus to plane to bus……… Riding to the hotel, I can see where some of the cool road plans for Gran Tourismo come from.

Sound check tomorrow, another Yamaha desk, but this time the old school analog version of a PM4K. The lucky ones are on stage with a Heritage 3000. Oh well….

Some time off in London – Chillin in London with a couple of days off before we head off to Japan. What to do, what to do…..

Spain report – The show at Benicassim went well, considering it was the first show of the new touring party. The Meyer line array rig was on hand and I must say that it can be a very loud rig. Sounded very good, as many line arrays (especially outdoors) sound. The Yamaha PM-1D was a cool desk in many respects. Complete recall, eq on every input/output (nice to have eq on the aux send to reverbs), a delay on the headphone out to sync up local monitors with the PA. The compressors sound all right, but I wasn’t impressed with the FX section, basically 8 SPX-990’s built in. A very “touchy” desk too, when you tell it to do something, it does it. It didn’t crash on me, and with more time to set it up properly I could see using it more often. If they would only come out with a MAC version of the PC software you can use to set up the desk offline. Well, that, and I’d rather have a Midas 😉

London Show – In house Martin W-8 rig, not too bad of a room but the low end will mess with you from sound check to show. Gets better in the audience, but gets worse on stage. But no worries, they are tearing down the place for a tube extension

Busy, Busy, Busy – Getting Mercury Rev ready to hit the road. Making lots of cables, looms, running around buying stuff, making suggestions, advancing info, working out the puzzle of where to the rehearse, the puzzle of how to pack, and hoping the airlines won’t be to picky about some very large heavy pieces, and a couple of extra pieces, and……..

I’m am psyched to mix what is being produced in the rehearsal space, the first show in spain will be extra interesting as it will be my first time behind the Yamaha PM-1D, their fancy new digital desk. Quite a way to start off a tour, should be a blast.