Roadies in the Midst - Touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers - Roadie School

Day 268 - Feb 15 - On Da Plane

nospam@example.com (Dave Rat) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:41:13 -0800

Boeing 747 - 400 seat 18N Aisle, Business Class, British Airways. Comfy chair, crap food. Hey good news! I am proud to announce that I am relatively confident that I made it through this tour without losing a single item that I intended on keeping! Life is good, my days of losing things may be over forever, hurray hurray! Now all I need to do is just apply this same functional lossless life living pattern to tours longer than four days and I will be all set.

The Peppers did not win the award they were up for but no condolences desired. All good and you all already know the deep love and appreciation hold for award shows and as much as winning is an artificial thrill tossed in from the peanut gallery, to lose is an affirmation that one has not fully achieved Mcdonalds mass appeal generic status. My priorities and focuses lay elsewhere and from the reports I have received thus far, the sound aspects of the gig were a success.

**** Welcome to the Awards Show ****

A few people have asked me what doing these awards shows is like and about details of my involvement so here goes -

Peppers almost always bring in the backline and monitor rig like we did for the Grammy's but for Brit awards there was no time to ship the gear. That means we go to plan B and we used a mirror image setup of the backline gear that was assembled for situations like this. Daniel, the monitor engineer and Manny, the monitor tech hand carry over the mics and ear molds and we used a combo of locally rented and supplied monitor gear. Formy world at front of house and for the TV audio broadcast, it was purely supplied gear and house PA system.

Typically for live TV stuff everything is slow, very slow. As a rule of thumb, if you need to broadcast on thursday, you would figure out how long it takes to set up, let's say 4 hours, so add 2 hours as a buffer and then double it. Now add an extra day, just to be safe. So that means that if we have a 3 minute performance starting at 8 pm, optimally load in would be at 8 am on wednesday but only if we have wild and crazy TV people, normal TV people would double it again and then add a week if they could.

Day 1. At some point after load-in the techs set up all the gear which is immediately followed by the most important part of the day, which in professional circles is referred to as 'waiting around.' Usually the best place to do this waiting is around something familiar like wherever they rolled the risers that all the backline gear resides upon. Then at some arbitrary point in the day completely unrelated to the schedule we were handed, the waiting is abruptly interrupted by 20 local stage hands who grab all the gear and roll it on to the stage, at which point we switch to the other mode of operation called 'rushing stressfully.' This is where they try to make it all work, which takes an awkwardly long time and the backline techs rock out for a while and TV people wander around with headsets looking at things. Then, as quickly as it came, rushing stressfully is gone and we perform my personal favorite called 'leaving as fast as we can.'

Day 2 Show Day. Since everything is already set up, tested and ready to go and the dress rehearsal with the band wont occur till 2 PM, call time for the crew can be set a bit later today, so cutting it tight and allotting 2 hours to walk in and turn on the power switches before waiting around should suffice. So double it and then add a 1/2 hour if your particular TV people can be persuaded to allow such a dangerously tight schedule. So on it goes, wait around, the band rocks out for dress rehearsal. The Peppers always jam for awhile which then sends all the TV people into a tail spin saying "Is this the song? This isn't the song? Are they going to play the song? What are they doing? Why aren't they playing the song?" I smile and calmly tell them "Settle down, It's ok, they will play the song, they are warming up."

My adventure at the Brit awards.

TV is almost always 'hands off.' for touring engineers. That means that both in the broadcast truck and in the venue, the TV humans supply a sound engineer and I get to 'use my words' to mix. So I first head out to the broadcast truck and go over a basic a run down with Toby make sure the recording is coming straight off the mics with no alteration pre-tape and go over basic panning and any compressor or gate patching. I then head over to chat with Chris at the FOH sound board and do the same thing. After waiting around for a while, when we switch to rushing mode, I hang out at FOH and help get the PA and sounds all dialed in with the techs playing.

The following day I go back out to the truck and inform them that I will be hanging at FOH for the dress rehearsal and arrange a time after rehearsal where I can come in and dial up the TV mix utilizing a multi track recording of the rehearsal as a source. The band rocks rehearsal and I give a mini crash course of 'mix the Peppers' to the house sound engineer and inform him that I will be in the truck during the live broadcast and wish him luck, rock on. Then back to the truck and with the convenience I of a rewind button, I use my words to get the TV mix dialed in and then they save the settings. After returning to waiting around for a while show time finally arrives and back out to the truck I head and bingo, the band's live music shows up and mixy mixy, 4 minutes of pure joy and thank you, thank you, bye bye. Back to FOH, to see how it went, thank you, thank you, bye bye. At this point my cell phone lights up red and text messages from remote locations to inform me that the TV sound was good and I return to waiting around while gear is packed, get in van bye bye.

So now you all are fully trained and can cover for me next time!

Here is a photo of the stage. Hmmm, is it just me or does this look a heck of a lot like the tongue in cheek rock mockery of a stage set in the Guitar Hero video game? Coincedence or ?

Okey dokey, gonna put these burning eyes to rest,

Dave Rat

Day 167 - Nov 6 - Travel Home

nospam@example.com (Dave Rat) — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 12:47:02 -0800

One of the most enjoyable parts of traveling as we all agree is without a doubt the fun we have at the airport. Especially enjoyable are the lines we get to stand in and meet new people with the common goal of making it through security. Another fun part is checking bags. Notice below roadie Daniel's excitement at having the opportunity to delicately repack his belonging neatly in the traveling enclosure with the assistance of roadie Lyssa. It is my understanding that the airline employee had informed him that his other bag was over weight. The other roadies in line had much compassion that we expressed by laughing at his plight before several other roadies had to do the exact same thing.

As painful as it is to see the cycle of life in action and compassion for the fallen lives that were lost in the hunt brings tears to our eyes, we must face the realities of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Look, there, just as you have seen on the discovery channel when lions feast upon a fallen zebra, I have spotted three roadies that consuming three burgers that were not fit enough to escape their captors:

**** Roadies in the Midst 101 ****

If you were struggling with the mid term finals, do not fret, you can boost your grade by signing up for winter school and performing one or more of the following extra credit exercises:

1) Do considerable 'sound research' by listening to music. For the advanced listener should you choose to partake, there are many perspectives one can take while listening. Typically the most pleasure is derived from 'immersed,' where you become lost in the flow. Other perspectives are objective, analytical, technical, comparative and on and on. One way of taking an analytical view is to have a set of things that you will listen for, perhaps: kick, snare, cymbals, bass, guitar, vocals in that order, would be a good start. Then as the song progresses, you mentally cycle through them doing a level and tonality check. How loud is the kick in relation to the other instruments? Picture the tone. Is is complementary of conflicting with other tones? Keep in mind that for this exercise, no judgment or musical preference is made. Purely neutral and tonal and volume. How do the results from the cycle of listening differ from pop to reggae to heavy metal to punk? Which typically has the loudest kick drum? Which has the loudest bass? How do the vocal levels compare?

2) Practice your 'meet a roadie' skills on random humans by introducing yourself randomly to new people. Feel free to do this naked if you are so inclined.

3) Avoid stepping in poo.

Complete any or all of the above and you will receive an A+ for semester1 of 'Roadies in the Midst 101'

**** End First Semester of Roadies in the Midst 101 ****

The rarely bored,

Dave Rat

Day 124 - Travel to Toronto

nospam@example.com (Dave Rat) — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 15:06:00 -0700

I promised seemingly ages ago, that there would be a test on the material, well I hope you have been studying as today is that day. Though I know many have taken it already, it is important that we are all up to speed.

Take the Audio Quiz

Here are the strict rules:

Go to this link here, take the quiz, see what you get, post your results and let me know what you think!

And I hear by with the power vested in me, dub all that pass the test, Advanced Roadie Status.

Professor Dave Rat

NWIWGTPWMG!