Roadies in the Midst - Touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers - How it Started

Day 453 - Aug 20th - Surviving Sinking Ships

nospam@example.com (Dave Rat) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 07:38:00 -0700

I just finished reading "Enter Naomi," a book sent to me by the author, Joe Carducci, and long ago comrade in the legends and confusion of the Black Flag against world collection of memories. I am forgetful by nature so immersing myself in the hauntingly familiar chain of events of the decade 80's LA punk world is both depressing and yet feels empowering to have survived with manageable amounts of mind splatter. I remember meeting the razor thin girl at my High School, Mira Costa (which believe it or not, actually was the Rock and Roll high school in the Ramones movie) with a blades on chains around around her neck sealed inside tight clothes with random zippers and spikes, later to be roommate and then to become Michelle Flipside. We are 16 and she tells me about the "The Church" in Hermosa Beach, just three blocks from where I live with my dad. Half full of hippies and the rest full of punks in a virtual war like stand off The Descendants, Red Cross (Redd Kross), Black Flag and The Last rehearsed there in virtual anarchy. When I could muster up some cash, I could usually persuade Ron to make a beer run with the " I buy, you fly" negotiation tactic. Over time my after school hangout welcomed me in and I became a bit of a punk rock repair technician and began recording the bands at shows and helping out in exchange for getting me in to the gig and something to do. Especially and most of all I remember that I don't remember except for a few impactful highlights, that was until I start to dive into a refresher course.

So I dig up a few pics and the girl on the left was my short lived girlfriend at the time, I think her name was Julie but everyone called her Phoenix after she corrected them that she was not Julie anymore. Next over, Bart, then me, Bart's friend, and Mike Livingston. Maybe 1979 or so.

Rolling over in my mind a way to describe my recollections, the best I can muster is I feel like I was part of an expedition. Not one where people set out all organized for a goal but rather a haphazard conglomeration of humans who find themselves all headed a similar direction for various reasons that leads them on precarious journey that ends up being littered with self inflicted and coincidental tragedies. The goal, if there was one, was a loosely knit propagation of musical lifestyle anarchy, to actually succeed was to also fail which can be debatably envisioned in the hypocritical concept of "successful punker."

The westward movement of early America comes to mind. Each wagon train being a punker band and it's entourage. The meek, content, fearful and lazily rich stayed home with the status quo and waited for Hot Topic to sell fashionable outfits of the excursion while a kludge of the outcast, impoverished and explorers types who are never content, seek a new domain beyond the boundaries of safe and acceptable. An exodus into lawlessness.

I don't remember who sent me this pic but it is me, Dave Markey, Mitch Bury, Vic, Davo and C'el

Many have died over the years to follow and even more have disappeared into the non-musical frameworks of society. Bright lights burn out quickly, any lampi can tell you that. The Donner Party ate itself and perhaps so did Black Flag as the stress of relentless touring upstream took it's toll. Not too dissimilar from that westward movement, Punk Rock did relatively little directly, other than make a big mess and piss a bunch of people off enough to send the police out with billy clubs to attack their own children. The original bands and people that carved that path or long gone or obscure from a global perspective except as a name on a shirt to look cool for those that wish they were there. What is not gone is the stage they set for the future waves to build upon. What were the names of those that died in wagon trains long forgotten? Perhaps heroes of great accomplishment or criminals for ruthless Indian killing. Regardless, once carved the results remain forever etched as those crazy punker bands that stood up against the odds, were beat down by police riots and spiraled out of control, they drug us out of disco and 80's hair metal and have changed music forever yet as usual the glory goes to those that follow, not for a second that it is undeserved and each fulfills their purpose in the chain.

Oh, and speaking of hair metal band's of the 80's, for all you back East'ers and the curious, check out Girls Girls Girls, an all girl Motley Cru cover band, fun! Though I was not a Motley Cru fan, ever, there is something twistedly cool about the recycled version presented by hotties that rock!

Ok, that is enough for today. Oh, by the way, I am on my way to Scotland, for surprise surprise! Yep, some Peppers' shows for a change.

Dave Rat

Day 238 - Jan 16 - Nashville Day off

nospam@example.com (Dave Rat) — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:57:52 -0800

Yesterday saw the successfully completion of show number two. So what's new? Well, Marcel, the percussion player from Mars Volta is out with us and playing perc on 5 or six songs each night which adds a delightful variation to the live show and a cool person to have around. Add in John singing a Bee Gees cover of Shadow Dancing and the song "Hey" added to the set and the show was stood out as quite enjoyable and now that I have replaced my lost camera, I will snap some pics with Marcel up there. Speaking of camera. Scott and I grabbed a runner and headed out to Best Buy to replace my lost little friend. I opted for the same again but this time I got it in red rather than black. It is a Lumix DMC-FX07 for anyone curious and after owning 6 Canon digital Elphs, 4 Sony Cyber-Shot's, 1 Kodak, a Casio and a digital SLR Nikon D70, I can say that the little Lumix fighter is easily my favorite by far. I do still have and tour with the Nikon D70 and a giant lens and it would be my all around favorite if I had really huge pockets, the problem though is that 99% of the importance of of having a camera is found in actually carrying it with you. As far as the fate of all those other digi cameras, I am proud to say that I lost only about a third of them, a few were stolen, I sold one, gave a few away and the rest are in the electronics graveyard in my closet at home.

So once again, a bit late, I have implemented the Cam-Lam

method to increase the probability of retaining the the two items for an extended period of time in my possession. Speaking of retaining things, and since I have been on a bit of a blast from the past binge lately, here is another old Rat calendar that we mysteriously called the Amex Calendar

and since it is quite full of many pages, here is my January a 22 years back,

Minutemen and Meat Puppets at Fenders Ballroom and Oh Boy! we raked in the big cash at $350 but it appears we got shorted $50.

Who are these Violent Femms anyway, never heard of them, at least not back then and the show gets postponed.

St. Vidas $30 and owe $30. Hmmm looks like a sound engineer gig for me that I didn't get paid for. Oh and then on to do Black Flag, Flipper and Saccharin Trust, most likely at Fenders again as you can see we did not get paid again and added the $50 from the Meat Puppets show onto their "owed" account. If my memory serves me, I believe that we were quite skilled at not getting paid while living on little or no money. If we do the math, it looks like we earned a grand total of $730 for the month of January, receiving a whopping $350 to feed, fuel and pay rent for Brian Rat and I. But there just was not a lot of opportunities for a couple of punkers and their home made PA so we did what we could to stay alive. You know when people talk about the "good old days?" Well, Though those days are old and some of them were good, and I would not trade them out of my past, no way!, I will say that looking back upon them makes me truly appreciate my world now.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you left some truck drivers alone with a case full of Tiki items?

And since our Pirate days have passed, we make occasional donations to random and inspired fans

Take care till soon, the acclimating to tour,

Dave Rat

Day 2 1/2 - Barcelona - The Gathering

nospam@example.com (Dave Rat) — Thu, 25 May 2006 20:44:00 -0700

The Gathering is like animal critters arriving at the watering hole. Waves of familiar and soon to be familiar humans flood the hotel as each arriving flight dumps off new ones. Production is first to arrive. I sat next to Big Daddy, whom I met 20 years ago. We had a blast catching up on old times and Danzig/Soundgarden tour in 1990 we did together and it remains a constant source of funny stories. Who would have known that Danzig's body guard, Jessie James, would end up on TV married to Sandra Bollock!

I find 'our people' just wandering the street, searching for food or beer or just wandering then clustering and wandering some more. It is our new stomping ground. Lighting, riggers, sound and tomorrow we get backline techs. When all is said and done, there will be 50 or so crew from across the globe all here for a common goal. To build us a killer rock show!

Barcelona seems to have an amazingly high quantity of street artists that stand really still and each has some unique presentation, some are better than others.

These guys ride bikes with their skeleton friends

and some cowboys

and my favorite was just too realistic to even describe

I almost failed the jet lag battle and passed out, fortunately to be saved by a phone call. Never nap on a trans-euro flight landing day. Stay awake till after midnight at least, or you will pay the price for many days.

Let's see, I am 43, we tour this year, we tour next year, if past experience is an indicator, I will be 45 when the tour ends and my daughters will be 12. Hmmm, that is kind of scary. Yikes!

This where I fall into "why am I here mode." Well, it's not out of need, Rat world is doing well and the challenges there keep me happy and financially stable enough. More cities? I have seen enough, I have a back log list of places I want to revisit, when I am not working, too long to ever fulfill. Ultimately the answer of whether the adventure is worth the sacrifice will unravel itself with my personal happiness as the barometer.

I do know that these are 'my people.' I feel a welcome-ness and depth of belonging that I experience in no other group of humans. At home, I enjoy a relatively solitary existence. Family, a few friends I see on occasion, peaceful, focused and wrapped in projects that I seek out to solve. But here I feel like I glow. I know this world. Strangely familiar cities and wires and knobs and endless streams of puzzles that appear in the form of broken things need fixing. The creation of sonic landscapes. This is the forest I know like the back of my hand and these are my people.

Dave Rat

Day 2 - Over Atlantic Ocean - Aeroplane

nospam@example.com (Dave Rat) — Thu, 25 May 2006 15:59:00 -0700

I wake up out of a jet fly haze to the sound of an upset voice. Something about a missing wallet. All her money, passport, credit cards in said wallet have disappeared on the plane, while flying! Yikes, talk about a bummer. To make matters worse, immigration was on the jet way and she was trapped in the nether world. Not allowed into the country and yet has to leave the plane, flying alone on business, ouch. Just before security I turned around went back and handed her a fifty English pound note (about $90 us dollars). She told me thank you but she was ok, they will surely give her some $. I insisted she take it and gave her my email address as she promised to pay it back. I received an email the next day that she had ended up needing the $ for a cab to the hotel after all. Who would have guessed it was a bank holiday and they cleared her into the country but gave her nothing.

They found her wallet on the plane sometime later, money was gone. I lose enough things in my travels, where having some credits in the "help me out department" can't be bad. That was at the plane change in Paris.

Starting up a major tour is kind of a big deal. Having already completed 3 weeks of Euro promotional dates doing TV, radio and small gigs. In the US there was Saturday Night Live

some small shows, a NASCAR event

and some web broadcasts.

Crunching a band of this caliber into small and awkward venues

is quite the challenge and can be frustrating. Doing the real deal with 13 trucks, full sized stages, proper loading areas and all our gear will actually be easier in many ways once the initial dust settles.

Sound, lights, video, rigging, barricade, catering, busses, trucks, dressing room and accounting departments all get to meet each other and figure out how to interface safely and efficiently. It pretty mind boggling to see it all come together. The time has come for The Gathering.

The order of business is #1 -Communication, #2 - Battle Jet Lag, #3 - Keep Battling Jet Lag.

Communication with the Homeland. Intentional communication with the Homeland, not the in advertant communication with Homeland Security that I guess is a given at this point. So, the plan is to buy a local SIM card for my spare unlocked GSM cell phone, in each country. I will then give out my Skype #, which is a Los Angeles 213 # to all that need to reach me. As I arrive in each country, I set Skype to forward to my cell/SIM card # for that country. The end result is; one phone #, worldwide, that rings on my spare cell phone. Since all the phones over here are free incoming minutes if you use them in their own country and the Skype forwarding charges are relatively low, I now can be reached easily and inexpensively via a single US phone # worldwide and I can monitor the costs by watching the Skype account charges. Sure beats the $1 a minute they charge to use my US cell overseas. For outgoing calls, I will use Skype in my hotel room for long chats. The cool thing to do there is get a blue tooth ear piece so you are not attached to the computer when you talk.

Dave Rat

Day 1 - Boston - Fly Away

nospam@example.com (Dave Rat) — Wed, 24 May 2006 04:15:00 -0700

I feel like the luckiest human alive!

I am dropping my twin daughters off with their mom in Boston. She does monitors for Pearl Jam and will have the girls out with her for the next 11 days while I head overseas with Chili Peppers. Pearl Jam are magic people, I feel like they are my extended family and the rush of quick catching up since I saw them not 3 weeks ago in New York is wonderful. The whole camp, band, crew, management, the music, all is magic! Oh, and to make things even more heart warming, they play their song "Rats" during sound check.

Don't know if it was a coincidence or intentional but it makes me happy either way. I remember that day that we got a call at the Rat Shop from Pearl Jam for a graphic of our Rat Sticker. We had no idea it would end up in the CD sleeve next to a song, Rats.

Tears hurt. The euphoria of seeing Pearl Jam family comes crashing down as my daughter Samantha's eyes well up with tears and she clamp hugs me with all her might, pleading me not to go. It hurts a lot and her sister Maddie holds strong but I can see and feel her swallowing the sadness I miss them already. It hurts and I don't feel lucky anymore.

Forever cab to airport.

Dave Rat

SMFMBR!

Big Rock Adventures

nospam@example.com (Dave Rat) — Tue, 23 May 2006 09:06:00 -0700

In the Beginning there was this and the beginning this is.

Year sixteen as front of house sound engineer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. For those unfamiliar with the pro sound world, that means I control/mix the sound that the audience hears at their live concerts. A monitor engineer is the human that controls the sound that the band hears.

I also do other things. My work related passion lies with the company I started with some friends when I was 17, Rat Sound. I love to design/create things like speakers, solve problems, analyze complex systems and fix or improve them. Away from that and in conjunction with it, over the past 16 years I have joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers on nearly every show they have performed. I missed one Australian tour when I was hospitalized with spinal meningitis and another short trip when I had a 2 week overlap mixing Rage Against the Machine, I never did that again.

Over the years I have worked for many bands, 100's would be an understatement. I cannot remember how many tours or all the cities I have been to. Though I can remember mixing Blink 182 when they grew from clubs to arenas, Offspring on from Smash through Ixnay albums, tech'ing on a magical tour with Fugazi, setting PA and monitors for three Black Flag tours, two Sonic Youth album runs (Goo and Dirty), a miserable trip with Danzig/Soundgarden (Soundgarden was all good), L7 and quite a few years of traveling with Pearl Jam, whom I love like second family.

I never wanted to be a sound engineer. I learned to mix sound in order to test the speaker system designs and to operate the sound systems Rat Sound rented out. We could not afford to pay someone else anyway. By some round about way, I ended up with this this gig.

In the late 80's, Peppers were one of those bands that would always hire us Rats whenever they could. It was Mark, Robbie, Cathy and Chris Grayson. Chris was their FOH engineer from the beginning of the band. He would always hire us for sound and we would always bring too much gear, regardless of what we got paid. We referred him gigs with other bands and Rat eventually ended up hiring Chris to help with other Rat shows.

The call came from Mark Johnson that they were firing Chris and they want me to mix them, I refused. I could not take my friend Chris's job. When Mark told me that if I don't do it they were going to hire someone else, I agreed to cover for Chris till he got his life in order. Chris was having some issues as he had been a no-show on a Rat gig the week before and we were unable to reach him. After leaving a message on his machine, I reluctantly agreed. I have a PA company, I am not an engineer by trade, I will fill in and when he resurfaces, all will be patched up soon.

I never spoke to Chris again.

Chris was murdered in a drug deal while I was in Hawaii with Peppers doing a show at Pink's Garage. So here I am sixteen years later and still covering the gig for him.

We are currently embarking on a world tour supporting their the 5th album since I started and to be honest, if it was any other band on earth, I would not have agreed to go. The thought of tour no longer thrills me and yet, the thought of not joining this beautiful and eccentric group of life long friends is beyond comprehension.

There are two parts to this adventure for me. First is the rock show, diving in and creating something sonically unique and special. The challenge of great sound in bad sounding venues. The sensation of being the conduit that connects the artistry of the band in the the most intense method possible to those that bask in the experience. Secondly, my life. My own passions and desire to come home with more than a secondhand experience of building someone else's dream. Something with a bit more substance than a wad o cash, some frequent flier miles, a sad heart from missing loved ones, ringing ears and the distant memory of screaming fans. The key to happiness is merging the two.

Each tour I try and do something personally new and special, something that I can look back on with a smile. Once it was learning to weld and I had a 225 amp MIG welder sent to my hotel room on By the Way tour

and I made an electric go-cart with the help of Scott, Nick and Tim and I was determined to finish before the tour leg ended

Other adventures have been fishing

designing the Rat Web Site on Rage tour, designing MicroWedges, patenting the Rat Sniffer and writing articles like The Audio Quiz and Large Tour Logistics to name a few.

For this tour my project is to share the experiences of being a modern day rock and roll gypsy, glorified carney and/or living the dream job of world travel, celebrities and music, however you wish to look at it. I will do my best to show the warts and beauty of the adventures and bring whomever wishes to join, along for the ride.

Dave Rat

HMLIATOY!

Roadies in the Midst

nospam@example.com (Dave Rat) — Mon, 22 May 2006 20:28:00 -0700

Roadies in the Midst: The Story of Touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers (2006)

Directed by

Dave Rat

Genre: Drama

Tagline: In lands of beauty, wonder and danger, roadies follow a dream, fall in love and risk their lives to perpetuate the rock show.

Plot Outline: The story of how Dave Rat, a sound engineer, takes two year journey with the Red Hot Chili Peppers studying the roadies and later fights to protect them or just possibley just hang out with them.

User Comments: Not boring at all

User Rating: 8.9/10 (2 votes)

Cast overview, first billed only:
Anthony Kiedis.... Vocals
John Fruciante .... Guitar
Flea .... Bass
Chad Smith .... Drums
Gage .... Tour Manager
Bill ... Production Manager
Lyssa .... Backstage Coordinator
Dave Rat.... FOH Sound Eng
Nick the Fly and Tenacious Lee... FOH Assists
Daniel .... Monitor Engineer
Dave Lee.... Guit Tech
Tracy .... Bass Tech
Chris .... Drum Tech
Scott .... Lampi
Leif ... Lighting Assist
Grier ... Set Design
Andrew .... Pro Tools Eng
Lee ... Sound Crew Chief
Manny ... Sound Tech
Neal ... Sound Tech
Jamie ... Sound Tech

Also Known As:
Roadies in the Mist (USA) (short title)
The Adventures of Dave Rat (USA)
Runtime: about 2 years
Country: Earth
Language: English
Color: Color (Ratnicolor)
Sound Mix: Fairly Loud
Certification: Worldwide "PG" rated for the most part

Trivia: The roadies used in movies up to this time had obvious anatomical differences from real roadies; for instance, the real roadies were rarely seen, forcing many preconceived perceptions of roadie traits. For this series, wanderer Dave Rat wanted to use real roadies where possible, regardless of the obvious dangers involved.

Quotes:
Bill: Dave Rat, you are a knucklehead.
Dave Rat: Uh, oh!

Awards: None

User Comments:

"Not boring at all!" - Larry

"I thought it was gonna be boring but then it wasn't - Joe

"I thought it was boring, except for the parts that were not boring" - Dave Rat

"I think roadies are cute!" - Stacy

"I was captivated about the parts about Scott " - Scott the Lampi

"A definitive insight into the mysterious ways of the roadie!" - The English roadie

Was the above comment useful to you?
Check for other user comments.