Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

How cool is it when time loops back on itself and the past becomes the present from a differing point of view. When I was 16 I was listening to music as loud as the headphone/stereo combo would get, lost in a state of timeless bliss trying to pick out all four guitars on the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young live album, 4 Way Street. I was 15 years old when I bought the just released Pink Floyd "Animals" record and are there actually a pig sounds in the recording or is it just the swine references that make it seem like they are there?

Anyway, fast forward 30 years and here I sit surrounded by hundreds of surround-sound speakers sprawled out in a giant field. The reality did not hit me until the show and I heard my memories in real time. Me and my friends that built, run and operate this evolving entity called Rat Sound are providing audio for Roger Waters! Who would have knew! Ha, that rules! And not only that, since the moment the show ended and I got done pinching myself, I have been drilling to find memories of a show that was more impressive and amazing.

If if that was not enough, check this out. You know the big pig that is all over the news that got away? The $10K award for finding it pig?

Well, check out piggy's front right paw:.....

Continue reading "Time Circles and Gatherings"

Uh oh! No call sheet under my door! What time is lobby call? Oh, that's right, lobby call today - whenever, Ha ha! Reality shift as my life slips back to the other way. Way too much to do and every time I cross off something from my list, three more things jump on. Ahhh, but the timelessness is dreamy. Up at 7 am every morning and in bed by 9 pm or 3 am or up in the middle of the night all depending on what I am not sure.

The EAW adventure is moving along and if I can just remember to go to the grocery store I would not be hungry all the time. Oh well, eating is over rated any way. So stepping back to my notes and pics of the past.......

Day 457 - Aug 24 - Leeds Festival

Looks like Ozzy Osborne has a novel concept for solving the innate human nature to battle one another for no good reason. check out whateverittakes.org if you need one of these fashionable wristbands. Gotta love the Ozzy!

Ok, so here we are.

Leeds Festival is known for many things. One of which is being the sister festival to Reading, another is for having what is probably the worlds most notorious load in. I am standing at the truck dock. If you look closely you can see what resembles one of those contraptions you see at a museum that the ball rolls down in curious ways except here it is actually the ramp that you have to push every piece of gear up and down to perform the show. Though a mechanical masterpiece, it is also a roadie's nightmare.

The city of lights as roadie Lee grabs an overhead shot of mix position mid show. My home.

And with a flash of light the glamour erases and clear proof that lighting is inversely proportional to happiness.. ...

I wish I had more for ya but more is to come.

Oh, and all y'all that are working on roadiepedia, you rule! Some crazy funny stuff on there!

So sorry for being lax on responding to comments, my space posts and such, I just need to clear this bump of home acclimation and all will hopefully settle in. Also, I have all kinds of cool footage from Sonic Youth tour of the "Dirty" album that I will be posting soon on youtube.com, for all y'all that like that kind o stuff.

Dave Rat

 

For all y'all in the industry and even if you are not, who would like to nominate lighting, audio, trucking, staging, bussing and other entertainment entities for the annual Parnelli Awards, go to this link and rock out, vote for some, vote for all or none! http://www.parnelliawards.com/nominate.php

Day 456 - Aug 24 - Reading Festival

So as we approach the our last hurrah, Scott and I decide that we can not end without one last adventure into the roadie wilderness known as the crowd. Shhhh, as we lay low and creep off into uncharted lands the sensation of danger is imminent. Quickly we discover that to wander astray could have dire consequences. Hmmm, I wonder if this is the right way?

After a brief pow wow, Scott and I decide that we will heed the words of the yellow sign and follow a less ominous path. Stealthy we blend.

It appears that the natives posses a certain fondness for an effervescent yellowish liquid called beer. It also appears that warm beer is some sort of criminal act so they have placed an amnesty booth allowing the contraband to be traded for the more legal cold stuff. Notice the Function One PA off to the right. Hmmm, clearly a supporter of beer coldness perpetuation.

Wow, truly and advanced society! Here we find a reciprocal setup that pays cash for used beer cups. Very cool. My expectations are high that indigenous punters keep their cages quite clean.

It is not uncommon when out in the field observing nature that one will be so fortunate to observe the regional life forms involved in the mating ritual. With much care we creep up and grab a rare shot indeed.

Cleanliness is paramount in this tribe. Observe the female nonchalantly exiting the restroom as the hazmat team disinfects the area.

Approaching the outskirts, we stumble across the local watering hole. Both Scott and I dare not get to close as, like most creatures, punters do not like to be disturbed while quenching thirst.

I seem to have lost Scotty. where could he be? After much searching, I was quite surprised to find him dangerously close to the punter nesting grounds. "Hey Scott, what are you doing?"

Uh oh. As we all know, every silver lining has a cloud. what do we have here?

Ooooh, look! A swimming hole!! Perhaps this is where they bathe?

Feeling a bit home sick, Scott and I head back to the the roadie herd where we find safety and solace in our beloved front of house area.

The happiness of the rock show.

And, oh nooooo! Does that say 99.4 db in red? Is that what they consider too loud? How can that be? At least please give me 103. This is like driving on the freeway with a 40 mile an hour speed limit.Oh well, never forget it could always be worse.

One more show to go! See ya tomorrow.

Dave Rat

Though I vanish at times, I rarely disappear and if all runs smooth I hope to stick around in this bloggery world for a while. I woke up pondering and about how cooperative efforts of multitudes of humans with a common direction, makes me happy and I came up with a new interactive project that requires help from y'all, my bloggery friends. So after after thousands of hours of sharing my world and adventures and no advertisements, no strings attached and free for fun free, I have a favor or task or adventure to ask from all of you. Perhaps view it as the final exam, the beginning of something with no end or an interactive group public extension of the blog. Either way, if you go to http://www.ratsound.com/mwiki you can freely add edit and generally mess around with the evolving content of Roadiepedia. I would very much appreciate a bit of your time throwing some of your view, knowledge or personality into the mix and helping build what I hope to be something fun, funny and informative.

And with said said, lets more forward into the past.

Day 456 - Aug 24 - Reading

We have a day off in Reading which I am a bit sorry to say that Reading (pronounced redding) is not the epicenter of thrillsville and the big Festival here seems to be the life of the city. That said, it is cool here and a wonderful day for an excursion.

Now correct me if I am wrong but do the two police officers off to the right resemble Laurel and Hardy? And also notice that the skinny on has tons of pockets and obviously is carrying everything while the big guy has none. Oh, and hello coffee and Lee!

So off on a train ride head Lee and I

To go visit a legendary sound system builder designer named Tony Andrews. I had never met Tony before and on my mind is that just about everything he designs is almost the exact opposite of the methods I follow. He is all about horn loaded boxes and very anti line array. I avoid horns at all costs and love a well designed line array. Two completely opposing points of view yet we have chatted on the phone as someone I hold much respect for as the innovative system designer of the Turbosound Flashlight, Floodlight and many other forward thinking audio products. I am both honored and apprehensive.

The Funktion One shop is located behind their house in the countryside and it is an inventors dream. Everything needed to to design and build from the ground up. Audio stuff everywhere and a a virtual playground for sound nerd such as myself. Common ground. I could feel it was there though I could not put my finger on it till I was there. Aside from striving to design cool audio things I find our directions are not different, only the paths chosen to get there. Non-processor dependant designs that do not require hi tech electronics to make them listen-able, now that is something we agree on. The adventure cold not have been more fun and a wonderful dinner and brain challenging discussions and how cool is it that I get to hang out with famous audio humans!!

And speaking of audio innovations, how about those Greeks? This is a cool audio article on the ancient's sent to me by Lisa

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070404162237.htm

Till a different now which will be next,

Dave Rat

**** Ponderings ****

Is it a quandary to impact the environment by having a tremendous amount of humans gather for a giant rock show to promote social awareness of the impact that a the tremendous number of humans have on the environment? Is the event itself in it's magnitude directly undermining it's own cause? Busses, trucks, planes and trains haul masses of bottled water and beer drinking humans to create a mind bending amount of trash to promote reducing trashing our world. The hypocrisy was most purely embraced in full ignorance by Duran Duran's singer's attempt at self elevation when he walks on stage spewing "Raise your hand if did not arrive here on a private jet." As if somehow throwing spikes at the fellow performers gathering for a common cause would have some sort of positive spin.

More specifically, I arrived on an overnight bus ride of misery and left on a private jet to get to the next show that same night, with the rest of Peppers core crew. No other other way we could make the jump to Denmark for the show we had booked long before the Peppers were personally asked to support Live Earth by Al Gore. We all jumped many hoops. So one could ponder, would it have been better that Peppers not play? Was the environmental impact of transporting the band and crew to the event excessive compared to the effort towards of catalyzing humans to take up the mission of walking more softly upon the planet we tread? If the answer is yes, could than same response be applied to the event as whole and therefore it should never have existed?

First I must say that I fully support treating the world we live with care and respect. Whether it is global warming, decimation of other species or obliteration of the key components that necessitate healthy life, I feel that care and respect should be considered in all avenues. What concerned me was not the events existence but it's lack of thoroughness. Cool concepts like "return 10 empty cups to get a free beer to promote recycling, reduce the mess to be cleaned" that they do at the Werchter Festival in Germany and how Roskilde pays cash for empties, was sadly missing. The laminate lanyards they gave us said they were made from 100% recycled fiber while the laminates themselves were plain old plastic instead of cool recycled paper. How much of the festival was powered by renewable power? All I could find was that the web site servers were, the festival itself, while we just plugged into the wall of course. In the back of my mind grows the thought the true change will grow from innovation in grass roots events that focus on awareness while maintaining near zero impact, setting an example rather that just preaching what "you" should do.

Perhaps to truly solve the issue we face, we would have to also address the speed at which humans mass produce more humans at alarming rates. Where do we draw the line on whether we attack each other or work together and how effective we can be at slowing down the inevitable, all remains to be seen. Regardless though, there should be little doubt that less splattering of the planet sure beats screwing it up faster.

**** End Ponderings ****

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

So I am on little sleep, nearly all our gear in another country, I am mixing on a console I just met an hour ago and an EV X-Line PA that I have never used on a large event. Oh well, no biggie, it's just for hundreds of thousands of humans all over the world. What better time to play it safe? So I ordered in the best mixing board I could think of to handle the job. This is a big huge show and we all know that big huge shows must have big expensive complicated mixing boards so the soundman looks cool. Unless of course the soundman desired something small, fast, dependable, predictable and easy to setup. Hmmm, I see a $200,000 dollar Midas XL8, three $100,000 Digico D5's and $70,000 Yamaha PM 5D laying around the mix area here, all high end digital desks. Somewhere around here is my baby, aha, there it is on the left:

Oooooh, wow! Look at that $15,000 analog Midas Verona! Though the show could have gone smoother for me, given the fact that I had absolutely nothing in my favor, including loosing most of what little line check before I actually was given working snake lines and no time to play music through the PA so I could tune it, things went relatively well and compared to the various forms of trains wrecks I heard leading up to Peppers, it fell well into the window of good enough.

*** End Sound Nerd Speak ****

And off we go...

But not before grabbing a few pics

 

Meet Roadie Bryan, an awesome sound engineer and a long time friend, he mixes Foo Fighters, hanging with Roadie Daniel.

And just because I can, the gratuitous glamour shot with the guy that introduced the Peppers

Hurry up, we rocked and now we got to roll. Hour to the airport, two hour flight, 30 minute drive to the gig plus we lose an hour in the time change. Roskilde, the last show of this tour leg, here we come!

Dave Rat

 

**** Special Alert ****

Shhhhh! Don't tell anyone but I got a bit laid back in my bloggery, like 4 weeks behind, yikes and easily the longest lag yet and during this lag something special has happened. Guess what? We missed the Blog's Birthday! Happy birthday RITM blog! May 24th marks the first day of the second year of us Roadies being in the Midst, or at least the official observation of them in a bloggery form. One whole year since the actual tour started and though the actual tour process, as far as my involvement on an active level, started back in late January 2006, but we don't really count that because those extra months were PB (Pre Blog). So today is the Day 366 since us Pepper's roadies first left home on our world wide food sampling trip that also involved setting up gear for a rock show. Let us raise our glasses and sing in merry rejoice.

**** End Special Alert ****

Oh, and we may as well settle in on a proper calendar dating system. "PB" will mean "Pre Blog" as in Day 89PB was 89 days before the RITM blog began. That way I can now refer to dates via bloggery time. Where as dates occurring after the blog began will be referred to as "PB" which means "Post Blog" so to clarify Day 89PB will mean 89 days after the Blog began and we were in Arizona. Actually it does not matter much anyway because once time has passed it becomes a slippery medium that has less and less relevance with each passing day and all that really matters is the memories.

And while we are catching up on past memories, I guess now is as good a time as any to tidy up the unfinished Coachella adventure so here are few odds and ends. I don't recall mentioning it in past blog posts but here is something for the sound techery humans.

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

One of the issues, in my opinion, that us sound nerdery humans often encounter is the insecure action of ego based self importance that inspires us to loose track of the big picture. One area that often occurs is at mix position. Here we are at a festival ready to rock with 80,000 of our new found best friends whom have all come to join in listening and loving the tunes and low and behold they also like to see the band. Here we are as soundies (and lampies) all ready to rock like no tomorrow so we set up a monolith of techno scaffolding blockage dead center in prime seating so us privileged few who are paid to rock can do our gig. And with our momentum of self importance we barrel through and build our big bummer to stand on while totally disregarding the fact that the reason we are here is so that many of those humans who can't now see, want to view the show. After seeing event after event where there is a big "V" of emptiness behind the sound area because the audience can't see from that area, I decided to make an effort to bring about some change.

Here is an aerial picture from Coachella 2004's main stage with a "normal" festival mix position.

You may notice a slight devoid of humans behind the mix area above. Below is a picture of a low profile riser open back mix area that I came up with and have been fighting to implement for for many years but GoldenVoice and Coachella festival readily embraced it the following year in 2005.

Above you can see the "see through" mix position that I do all in my power to implement whenever possible. The amazing thing is how much resistance I encounter from promoters, production and other band engineers at festivals that really have a hard time straying from the norm. Even if though the "norm" sucks for the crowd and puts the sound engineer on a platform that is too high to hear what the audience hears.

Below, I put together a very high tech labeling of the sound system in the Mojave tent:

A pic from main stage at night

Mojave mix position

The 60 foot dome

\

Other wanderings

And I will see ya soon!

The returning to blog life,

Dave Rat

**** Ponderings ****

Great sound is just an opinion. As a sound engineer, it is very important not to forget that. Opinions are fluid and need no basis in fact or logic and with music, technically perfect often equates to boring, as the music world quickly discovered when drum machines were invented. There are humanoids that love and bask in the endless quest of capturing perfect recordings of classical music and connoisseur themselves into frenzy focusing on every detail. I have met and listened to a few of these "oh you have to hear this!" audiofoolery setups and sat there and closed my eyes and not once did I go "Holy shit! for a second there I thought an orchestra snuck in hear and started rocking out while I had my eyes closed." But what I did hear is something that was their opinion of amazing sound. And after all the hype and build up about how great it is, I find my focus riveted to finding the flaws, (but hey, I am a sound engineer, that's what I am supposed to do, right? Then I think, hmmm, what if I happened upon that same sound system in a pawn shop? I may go "Holy shit, it almost sounds as if an orchestra just snuck in here and and started rocking! How much for that stereo system?"

**** End Ponderings ****

So Coachella is has much to see and while in a wander. I found bikes, but nowhere did they go.

While I do enjoy a good bike ride and I am often quite happy to go nowhere, combining those two concepts at a music festival seems a bit less than attractive. These were not normal bikes though, well, actually they were normal bikes but they did something cool. See the little motor to the belt? Ever had your cell phone go dead at a three day festival? Here is a way for you to pedal that power back into the phone, very cool and part of an energy awareness exhibit. So we wander on and in no particular order have look at some of what I see'd and did. Bjork played and had some cool keyboard sequencer thing that he moved little things around and sound came out that no one could figure out what it was.

I mixed Chuck Dukouski's band CD Sextet in the Gobi tent

So I got to mix the largest and smallest stages and is was cool to mix on at a Rat Trap System which I have not done forever. Say hey to Ian who came to visit and Chuck.

I got to meet DJ Shadow

and

Catering did not suck

We all know the importance of driving a sexy ride and when your cruising such sweet vehicle as my rickety Rat cart clearly was, irresistibility is just one of the perks.

The Peppers crew hotel was far from sucking as well.

Stability is formed by the third point in a triangle. Like on a bicycle, you go to park and trying to balance it on two wheels and poom, over it goes but if you put down the .......

kickstand, it makes it all better, badabing. And finally for today's installment, DJ's use headphones to do their deal and to get a nice clear powerful sound. Well, we also know that bigger is better, check out these headphones!

For you techies out there, that is four 18" speakers, four 15" speakers, four 10" speakers, two 2" horns - per side stereo tri amp with subs on an aux send. Turn that up and I bet it would make your heart tremble. I think we may have a new entrant into the **** Ingenious and Practical Sound System Design Award **** contest.

Ok, off to do things that humans do.

Dave Rat

Out to the desert I head for a big huge music festival. Bjork headlines the main stage on friday, Peppers headline saturday and Rage Against the Machine on sunday. Plus there are 4 more stages and it is an all day event, all three days. This event is family. It was the brainchild of GoldenVoice's Paul and Rick and though Rick has passed on, Paul continues to build the dream, a giant annual beautiful euro style multi day festival in the So Cal desert. GoldenVoice is the promoter the initially put trust in us scruffy Rat's and hired us to do sound for their punk shows. Here we are over a quarter century later and Rat Sound is providing the largest outlay of sound gear and crew ever as we provide audio for all five stages.

I arrive on friday but most of the Rat's crew have been there four days already with the best of the Rat all gathered or perhaps more accurately, all of the Rat all the available Rat's all gathered, today my job is wandering and general person of hello's, a meeter, a greeter and getting a feel for what the heck is going on. The actual orchestration of the incredible complexities from Rat's end is handled by Jon, our systems coordinator. My interaction varies from year to year but this year and last year since I was on tour, I was fairly hands off except for Peppers related stuff. I don't get too excited much about about big PA systems or shows like I used to but I must admit that pulling up to park and seeing the Main Stage of my home for the next three days was pretty exciting

And somewhere in the back of my mind I feel more apprehensive than usual. Something tells me that there is a lot going on over there and I am walking right into the middle of it. And what better way to head into the thick of it than cruising in this pimping ride?

It was the last cart left in the bone yard. My chariot. So off I head in a rickety cart that you have to pump the gas to get it to start, the brakes barely work, the shocks are shot so ever bump nearly launches you. Perfect! So I tagged it with Rat stickers and put in a request to Aimee the cart master, to assign me this cart tomorrow and sunday as well. The similarities to the old thrashed old Rat trucks we used so long ago, hey, it's like the good old times!

To be continued ....

Dave Rat