Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

**** Merging of the Worlds ****

Something I realized a bit ago was that writing this blog has a strange side effect of connecting all my worlds. Past meet tour, tour meet home, home meet business, business meet friends and everyone meet family. This cross life interconnect is an odd sensation and as time progresses, so does my caution fade. Plus, I guess I now have a 600 page answer to the question "So, what do you do?"

And what I did on thursday was to go on a snowboarding blitz with Grier.

I had to head up and grab my boarding gear and from up there and may as well do some runs while I am there and awesome, Grier was up for joining. Two hours away, wonderful day and home by 4pm. Years ago I bought a house in Big Bear, up near the ski resort,

used to live up there and now I just use it as mountain get away of peace and quite to balance the flurry of tour. I have been renting it out as a vacation rental and if any of y'all are ever wanting to head up there, let me know and I figure out some sort of super bloggery friend discount.

http://www.allseasonsbigbear.com/units/54.html

As you can see, in one of my wacky brainstorms, I decided to put a in a train that runs around near the ceiling.

**** End Merging of Worlds ****

Grammy's rehearsals went well, familiar faces everywhere and it seems like just the other day I was here last year with Maroon 5 keeping an eye on the room sound while their FOH engineer Brian was in the broadcast truck looking out for the sound sent to the TV networks. Before that I spent the multi-hours hanging out in TV world when I was in the truck doing the TV sound for the Foo Fighters and Chick Corea combo. It is all pretty much the same each time, the Grammy's, the MTV video awards and all the big TV productions. Lots of humans, lots of rules, lots of caution and lots of waiting around.

**** Nerd Speak ****

I learned something cool. Ok, normally with touring shows we use chain motors (hoists) to lift up the gear. An up-rigger goes up to "the roof," drops a rope which a down-rigger attaches to a hook on the end of the chain running through the motor. The up-rigger pulls the hook/chain up and attaches it to the roof in one of several ways. Then, when the motor is energized, it can be remote controlled to climb up and down the chain. Occasionally something goes wrong with the remote control and a motor stops working. When this happens, a rigger either climbs up or or lowers down on a rope to the motor and fixes it or they attach a second motor and transfer the load. This takes quite a bit of time. For live TV, there is no time for that type of mucking around and there are quite a few stage bits that move in and out during the show. So, in order to insure that a stalled motor does not screw up the elaborate TV production, they put two motors case to case on the critical moving set pieces. One motor is upside down attached to the other. So just imagine in the pics below that the motor hooks are connected and the chain bag is not defying gravity

So what they do is, control one motor to move the set pieces in and out and the other just gets towed around but.... If the primary motor fails, they can switch to the secondary motor really quickly and still keep the show going.

**** End Nerd Speak ****

While I am down at the Staples Center doing Grammyish things, I walk to lunch with my good friend Frank and brother in law, Jason who is working there as well and look at that!

It is the Variety Arts Center, have not seen it for years. The riot when the Butthole Surfer played, Janes Addiction and we did so many gigs there it was like a second home for years. Ahh, the memories I love to hold and hope not to repeat

The not so nostalgic,

Dave Rat