Skip to content

Day 318 - April 6th - The World's Biggest Island

Posted by Dave Rat on

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Due to the far awayness and the timeline of travel, we have left behind the Rat PA system in the US and I will be working on regionally hired sound systems in Australia and Japan. The stuff we carry with us we have paradoxically named the "global gear" which consists sound wise of the band's backline gear, the monitor system, my front of house console and outboard gear, the Pro Tools recording rig and two large tigers. As far as the main PA system is concerned, we do our best to mirror image it as best we can. The success rate of getting identical gear varies from country to country but for the most part, we can get pretty close with the main difference usually being that we can only get the Rat Subs from the Rat Shop. I will miss them dearly but the V-Dosc SB 218 subs can get pretty close with some audio massaging. So here is the sub cannon setup built with SB 218 triple stacked rather than the double stacked Rat Subs.

**** End Sound Nerd Speak ****

For all y'all that have yet to do earthly traveling down under or to the UK and also happen not to live in those regions, you may not be familiar with the black gooey substances with a strong savory odor known as Marmite in England and Vegimite for the Aussies. Though the two are a bit different and there are several other versions available like Bromite, they all carry the common trait of being an emotionally and passionately dividing line of opinion. Talk about a love hate/hate thing, this stuff is one of the top contenders of acquired taste or immediate revulsion depending on your culinary adventurousness and childhood exposure. Personally I hate the stuff. Or at least that is what I used to say before I started thinking. "Hmmm, so many people love this stuff, it smells like crap and tastes even worse but wow, the people that love it truly love it and it seems to make them so happy." So one day many years ago I set aside my closed minded bias and asked an English friend to make me up a Marmite toast and gave it a shot with big eyes and curiosity and you know what? It was good! Spread super thin on hot buttered toast, I understood and added one more thing to my life that makes me happy.

It is not for everyone but once you get it, yumm! Oh wait, look! Some magical face has mystically appeared on my Vegimite toast and I was going to sell it on Ebay but alas, I could not help but eat it up.

Hmmm, I wonder what is in here, this smells delicious as well

Show tomorrow!!

Dave Rat

Trackbacks

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as Linear | Threaded

Andy on :

Ok it's not the best photo... but since we haven't seen you post the tigers and flamingoes I thought I would send you one. http://www.users.on.net/~andrew.hody/RHCP/DSC00069.JPG Thanks Dave, enjoy the rest of the tour Down Under! If you go diving, don't forget your shark repellant aka. vegemite. ;)

Dave Rat on :

Very cool, you caught me with all papparazzi style! Thank you and I guess I have been slacking a bit on FOH pics, I will have to change that!!

Monique on :

Damn...I had a blank panther tattoo years ago that ended up looking like a big black blob so I got it covered up. Yet, your rat tattoo looks fab. You can even see the shading. Nice.

Monique on :

Shoot--that was supposed to say "black" not "blank".

Dave Rat on :

Thank You Monique! I had all my tattoos done by a guy named Mark Mahoney. He is really good and has that proper depth thing wired where it is deep enough to stay and shallow enough not to blur.

Mikey B on :

Cannons with ego decks!! Better than viagra. If ya see JK down there say hey for me.

Jon Bannan on :

Hey Dave, If you get a chance, can you discuss the theory behind the sub cannon? Do you time align each sub stack to the PA, thus resulting in 3 seperate delays for the subs? Thanks man! Jon

Anonymous on :

Look at March 16th blog.

Hollis on :

hey thanks for posting up this blog. I'm a 2nd year student at UC santa barbara and I'm in charge of the sound for their shows. we just had the Killers in for a 4400 person show yesterday. thats probably not a lot of people to you but our regular venue maxes out at 820. it was a great experience since I had gotten somewhat used to mixing/running shows in the smaller inviroment. for the killers I was just a lowly crew cheif though, but my crew included my 14 of my usual student production crew plus 20 students drafted from security plus a handfull of outside crew. chiefing the ouside crew was esepecially interesting since they were a lot older and siginifantly more experienced. but I got their respect fast by jumping in right with them for the first few trucks. getting the three groups working togeather alone was an interesting issue, not to mention getting them to work with all the touring crew. thanks to your bolg I was able to identify why tour sound pointed a bunch of subs backward for rear phase cancellation (that scored me some points :), and also just gave me an idea of what to expect in terms of how major shows work (trussing, flying speakers, people with very specific jobs). so thanks again, and I hope the next leg of your tour goes smoothly.

Dave Rat on :

Hello Hollis, Very cool, so happy that the info is being put to good use! Rock on!

KC on :

Dave, A very funny "travel" book about Australia is "In a Sunburned Country" by Bill Bryson. You should read it!

Dave Rat on :

I will look for it in my travels. Thank You!

Add Comment


To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

Form options