Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

**** 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

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Other wanderings

And I will see ya soon!

The returning to blog life,

Dave Rat