Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

Any of y'all who have followed my bloggery adventures for a while and I have not bored away, you may recall my FOH techs Nick the Fly and Happi-Lee. Nick started Peppers with me and I like to have out during the design phase early on. Then Lee joined on with his amazing and precise skill set that really locked the PA into an amazing level of consistency. For this Blink tour, Nick once again got me started up but I could not get Lee. Instead I have the fabulous honor to be working with none other than Jim Lockyer, new tour nickname yet to be determined.

I can not stress enough the importance of having a high quality PA tech. Especially for my spacey forgetful self. I heavily rely on my techs for consistency and attention detail as I want to walk into a setup as close to identical as humanly possible everyday. My goal is to purely focus on any venue to venue issue but the system and everything else must be in its proper place.

Now typically I am a calm and easy going individual but when there are issues that involve gross negligence, or complete disregard, I can really ramp up into a frenzy that I highly recommend everyone avoid. So imagine my surprise when I arrived at the sound board to fired up the system and noticed this

I know, it is hard to look at and sorry for putting you through it, but it was too big of an issue to let slide. Yes, the zig zaggy pad edge is missing its outer strip. Frozen in time I felt a full melt down rush over me. JIM, what the fuck kind of ship are you running here? I thought you were pro! You came highly recommended. Sigh, I thought you were my friend :(

Not only was the strip not in its proper position, it was actually sitting on the console for the last few shows. But since I mix in the dark and rarely look there, I had not noticed.

How am I supposed to mix the god damn show if I am limited in my padded roaming room? Can I mix like that? No I can't, no wonder the last two shows sucked ass. This absolutely unacceptable! Aaaargh! I am out of here. I can not work under these conditions but fortunately our head of tour security, Tony the Tiger, captured me as I was running off and convinced me to give Jim another chance.

He assured me it wont happen again and that he will do all posssible to be spot on from now on.. I was relieved to see his dedication renewed and I snapped this photo of Jim tuning the sound system the following day, notice the RTA mic with the orange spiral tape.

Here we can see Jim line checking:

So, far since "The Pad Event" he has held things together very well. Lets just hope that he keeps his wits about and priorities straight. And in case he forgets:

#1) No Lights! No board lights, no rack lights and computer screens must be facing away from me or off during the show.

#2) Carpet and pad setup properly.

#3) Wine glass never empty and make sure I drink plenty of water.

#4) The mixing Stick must be readily accessible at all times.

#5) Make sure most of the PA works and sounds halfway decent most of the time.

For those of you unfamiliar with the mixing stick:

Ok, now that I got that off my chest, enough with the serious stuff.

Hey, can you guess where in the truck the KUDO boxes were after the rainy gig?

I really am enjoying this tour and I really feel loved

And it's is fun! Ha!

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Finally, as a side note, Notice the modified Slotfire setup we are calling V Fire?

Basically, same theory as Slotfire, but closing the backs up puts a lot less sound under hollow stages. Slotfire does sound a bit better and offers a smaller point source as the V opening needs to be larger to work properly. But, sealing up the back really help. So wall or solid behind, we use Slot, Hollow or open behind, we use V. We even used a combo wit on slot and one V per side when the inside stacks were in front of the hollow stage and the outsides were against concrete.

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

Next up, well dunno yet but it will be some ramblings about something or other.

Dave Rat