Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

After line check Nick the Fly and I went for hike. Figuring White River Amphitheater may be actually near a river and with the little help from Google map on my phone, off we went. Hey, if you have not checked out Google Earth or the mobile Google map with satellite view, I highly recommend you do. To be able to see an accurate aerial view of where you stand is beyond cool. Ok, so we are hiking and we pass a house and then a few hundred feet later stumble across a flowers, toys, mounds of dirt and tombstones. It just is not that often, like never, that I see fresh graves in someone's backyard. Just the thought of heading out back to dig a hole when a family member dies seems so awkwardly 1800's. Slightly phased we forge ahead down an overgrown dirt road heading down. Farther and deeper we next come across another graveyard but this one is for late model trucks and an an El Camino wedged under blackberry bushes. And just then the grunts and yelps of a dozen or so in drunken party come into focus with one loud gurgle definitely tossed in our direction. We still had yet to cross the small stream with the leg of a split hoofed animal floating in it and I am having a tough time getting thoughts of the movie Deliverance out of my mind. Two small streams later, neither with floating legs, Nick and I call it a wrap and head back while the getting is good. Indian land, sovereign nation, scary while also intriguing and kind of cool in its primal lawlessness feel. It was good hike and time to head back to the rock show a half mile away.

All this walking has made me hungry and though I had my share of lunch:

I am excited about dinner:

I enjoyed the first half of The Mars Volta's set before heading back to get my world together for the Peppers set. Except Mars stops playing early. I heard something about a bottle of liquid, possibly piss being thrown, landing on Omar's guitar effects pedal board and making things not work anymore. How do people come up with such bad ideas? Well, since neither The Mars nor their gear were too excited about the aerial gift that was that and that meant the end of their set. Here is what it looked liked pre-projectile:

And you can see the EAW KF760 rig provided by our friends at Carlson Audio. Visually the rig seemed to be a bit shy but actually it sounded quite good and worked just fine. It was the best experience so of mixing on a non V-Dosc system since we started the tour and the first real experience for me to have some time on this particular system type. I think I now have my second favorite rig for Peppers but it will take more than one show to know for sure.

And finally, since you are joining me on this journey, you may as well hang at the sound board for a gig and it will look something like this:

or it could look like this, depending on how much you drink:

Roadie research, must remember to do roadie research.

Good night.

Dave Rat

AWWIGCOYMAMYIAPT!