Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

The US is a great country built by many amazing and brilliant people. Unfortunately the most adamant flag waivers are more likely to fall into the categories of unhealthy, lethargic, self righteous followers whose bragging rights are based on the plot of dirt they were born. Hmmmm, the beauty of clinging on the accomplishments of others, versus creating them of their own. And when ever I remember to I ask myself "What can I do that is unique, different, amazing and special, today or any day? And how well am I treating my my mind, my body, the critters around me (humans included) and the planet I reside?" I find I am most deeply happy, as that is when my world is balanced and I am pursuing new adventures. That is of course not the same as when I have the most fun, which lays more in the realms of playfully devious or the seeking of thrill.

And thrill seeking we did. Here you can see roadies Chris Warren and Scott the Lampi very seriously rocking out on Guitar Hero:

For those of you confused enough to think that Guitar Hero is just a silly Playstation game where you rock out on a toy guitar to hit songs, well you're right, but it is embarrassingly fun. Personally, I am not much for video games, as they time sponge away my world. Furthermore I am odd in that I don't watch any TV either. So when Nick the Fly's brother, Sailing Joe, dropped me off a Guitar Hero game last year (Joe works for the G. H. company), I must admit, I made an exception and spent some time rocking the toy guitar. Thank you E, D and G for hanging out and a great time!

**** Begin SoundNerdSpeak ****

Subwoofers on an Auxiliary Send

Most sound systems are made up of speakers that vary in size depending on the frequencies they reproduce. Smaller speakers for the higher notes and bigger speakers for the lower notes. At home for your computer you most likely have a pair of roundish speakers mounted in plastic boxes. For your living room there may be a big speaker a mid sized and a smaller one mounted in some wooden boxes. Also home systems typically have one stereo amplifier and there are some electronic parts inside the speaker box that divide the music to send low notes to the big speakers and highs to the little ones.

On large scale sound systems there is pretty much the same thing except the sound is divided the sound up before the amplifiers. That means there is a separate amplifier for the lows, another amplifier for the midrange and yet another amplifier for the highs. On the Peppers we are carrying with us, there are fourteen 2000 watt stereo amps just for the sub woofers alone and many more amps for lows, mids and highs.

I do everything in my power to assure that the sound systems I use are configured such that there is a separate control over the signal sent to the sub-low speakers (sub woofers). For me that is extremely important. The technical term is 'subwoofers on an auxiliary send' or 'subs on an aux.' Subs on an Aux is what gives me the delicious control over that syrupy low frequency ooze that wraps around you and connects your body to the lowest of bass notes and thump of the kick drum. Unfortunately, I am often denied this control when using alien (not Peppers touring) sound systems. Today, once again I am appreciating how awesome it is to have subs on an aux and 'our' PA!

**** End SoundNerdSpeak ****

And then there were these guys, of course:

And finally just to make you smile, check out the picture at the bottom of this web page:

http://flipsidefanzine.com/Gallery2.html

Clearly I was planning on being very thirsty and not very hungry. Oh, and if you are curious about the punk rock scene in the early 80's, you should take a look around Michelle Flipside's site. You know the Ramones movie "Rock and Roll High School?" That was Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, CA where I met Michelle in my tenth grade english class.

The not quite so thirsty,

Dave Rat

SDWSAFG!

It has been a while and who would have knew, the return of:

**** Issue of the Day ****

Every tour with any duration always seems to have a point where 'tanti time' comes. Oh the heart warming enjoyment of grown roadies all upset over the relatively insignificant. And I never want to be left out of the fun so I naturally join in in anyway I can. Bus food. Seems there is a discrepancy between what the roadie bellies desire and what what the roadie bellies are being fed for overnight drives.

Though roadies are well known to want nothing other than Pizza every night, best I can figure there were a few busses that made a few trips with minimal or non existent supplies of drinking water, bee and wine stock. This, of course, angers the roadie's bellies and angry roadie bellies are capable of inspiring the roadie in which they reside into either profuse whining or even worse, taking matters in there own roadie hands. Couple that with the fact that a loaf of Wonderbread was discovered on one of the busses and hence erupted:

The Wonderbread Mutiny 2006

Though similar to the Boston Tea Party, the Wonderbread Mutiny 2006's place in the history books is yet to be determined. What was truly incredible was that word of WM '06 spread so quickly that within hours the head Peppers office 3000 miles away not only got the news but was able to orchestrate an eyebrow raising delivery of three additional loaves of Wonderbread. Anyway, soon afterwards the uprising lost steam because it was too difficult to be mad while laughing.

Furthermore, concessions on the food supply end were made as well and without a single drop of bloodshed, the the tour slid back to its lumpy harmony of balance that we all love and enjoy.

**** End Issue of the Day ****

And since I have to watch these guys every day so I may as well have you do the same:

And so ends another day on the road.

The reminiscing

Dave Rat

P. S. Have you ever peeled the crust off of Wonderbread and squeezed the middle part back into a dough ball?

IDTCYFBAAF!

Roadies love truck stops and if you are chipper enough to pop out of your bunk at a fuel stop, there is some real fun to be had. With everything you could need from truck parts

adorable gifts for the kids

and you can pretty much live off of these these multipurpose macro-marts. With restaurants, shower rooms and special trucker only lounges that have couches, movies and internet. The trucker sub culture is right at home here and most importantly, they are located with easy freeway access and 60 foot long parking spaces.

For us roadies, truck stops provide a place to frolic, shop and occasionally get left behind. Being left behind is called "oil spotted" in roadie speak. No one truly knows the origin of the term but evidence does indicate that it may have evolved from the statement "the only thing I could find was the oil spot where the bus used to be." To avoid oil spotation, it generally a good idea for roadies to leave a note on the drivers seat if they leave the bus. What happens is the driver goes inside to pay for fuel, roadie wakes up and leaves the bus to go crap in the bathroom, (piss only on tour busses) and the driver returns and drives off, hence the note idea.

I have a few good oil spot stories that I will save for a rainy day, but since today is sunshine, lets go sailing!

Nick the Fly's brother Joe has a boat in the bay and picked up Nick, Scott and I for a sailing adventure soon after we arrived in SF. Here we can see these salty sailors out on the open sea:

First they said something about coming around then it gets really noisy, all hell breaks loose, a metal thing swings across really fast and and then the boat goes the other way. I hide in the cabin.

They did that a few times and then started looking at the swingy metal thing

and it was much easier to fish without all the ruckus. Good thing too, cause otherwise I may not have gotten the chance to land this impressive behemoth

And such ends another rough day on the road.

The weary,

Dave Rat

IWTSTSFYEAIRYA

Do you know that feeling of camping and waking at the crack of dawn to a misty crisp refreshing lung full of air? That beautiful scene that you sealed outside as you zipped your tent in the darkness the night before? Well, touring is nothing like that. At some point during the previous night I escaped the gig after the my little bit of the load out was done and shacked up in the bus while 12 trucks of gear was loaded. At some point the world I left behind when I closed that bus door disappeared and a brand new world showed up in the morning. Hello new day, hello new city, or parking lot as the case may be. No real fresh air, just a hot parking lot and the little game of 'find the entrance to the gig' that I get to play.

Today is laundry day. The way it works is I pack my little bag with all my dirty clothes, go find a numbered tag in the production case and pin it to my bag. Then I put $20 in an envelope and write my number on it and my name. At some point, later if all goes well, my bag and an envelope full of change will be in the production office. Also at some point later, someone will come on the bus after the gig and say "hey, Dave Rat, you know your laundry is still in the production office." I then go get my laundry.

Take a look at this picture and remember it clearly the next time you even consider complaining about what a pain it is to parallel park.

That is a 53 foot articulated trailer, down a ramp, fully loaded 4" from the wall.

Want to see some speakers before they get dressed?

Look at the cute little Rats on the backs of these V-Dosc boxes, 72 of them on this tour. Each box has two 15" speakers, four 7" speakers and two 2" horn drivers. If you multiply that all up it equals a lot.

Finally, oooooooh sexy Rat Subs! 44 dual 18" cabs out here. These babies can really move some air and are responsible for the breathless pauses in time when Flea hits the super low notes and the stage wings are actually aluminum grating over a block of 12 of these.

The 'showing my sound nerdy roots'

Dave Rat

WIARIWCFMW!

It was hot, really hot. Then it was wet, really wet. And then there was lightening, lots of lightning. So much lightning that I actually stood outside with my finger on the shutter button and it only took me about 20 minutes to actually take a picture of lightning. Not a great one, but it felt like a feat accomplished!

Walking by I grabbed a quick pick of The Mars

And then Nick the Fly took a wander around the gig with my camera and grabbed some cool shots:

And, yeah I know, doing just the all pictures is kind of the the lazy man's post but hey, look at the pretty colors!

Off to San Diego,

Dave Rat

Special "what people do on tour" special!

**** The Amazing Durable Roadie ****

Touring gigs vary drastically in workload, responsibility and exposure to stress. Equally diverse is the schedule that each roadie in the herd maintains.

Riggers - are the sharp edged early risers. First in and last out, they calculate and hang the heavy loads safely over our heads. These clean, mean and meticulous machines effortlessly climb to frightful heights. The upside is that they typically can get a nice long mid day sissy nap.

Bus and truck drivers have even earlier call times as they drive all night and sleep all day, these nocturnal roadies like riggers, hold our roadie lives and the safely of our beloved wires in the grip of a steering wheel. An interesting side note is that bus drivers typically get carted off to a hotel during the day, while truck drivers sleep in the micro hotel room located in the cab of their truck. Bus drivers drive straight through to deliver their roadie cargo while truck drivers do showers at truck stops that are setup for exactly that, along the way.

Production roadies include the production manager, stage manager and production assists. With their early load ins and late outs they have possibly the most stressful gig of the bunch. Their chosen tasks of keeping the whole show running smoothly, sooner or later brings every unresolved issue into their lap. Plus they are responsible for organizing all the humans and gear to show up in the right place, right time, within budget and as many people as happy as possible. The positive side? Well hey, they run the show so if they need something they just ask themselves if they can have it and that has its advantages.

Lighting Techs. One thing about lights is that they take a lot of power. Big power means big heavy wires and a heck of a lot of them. These roadies are coming in soon after riggers and are at the gig till the hairy end. If you look to the upper sides of stage during the show, you will see there are four follow spot roadies. Those the specialized lighting people you see climbing ladders right before the Peppers play. We carry two of them, the other six are locally hired each night. Lighting techs to this day tend to be some of the more rugged roadies, maybe it is the wires or genetics but the work hard/play hard ethic runs strong in lampi world.

Carpenter. A highly specialized roadie whose purpose is to be able to fix, repair or build anything the tour may need and then do what ever else need to be done afterwards. Carps are cool!

Catering - In Europe we, as most large tours, carry full catering. In the US, the opposite is true. Why that is, heck I don't know. On this tour we carry a band chef and he also looks after the crew a bit as well. They shop, they cook and they feed and though it is a good solid day of work over hot stoves, the appreciation they get from grateful eaters is not in short supply.

Video Techs - Video is a bit of a newer gig compared to old school lighting and sound worlds and as such tends to vary quite a bit from tour to tour. With huge video sets like we have out here, the vid crew is running about the same workload/schedule as lighting. With the current video setup including two active cameramen and two roadies in real time control over video shots, they keep pretty busy during show time.

Sound Techs - A bit later call times than the lighting, the sound techs get to do a lot of waiting and then have a bit of a crunch to get set. The sequence of events during load in is usually rigging, lights, video, sound and then backline, with overlaps of course. The state of the art sound systems that we use today are a far cry from the old "hang a pile o boxes here" mentality of 5 or 10 years ago. Currently, every room is measured with laser range finders to determine the dimensions. The data is input into 3D sonic prediction software that calculates optimum coverage, potential volume levels and determines the precise angle of every speaker box. To learn this, the techs go through a training course and are certified as such.

Dressing room coordination - As you get closer and more directly involved with the artists, things take on more of an air of finesse. A far cry from thousand pound set carts bouncing on a forklift, building the happiness escape that keeps the musical humans smiling and harmonious is the job of dressing room humans. A world of comfort within a world of frenzy. Their day starts later but the end is dictated randomly by who stays how long. So, flexibility and adaptation are the name of the game while being the delicate buffer to protect one of our most valuable assets and the reason we are all here, the band.

Backline Techs and Monitor Engineer- These techs have an even later of a call time and finish relatively early in the big picture. The workloads are fairly light comparatively but the responsibility huge. Each backline roadie deals directly with their band human, one each for bass, guitar and drums while the monitor engineer with all four in he band. Every nuance from which guitar tuned how and when, to making absolutely double extra sure that the guitar, bass, drum and monitor rigs operate as close to perfection as possible, every single show. There is no error unseen by either the band member or possibly the entire audience. They have both awesome gigs and mind bending stress as each of them is pretty much responsible for the band hearing themselves and each other so they can perform the show.

FOH World - Lighting designer and FOH Sound Engineer live in a bit of a different realm. On one hand they are far from the fray of stage where the action is, on the other hand, everything the audience sees and hears is at their finger tips. The mass of ears is a unique critique that responds to feeling and emotion. Meanwhile, there are enough people in the know at each show that errors do not go unnoticed. It's an ethereal slow distance once removed stress that can pop into immediate trauma if something important goes pear-shaped. A gig I love and would not trade for the world.

Band Entourage includes the tour manager, TM assist, the band members and a few key people that keep 'em in tip top shape. The band entourage travel separately from the rest of the tour crew and many mysteries surround them. Actually, I am just side stepping the description as the documentary Spinal Tap has already adequately covered the facts from the band angle.

**** End The Amazing Durable Roadie ****

And time for this roadie to sleep,

Dave Roadie Rat

IHAWTJACBUYA!

Last night the trucks and busses all headed out on a 900 mile drive to Phoenix Arizona, I did not. Instead I am staying in Denver for a couple of days to regroup my mind, rest up, enjoy some healthy air and reduce my exposure to massive quantities of humans for a bit. I booked a flight on show day into Phoenix.

So I did some wandering and off to the beautiful mountains for a drive. The sights were amazing though it did rain a bit

But there was some irresistible shopping along the way:

And finally I reached my destination:

The now dry,

Dave Rat

YLFDBWP!

**** More Roadie Research ****

Just as pictographs, petroglyphs and later, hieroglyphics were used to depict the hunting, battling and deaths of ancient man, roadies too are capable of understanding simple little pictures. Astute stage-manager roadie Tim was quick to pick up on the surprising intellect of his fellow roadies and determined the best way to communicate clearly was in exactly that method, simple little pictures. Below you can see the load out sheet for our Denver show:

Though time has weathered this ancient papyrus scroll, if you look closely you will see to the bottom center a depiction of the antifreeze escaping from the bus motor. Directly to the right notice what appears to be a catapult launching roadies into the burning fire of Phoenix desert heat. You can ignore the other scribbles here, as they have to do with which gear goes in which truck and stuff, so it can be considered useless info.

There seems to be some disagreement between experts as to whether roadies were truly able to make a catapult that could fling a roadie over 900 miles. Many believe that it it is just a symbolic representation of an event while others believe that the roadie catapult did exist and may be located on a mountain top somewhere.

**** End Roadie Research ****

So, I took a wander backstage looking for something new to share and look, I found a little tiny drum kit! And it was in a room strangely enough called "drum room." Turns out, this little kit can make a ton o noise when Mr. Smith beats the crap out it before each show. And I must say, it is really cool to watch Chad warm up.

And lastly but not leastly, here is venue early on in the eve. For the PA nerds out there, you can see the dual stereo V-Dosc clusters in this shot.

good night.

ave at

MHLBWPFBSAT!