Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

Uh oh! No call sheet under my door! What time is lobby call? Oh, that's right, lobby call today - whenever, Ha ha! Reality shift as my life slips back to the other way. Way too much to do and every time I cross off something from my list, three more things jump on. Ahhh, but the timelessness is dreamy. Up at 7 am every morning and in bed by 9 pm or 3 am or up in the middle of the night all depending on what I am not sure.

The EAW adventure is moving along and if I can just remember to go to the grocery store I would not be hungry all the time. Oh well, eating is over rated any way. So stepping back to my notes and pics of the past.......

Day 457 - Aug 24 - Leeds Festival

Looks like Ozzy Osborne has a novel concept for solving the innate human nature to battle one another for no good reason. check out whateverittakes.org if you need one of these fashionable wristbands. Gotta love the Ozzy!

Ok, so here we are.

Leeds Festival is known for many things. One of which is being the sister festival to Reading, another is for having what is probably the worlds most notorious load in. I am standing at the truck dock. If you look closely you can see what resembles one of those contraptions you see at a museum that the ball rolls down in curious ways except here it is actually the ramp that you have to push every piece of gear up and down to perform the show. Though a mechanical masterpiece, it is also a roadie's nightmare.

The city of lights as roadie Lee grabs an overhead shot of mix position mid show. My home.

And with a flash of light the glamour erases and clear proof that lighting is inversely proportional to happiness.. ...

I wish I had more for ya but more is to come.

Oh, and all y'all that are working on roadiepedia, you rule! Some crazy funny stuff on there!

So sorry for being lax on responding to comments, my space posts and such, I just need to clear this bump of home acclimation and all will hopefully settle in. Also, I have all kinds of cool footage from Sonic Youth tour of the "Dirty" album that I will be posting soon on youtube.com, for all y'all that like that kind o stuff.

Dave Rat

 

For all y'all in the industry and even if you are not, who would like to nominate lighting, audio, trucking, staging, bussing and other entertainment entities for the annual Parnelli Awards, go to this link and rock out, vote for some, vote for all or none! http://www.parnelliawards.com/nominate.php

Day 456 - Aug 24 - Reading Festival

So as we approach the our last hurrah, Scott and I decide that we can not end without one last adventure into the roadie wilderness known as the crowd. Shhhh, as we lay low and creep off into uncharted lands the sensation of danger is imminent. Quickly we discover that to wander astray could have dire consequences. Hmmm, I wonder if this is the right way?

After a brief pow wow, Scott and I decide that we will heed the words of the yellow sign and follow a less ominous path. Stealthy we blend.

It appears that the natives posses a certain fondness for an effervescent yellowish liquid called beer. It also appears that warm beer is some sort of criminal act so they have placed an amnesty booth allowing the contraband to be traded for the more legal cold stuff. Notice the Function One PA off to the right. Hmmm, clearly a supporter of beer coldness perpetuation.

Wow, truly and advanced society! Here we find a reciprocal setup that pays cash for used beer cups. Very cool. My expectations are high that indigenous punters keep their cages quite clean.

It is not uncommon when out in the field observing nature that one will be so fortunate to observe the regional life forms involved in the mating ritual. With much care we creep up and grab a rare shot indeed.

Cleanliness is paramount in this tribe. Observe the female nonchalantly exiting the restroom as the hazmat team disinfects the area.

Approaching the outskirts, we stumble across the local watering hole. Both Scott and I dare not get to close as, like most creatures, punters do not like to be disturbed while quenching thirst.

I seem to have lost Scotty. where could he be? After much searching, I was quite surprised to find him dangerously close to the punter nesting grounds. "Hey Scott, what are you doing?"

Uh oh. As we all know, every silver lining has a cloud. what do we have here?

Ooooh, look! A swimming hole!! Perhaps this is where they bathe?

Feeling a bit home sick, Scott and I head back to the the roadie herd where we find safety and solace in our beloved front of house area.

The happiness of the rock show.

And, oh nooooo! Does that say 99.4 db in red? Is that what they consider too loud? How can that be? At least please give me 103. This is like driving on the freeway with a 40 mile an hour speed limit.Oh well, never forget it could always be worse.

One more show to go! See ya tomorrow.

Dave Rat

First of all **** Kudo's to all that have been rocking out on Roadiepedia! Awesome to see it growing and I check the recent changes every day and chip in when I can. I love the mix of serious, informative and sarcasm developing. All good!

**** Dormant Roadie Babble ****

Slowly the layers of tour habit peel a way as I re-acclimate, sometimes begrudgingly, to the world of home. I love my own bed but changing and washing sheets, well, not so much. My fridge 'food to consumption' ratio is way out of whack and I buy way too much of the wrong things and not enough of the right ones so I end up hungry as toss I out things gone rotten. I do a short run to the beach and back each morning which definitely makes my day better, I would love to get some serious exercise but instead I run around from project to project still feeling a sinking sensation that I think is for the most part illusionary as I know I am making headway, I just have so much catching up to do that the progress is not readily apparent. Have you ever tried walking to what appears to be a nearby mountain only to find it is like ten miles away?

If the darn house would be done, it would sure help. Then I could unpack from the garage, then I could have room to work on projects in the garage and I could find things without searching and un stacking tons of boxes. Almost ready to get the molding caulked and everything primered except the guy that did the molding messed up and mounted it all backwards around the doors and screwed up some other stuff too. The contractor is like "there is no way I can let this stay like this, it would kill my reputation." And I am like "oh, and also it looks really bad too!" So after that I get final inspection, then I have a few more projects that do not require a building permit but if I start them now, the inspector won't sign off on inspection till they are sealed up, aaargh. So all this work I could get out of the way needs to wait wait wait some more.

**** End Dormant Roadie Babble ****

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

On another note, I am really excited about progress with MicroWedge products.

I have been working on designs for a complete series of stage stage monitor products for some time now. Seven years ago I got a patent on the design and licensed it to Radian Audio to manufacture and distribute. While Radian did a pretty good job of getting a few of the products to market, without a dedicated engineering staff, it was really tough to get the rest of the complimentary designs done, processor settings refined and such. Anyway, I had been approached by several larger companies interested in the MicroWedge designs and when the contract with Radian ended in May, I was able to seriously follow up. Hence my adventure as a designer/consultant has begun with a company called EAW. I even got to hang out with Jeffrey Cox, the Prez who used to run L'Acoustics, all good!

http://www.eaw.com/frontrow/2007/09/post_21.html

Hurray! We get to build cool audio toys!! Not only that, I get to work with and hang out with all these incredibly brilliant audio engineering humans. Finally after all these years I feel like my dream of making all these cool designs I have been working on for so many years will become a reality. If I was a rock band, this would be the equivalent of me getting signed to a major label after putting out 3 albums on an independent. Except for the fact that most audio companies are not all creepy like record companies tend to be.

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

Next up is "Dave and Scott brave the wilderness known as the crowd." What will they find? Is it safe? Will they be eaten? The answer to those and many other questions, coming soon to a blog post near you.

Dave Rat

 

Though I vanish at times, I rarely disappear and if all runs smooth I hope to stick around in this bloggery world for a while. I woke up pondering and about how cooperative efforts of multitudes of humans with a common direction, makes me happy and I came up with a new interactive project that requires help from y'all, my bloggery friends. So after after thousands of hours of sharing my world and adventures and no advertisements, no strings attached and free for fun free, I have a favor or task or adventure to ask from all of you. Perhaps view it as the final exam, the beginning of something with no end or an interactive group public extension of the blog. Either way, if you go to http://www.ratsound.com/mwiki you can freely add edit and generally mess around with the evolving content of Roadiepedia. I would very much appreciate a bit of your time throwing some of your view, knowledge or personality into the mix and helping build what I hope to be something fun, funny and informative.

And with said said, lets more forward into the past.

Day 456 - Aug 24 - Reading

We have a day off in Reading which I am a bit sorry to say that Reading (pronounced redding) is not the epicenter of thrillsville and the big Festival here seems to be the life of the city. That said, it is cool here and a wonderful day for an excursion.

Now correct me if I am wrong but do the two police officers off to the right resemble Laurel and Hardy? And also notice that the skinny on has tons of pockets and obviously is carrying everything while the big guy has none. Oh, and hello coffee and Lee!

So off on a train ride head Lee and I

To go visit a legendary sound system builder designer named Tony Andrews. I had never met Tony before and on my mind is that just about everything he designs is almost the exact opposite of the methods I follow. He is all about horn loaded boxes and very anti line array. I avoid horns at all costs and love a well designed line array. Two completely opposing points of view yet we have chatted on the phone as someone I hold much respect for as the innovative system designer of the Turbosound Flashlight, Floodlight and many other forward thinking audio products. I am both honored and apprehensive.

The Funktion One shop is located behind their house in the countryside and it is an inventors dream. Everything needed to to design and build from the ground up. Audio stuff everywhere and a a virtual playground for sound nerd such as myself. Common ground. I could feel it was there though I could not put my finger on it till I was there. Aside from striving to design cool audio things I find our directions are not different, only the paths chosen to get there. Non-processor dependant designs that do not require hi tech electronics to make them listen-able, now that is something we agree on. The adventure cold not have been more fun and a wonderful dinner and brain challenging discussions and how cool is it that I get to hang out with famous audio humans!!

And speaking of audio innovations, how about those Greeks? This is a cool audio article on the ancient's sent to me by Lisa

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070404162237.htm

Till a different now which will be next,

Dave Rat

Good morning sunshine! I can't say it exactly a haze I am emerging from. More accurately it feels like "velocity differential acclimation" sort of like when I look outside the car window at world around while driving and all is smooth and normal. I sit in a comfy seat watching it slide behind me yet if I were to step out of the door while traveling 60 miles per hour, the "velocity differential acclimation" experience would be quite life-disruptive. In fact the velocity differential would be so great great that rather than acclimate, I would most likely end up absorbing the 60 miles per hour in a flailing arms tumble to an eventual big owie stop. That is how these last two weeks feel except without out the big owie part.

So before I work my way up to now, how about a bit of catching up on then......

Day 455 - Over the Pond, Again

The final bit. Three shows, one our own and then two mirror image festivals. For me as a sound engineer, today is the last real day with all the toys. So over we wander and stumbling across delicious delectable's makes me smile, Yummy!

Oh, and speaking of yummy, we roadies went a wandering and once again stumbled upon the same place we ate here last time. Or was it the time before?

Either way, greasy bar food was exactly as we remembered it.

And once again we chickened out on ordering the Haggis, though I regret it now and won't make that error again. Next time for absolute sure. For those of you wondering what haggis is, well like so many things, you have two choices from which to pick

1) "A haggis is a small four-legged Scottish Highland creature, which has the limbs on one side shorter than the other side. This means that it is well adapted to run around the hills at a steady altitude, without either ascending or descending. However a haggis can easily be caught by running around the hill in the opposite direction."

Or

2) Haggis is a traditional Scottish dish.

And lucky you! I have included a recipe for y'all to try at home.

"Here's a recipe for the beloved Haggis of Scotland. In addition to the other naughty (read 'delectable') bits, the lungs are traditionally included in Scotland, but are omitted here as it's illegal to sell lungs in the U.S. (Any clues as to why, anybody?). Some folks also think that liver shouldn't be used ..." 1 sheep's lung (illegal in the U.S.; may be omitted if not available) 1 sheep's stomach 1 sheep heart 1 sheep liver 1/2 lb fresh suet (kidney leaf fat is preferred) 3/4 cup oatmeal (the ground type, NOT the Quaker Oats type!) 3 onions, finely chopped 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper 1/2 teaspoon cayenne 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 3/4 cup stock Wash lungs and stomach well, rub with salt and rinse. Remove membranes and excess fat. Soak in cold salted water for several hours. Turn stomach inside out for stuffing. Cover heart and liver with cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Chop heart and coarsely grate liver. Toast oatmeal in a skillet on top of the stove, stirring frequently, until golden. Combine all ingredients and mix well. Loosely pack mixture into stomach, about two-thirds full. Remember, oatmeal expands in cooking. Press any air out of stomach and truss securely. Put into boiling water to cover. Simmer for 3 hours, uncovered, adding more water as needed to maintain water level. Prick stomach several times with a sharp needle when it begins to swell; this keeps the bag from bursting. Place on a hot platter, removing trussing strings. Serve with a spoon. Ceremoniously served with "neeps, tatties and nips" -- mashed turnips, mashed potatoes, nips of whiskey.

Hello Scotland and if I was to vote on the most likely birthplace of sarcasm, this would be it, I like this place .

**** Teary Eyed Goodbye ****

Well this is it. The Double Hung PA I designed for this Pepper's tour now hangs it's very last hang. I have no idea what the future will bring. We do have two more shows to go after this but those are festivals with typical V-Dosc rigs and sound pressure level limits so strict that if it was near the sea, the ocean would get fined for it's waves being too loud.

Say bye bye double hung PA

**** End Teary Eyed Goodbye ****

To bloggery back soon,

Dave Rat

 

So during the near six week break, I finally got the chance to feel truly home for the first time in fifteen or so months. I started getting up early everyday, doing some running down to the beach for short dive and swim. Healthy food rather than the crap shoot between wonderful Wayno cuisine and the slop that is available to roadies in between. Detoxing from jet lag and drinking with friends evolves into clear thoughts and energy excitement to return back to my more nerdy roots of technology and wires and new soundie designs.

My laptop has finally re reached a state of usefulness as I install the last missing program, (Corel Draw) with which I do all my designing. But alas computers as they are and do, fail. None are immune and down drops another. This time it is a full size machine that one of my daughters uses.

Notice my workbench and the poor defunct mother board with all of her children sprawled out on the bed. Can you believe it? A complete computer melt down and $ 39 and a trip to Fry's electronics buys a new mama!

Bing, pow, boom and she is up and running better than new. 1 gig ethernet, hifi sound, firewire, USB2, high speed video and SATA drive compatible. Old by new standards yet more than enough. I have never attempted a mother board swap before and was amazed how easy it was. So many choices and everything fit, plugged right in, fired it up, a cross compatibility dream as I smile that the e-waste will be just a single card rather than yet another whole computer headed to the dump. Hmmm, I wonder if I would have had the same luck and cash outlay if it was a Mac? Perhaps the $ 39 Mac motherboard were just around the corner or more likely they cost a wee bit more, perhaps 10 times as much? Oh that's right, the dead Mac laptop I have in my closet cost more to fix than buying two new PC machines. Now don't get me wrong, I have no lost love for Microsoft either and I really can't stand the extortion of intentually building in incompatibilities to something we purchase.

Oh, and speaking of making things incompatible, check out this guy, he rules! A 17 year old in New Jersey has successfully figured out a way to bypass the Mac/ATT collusion orchestrated to sap max money from those jumping on the iPhone status symbol bandwagon.

http://iphonejtag.blogspot.com/2007/08/full-hardware-unlock-of-iphone-done.html

Unfortunately the modification is beyond the scope of normal humans including myself but headway is being made toward freedom of choice, not that I would buy an iPhone anyway. Oh, have I mentioned that I am all about the concept of fair and cool competition and companies making products that people want without sneaky strings attached? What I am against is crap like "hey, if you want to buy an iPhone, you will have to sacrifice your freedom to choose your cell phone carrier company." "Hey, buy the cool stuff we make and then after you own it, we will do all in our power to milk you for as much money as possible to keep whatever you bought from us running." Printer companies selling their $ 80 ink cartridges for their $ 79 printers is a perfect example. Aargh, greedy sneaky humans annoy me.

Anyway, on a more enjoyable note, I bought a BBQ and it came with a rotisserie so I thought I would take a stab at making my first spinning chicken.

I put melted butter, some olive oil, fresh garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper in a food processor and blended it up to a paste and rolled the chicken in it then took unchopped versions of the same and what was left over and stuffed it inside. Who would have knew it would be so good so easy? Who would have knew dinner could take so damn long to cook. I have never cooked a meal before that took more than 30 min's. To complete the two course meal, a salad with tomatos, feta, olive oil I brought home from Italy and some crazy thick balsamic vinegar I found in France. I got the lettuce locally though.

I really don't want to leave home, right now.

DR

I just finished reading "Enter Naomi," a book sent to me by the author, Joe Carducci, and long ago comrade in the legends and confusion of the Black Flag against world collection of memories. I am forgetful by nature so immersing myself in the hauntingly familiar chain of events of the decade 80's LA punk world is both depressing and yet feels empowering to have survived with manageable amounts of mind splatter. I remember meeting the razor thin girl at my High School, Mira Costa (which believe it or not, actually was the Rock and Roll high school in the Ramones movie) with a blades on chains around around her neck sealed inside tight clothes with random zippers and spikes, later to be roommate and then to become Michelle Flipside. We are 16 and she tells me about the "The Church" in Hermosa Beach, just three blocks from where I live with my dad. Half full of hippies and the rest full of punks in a virtual war like stand off The Descendants, Red Cross (Redd Kross), Black Flag and The Last rehearsed there in virtual anarchy. When I could muster up some cash, I could usually persuade Ron to make a beer run with the " I buy, you fly" negotiation tactic. Over time my after school hangout welcomed me in and I became a bit of a punk rock repair technician and began recording the bands at shows and helping out in exchange for getting me in to the gig and something to do. Especially and most of all I remember that I don't remember except for a few impactful highlights, that was until I start to dive into a refresher course.

So I dig up a few pics and the girl on the left was my short lived girlfriend at the time, I think her name was Julie but everyone called her Phoenix after she corrected them that she was not Julie anymore. Next over, Bart, then me, Bart's friend, and Mike Livingston. Maybe 1979 or so.

Rolling over in my mind a way to describe my recollections, the best I can muster is I feel like I was part of an expedition. Not one where people set out all organized for a goal but rather a haphazard conglomeration of humans who find themselves all headed a similar direction for various reasons that leads them on precarious journey that ends up being littered with self inflicted and coincidental tragedies. The goal, if there was one, was a loosely knit propagation of musical lifestyle anarchy, to actually succeed was to also fail which can be debatably envisioned in the hypocritical concept of "successful punker."

The westward movement of early America comes to mind. Each wagon train being a punker band and it's entourage. The meek, content, fearful and lazily rich stayed home with the status quo and waited for Hot Topic to sell fashionable outfits of the excursion while a kludge of the outcast, impoverished and explorers types who are never content, seek a new domain beyond the boundaries of safe and acceptable. An exodus into lawlessness.

I don't remember who sent me this pic but it is me, Dave Markey, Mitch Bury, Vic, Davo and C'el

Many have died over the years to follow and even more have disappeared into the non-musical frameworks of society. Bright lights burn out quickly, any lampi can tell you that. The Donner Party ate itself and perhaps so did Black Flag as the stress of relentless touring upstream took it's toll. Not too dissimilar from that westward movement, Punk Rock did relatively little directly, other than make a big mess and piss a bunch of people off enough to send the police out with billy clubs to attack their own children. The original bands and people that carved that path or long gone or obscure from a global perspective except as a name on a shirt to look cool for those that wish they were there. What is not gone is the stage they set for the future waves to build upon. What were the names of those that died in wagon trains long forgotten? Perhaps heroes of great accomplishment or criminals for ruthless Indian killing. Regardless, once carved the results remain forever etched as those crazy punker bands that stood up against the odds, were beat down by police riots and spiraled out of control, they drug us out of disco and 80's hair metal and have changed music forever yet as usual the glory goes to those that follow, not for a second that it is undeserved and each fulfills their purpose in the chain.

Oh, and speaking of hair metal band's of the 80's, for all you back East'ers and the curious, check out Girls Girls Girls, an all girl Motley Cru cover band, fun! Though I was not a Motley Cru fan, ever, there is something twistedly cool about the recycled version presented by hotties that rock!

Ok, that is enough for today. Oh, by the way, I am on my way to Scotland, for surprise surprise! Yep, some Peppers' shows for a change.

Dave Rat

 

My computer crashed, the worldwide rocket ship I was riding while blasting through cities has come to a near screeching halt as I find myself road-rash skidding - POOM. Here is me. No longer a motion full roadie, merely another of many humans that stands in lines and alternates between being annoyed at lead foot drivers and resisting the desire to honk at red lights.

Without motion I no longer can describe the blur from a first hand perspective leaving me only with the remnants of enlightenment or damage caused by the journey. I spend my friday night wavering between solitude appreciation and debating winding myself up into taking a stab at finding an enjoyable interaction and decide to make a solo dinner of habenero turkey burgers in a cast iron skillet. One pound lean ground turkey, one slice of diced onion, 1/4 diced bell pepper (yellow), some garlic powder, salt, pepper, one whole minced habenero pepper and a handful of granulated feta cheese. Mash, burger-ize and pan fry in a tiny amount of olive oil. It is all about knowing when to stop and done right, all good. Listening to the sounds of heat and watching the textures evolve, I try to time when to flip, too soon and she will break apart captain, too late and the burger will hermetically bond itself to the non-non-stick pan.

Then suddenly I stumble upon the thought "The world is dirty, and we poison ourselves in our efforts to to create the 'clean' illusion." For a flash, it all fits, landfills overflowing and smoggy skies from manufacturing and transporting millions of plastic "clean" water carrying bottles. Priests attempting to be so clean and pure they end up in jail as child molesters and the hydrogenated, modified whatever that is in all our food so it stays as "fresh" as possible even though it becomes the opposite of healthy. "Yuck, dirty insects, quick, put poison on our food." There are many debates about good and bad and various things and for the moment at least, it appears so simple. If you have a box gray sand and pull out all the light or dark bits, all that will be left is the other. It is that polarization, the acceleration towards dividing our infinitely gray world into the much more palatable black and white of "This is clean, this is dirty. This is good, this is bad." But perhaps the reality is that it is similar to Newton's conservation of energy law, "good" and "clean" are not created, they are only temporarily separated from "bad" and "dirty" counterparts. I ponder as I wash the raw turkey remnants from a bowl now clean while soapy turkey water flows down a drain to an unknown destiny.

Long ago a friend named Davo said something that I never forgot. "Many things in this world are like air conditioners, the cooler it gets on the inside, the hotter it gets for everyone else." He was referring at the time to the United States versus the rest of the world, mid Reagan era. Except it even seems bigger than that and impacts us on all levels as we all seem to eventually leave the air conditioning at the end of the day and sit there fighting that irresistible desire to honk at red lights.

From the inside out I view, as we all do and I often wonder if everyone feels as disconnected as I. And if so, how they are so good at masking it? Perhaps I should watch more TV

but I keep forgetting, in the mean time I will sift through the pile of things that I want to remember to do, so I don't regret later.

And oh, where did I go? I guess, everywhere but here. "One more, one more!" Oh ok, last one, these roller coaster's are fun, one last ride before the park closes.

On another note, as one curtain closes another opens. How excited am I? I have signed on as a consultant/designer for a large sound manufacturer and looks like we are going to be building some Ratty designs! A dream come true and cool stuff too! Secretly in my other life I have been designing cool soundie stuff between being transported and bloggery posts and now if all goes as I dream it to be, the thoughts will become real tangible entities. I will post more soon with details once the company releases the info publicly. As I slip away from pondering into personally following those same humanly ways of sorting through the sand box reforming the bits of the world around into things for a differing purpose.

Dave Rat