Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

Last night the rest of the crew took the bus up the hill but I opted to stay in Tokyo for the night and ride the bullet train up with the band party. Being that the gig is a 'throw and go' and Nick the Fly has no problem getting the gear dialed, interfaced and under control, the lure of actually having an internet connection was too tempting to pass up. Flea, on the other hand, did the opposite and had Clara with him (his older daughter). They cruised up to the ski resort with the crew after the TV show to enjoy a day out of the city.

The bullet trains are really cool and super fast and smooth to ride on. Roadie Jason can be seen here petting the bullet train, which is generally ok to do,

Though whtever came over him and inspired him to touch its eye is beyond me. It is well know that touching the eye of a Trainosaur, could anger it and he is clearly at great risk on being bitten. Roadie Jason is clearly fearless.

Immediately upon arriving at the picturesque venue site we went on an expedition in the general direction of the dressing rooms. And even though the rain was light, I do not know what we would have done without the 8 natives acting as umbrella technicians.

As you may be aware, one of the more challenging aspects of touring is maintaining a healthy diet. After the train ride and mountain drive, I was overjoyed when I found my concerns unfounded, at least for today. Feast your eyes upon this delectable spread the still even had something reminiscent of warmth located towards the middle if you stick your finger in it, may I say "Yummy?"

I love Sonic Youth!

I love their music, I love them as magic and wonderful people! And do you know how you sometimes meet people that have a profound effect on your life? Well, Sonic Youth was the first band to take out a full Rat Sound PA system since the 3 Black Flag tours in the mid 80's. After the Flag tours, we at Rat decided to stop touring and rebuild the sound gear to be fully tour perfected based based on all we had learned from the vigilante style punk rock style tours. When we were ready, as with many things in life, no one wanted to risk taking us on a 'real' tour unless we had experience doing 'real' tours. Catch 22. Back then there just was not a lot of bands/managers that both cared who Black Flag was and also were big enough to carry a sound system on tour. Well, Sonic Youth had grown out of the punk rock/SST Records world and they gave us our second big break and took us Rats out on the their Goo tour.

Looking out over the crowd from stage we see many pretty colors:

And the gratuitous snapshot of the rock show, the way I see it:

And following a long day in less than optimum weather, the show was awesome! The crowd was so excited and filled with energy, the steam rising off the audience, and whether the audience got the energy from the band or the band fed off the energy of the audience, the two mixed together with the mountainous japanese retreat and it was all good.

In order to reward ourselves for having so much fun, a celebration was most definitely in order. Here you can see the plush interior of a Japanese tour bus filled with celebratory roadies:

And tomorrow we fly home!

The portable Dave Rat

Of all the yearly occurring festivals I have worked, Fuji Festival is easily my least favorite. There are numerous reasons ranging from it being very far away to the fact that it is far away and hard to get to as well. Invariably a Fuji festival trip consists of flying 12 hours or more depending on your starting point, driving 2 hours from Narita Airport to Tokyo to do some sort of promo, doing a 4 hour midnight run up the hill to the festival site to stay in a mini-bed ski lodge with no internet, hanging out all day in a remote location waiting to do a throw and go rock show followed by another 4 hour midnight run down the mountain to stay in an airport hotel before flying home. And get this, Fuji Festival is not even at mount Fuji! That awesome white topped famous mountain, well that is in the opposite direction, I am told. Though, it did not used to be that way and I remember the first one I worked was actually at Mount Fuji.

Anyway, that is tomorrow, today we setup at a TV studio for a one song live deal. It is pretty interesting, they have the stage on segmented rolling risers with a set change involving what seemed like 50 Japanese stage crew. It was kind of fun and I joined the techs as they surfed their segments moving pretty darn quick out the door and into the other room and back again. Here you can see roadie Tracy surfing his segment into the storage room

Now look closely at the picture above and you will notice that there are a bunch of people working but one in particular must be special because he has a rather large tool belt on. Maybe he is a carpenter that works with hammering nails and sharp things? How else could you explain the fact that he is wearing the Japanese safety shoe. It turns out, every single person I could find that had a tool belt also was wearing the highly protective footwear:

Dave Rat

P. S.

If you are ever looking for a bargain on a square watermelon, you can scoop this baby up in Tokyo for $100.00 US or so!

And is that $60.00 for 2.5 KG of oranges? May as well grab them while you are here.

6 or 7 or 8 am. Eyes burn, nauseous boat dull rumble sway. Good news is the ferry is much nicer than the last time I went top side. I can't remember exactly what year that was but maybe 4 years or maybe 6?

**** Roadie Research Notes ****

Here you can observe a multitude of roadies clustering in the travel position. Roadie are know to enjoy waking up early for boat rides. Clearly these Roadies are involved in some sort of celebration ritual involving festivities.

Also notice that in the background there is a TeeVee, much to these Roadies delight.

**** End Roadie Research Notes ****

Ferry Riding Rule #7 - Never get off the bus when riding a Ferry in the wee hours of the morning on a show day.

Exception - If significant amounts of water gets inside the boat, promptly exit the bus, find the ferry exit and swim hastily in an upwards direction.

Here we can the front of the boat at a less than optimum angle opening as we head to dock so the cars and busses can escape the belly. There are other doors that keep the water from getting in. I feel much happiness that the doors are currently closed.

The colony of fans, often referred to as "Punters":

and some show pics:

 

Ratman

Oh the joys of the Scotish summer! It rained, it winded, it colded and it mudded us all. The crowd was great, the weather was poo. Though nowhere near the coldest gig I have ever mixed. That was the Foo Fighters playing the winter Olympics awards ceremony. I was in a tower about 16 feet up that was sealed except for the sub zero wind blasting in sound listening opening directly in front of me. I had read stripes down my fingers from blood seeping from frozen cracks in my fingers. Bad aim that kept me banging sore fingers accross the console knobs.

The wettest gig I mixed I believe was Peppers at the first Mount Fuji festival in Japan. There was word of a typhoon coming in and so I go to confirm with one of the locals, I ask about a Typhoon and he replies in a Japanese accent and a level of emotion that cracks me up "No, Super Typhoon!" I remember Dave Navarro leaning at nearly a 45 degree angle over the audience that was standing in 2 feet of water and sideways rain. People were panicing but Peppers played on. Electricity and water is bad for humans but aparently not bad for Peppers that night. The show the next day cancelled due to sunken stage.

Compared to those shows, T in the Park was warm and wonderful.

Here you can clearly see the wind, well, maybe not but Kaiser Cheifs were awesome! Not big in the US but really cool to see.

Sound wise, it was another two banana system at a windy site. Another giant Leslie. (For those not familiar witha a Leslie, it is a speaker where parts spin around and create a wobbly loud/soft sound plus doppler effect that is often used with keyboards). At least it was V-Dosc. The goal for me is not perfection, that is the job of the studio engineers. The goal for me is to play my part in creating the the most memorable experience possible with the tools at my disposal and in that, I was happy.

One of the things that makes this all worth while is the energy and excitement of the fans. I can not help but smile when so many people are unified in a comon happiness!

Drat

MDTBWYFAYPM!

Tis is the second of five football stadiums, most of them have never had a rock show. Coming into places like that, there is no history or patterns how to do things. While I normally change things and readily disregard 'the way we do it here' in order to improve if I can, when there is no past pattern, it creates some challenges. I was not happy with side or rear coverage yesterday and requested a change in the the placement of the delay clusters. Unfortunately, the three days it takes to setup the stage means I won't see that the new configuration till Derby.

Here you can see the cantilevered delay clusters. On the front side are two huge follow spots pointed at the band, on the back side are speakers pointed at the stands.

One thing that is especially interesting is the over whelming desire that the fans have to hurl the plastic beer bottles and cups at each other. I can think of little that is more refreshing than watching a band while being beaned in the head by bottles and covered in a sticky mix of soda and beer for hours on end. Plus, the fans being as friendly as they are, decided to include !!! (Pronounced Chick Chick Chick, the first opening band) in the receiving end of the refreshing beer and soda bath adventure. Today John Fruciante came out and made a heart warming pre show announcement about loving all and how much he likes !!!. It was nice to see more fans actually watching than be concerned about both ends of the projectiles.

Here we can see them cleaning up the spent ammo

Each festival, artist and venue caries with it a personality, it is the harmony or clash of these personalities that add a level of uniqueness beyond the performance itself, to each event. New venues (to rock) are a bit more hit or miss, famous european festivals, some being decades old, carry a level of depth that can be truly astounding. Werchter Festival has a deal where fans can return 10 empty beer (plastic) bottles and get a free beer, there was not a single bottle tossed and instead there were roaming collectors saving up for another round. Roskilde pays cash for empties, Glastonbury festival takes every 5th year off to let the earth heal properly. There are hundreds of nuances that define these festivals, ways they treat artists, the fans and the earth we share that each year refine and adapt to their particular challenges. Something we unfortunately don't see much of in the US with Coachella being an exception to the rule.

Oh, and those innovative Belgians at Werchter have developed "central beer plumbing!" High pressure lines run throughout the event feeding draft beer from a massive beer truck, reducing the supply line infrastructure needed to keep the thirsty satisfied.

As the sound engineer, it is my responsibility to present the audio that you all here at the shows. All audio coming out (or not) from all those speakers passes through my finger tips. It is my job to capture sounds the band create and present them to huge spaces, intact, balanced and sonically connect the band to the audience in real time. I have no rewind button, second take or hold on for minute while I get that ready. So for each show it is extremely important for me to get in the proper state of mind, to merge with my surroundings and prepare for the task at hand, here you can see me in my pre-show-meditational-state:

And the Peppers as seen from where I stand:

Good night.

Dave Rat

Mm!

I don't really get bummed out when things beyond my control go wrong, but when I screw up it really drags me down. And though I mess up more than I wish I did, today was one of the former.

Once again we are off on a festival gig without our main gear set.

If you have ever traveled overseas, you most likely have experienced issues with your shaver, hair dryer or cell charger having either the wrong plug, wanting the wrong power or both, maybe you have even seen smoke billowing from something that used to be important. Imagine having a $500,000+ worth of highly complex audio gear that is all US powered and adaptored and going to various countries where every power connection wont fit and is just waiting to blow it up. Typically, when we have all the gear, we carry these giant transformers than make 'nice' power for our beloved gear to sip. On this gig, we had to adapt. Buckets they call them. Heavy things that make the poison Euro power drinkable by our US equipment.

Ten minutes to show time and something is wrong. The power supply for the mixing board reads 83 volts and is flashing in an excited way, both my racks which read 112 earlier now read 96 volts and dropping with each thump of the house music .Typically anything below 105 is scary. I suddenly feel a bit less than exuberant. Turns out the temporary power buckets we got for the day were too whimpy for the task, got hot and were dropping voltage. Low power = bad, especially if when the rig is up to full volume it takes power below the shutdown line. It took a few wind sprints and some spaghetti plugging to build a quick fix and adequate juice and start the gig. It was most annoying. I should have been more diligent in my power checkery, yet these buckets were sneaky, they were twice the physical size of what I have used previously and the connectors well exceeded my max power draw and came up fine earlier. Who would have known they would get sleepy at show time?

4am - bus bunk. Overnight to Ipswitch, is what the itinerary says. It also says something about a ferry. Wow, I love boat rides! Whee! Especially in the middle of night instead of sleeping on a show day. The deal works like this: Bus drives to dock, crew gets evicted, passported, questioned and hopefully released by immigration, crew gets back on bus, bus gets in line, waits for ferry, drives onto ferry, ferry-humans decide whether to cheer up crew by inviting us all to go sit in hard seats under florescent lights up in the top of the boat or to let crew miss out on fun and stay sleeping in cozy bus bunks down in boat belly.

Some amongst us get unhappy feelings sleeping in the internal chasm of an ocean going vessel. Maybe because these ferry things forget to float every so often.That would sure put a damper on load-in tomorrow if we spent the night trying to swim the English channel. I put my life in the hands of pilots, riggers and bus drivers on a regular basis so today my life is in the hands of a captain and I am hoping to float the ride in my cozy bus bunk

**** Roadie Sightings ****

Ok, it's 5am and Shhhhhhh! I spotted some roadies out and about, lets go take a look, be very quiet as they can be quite dangerous at this hour, especially when clustered in a small herd. And look! A rarely captured moment of roadies grazing near an immigration building:

Sometimes at sunrise roadies can be seen frolicking near their nest

And who wouldn't be frolicking with such stunning views such as these:

And then, much to my surprise, I spotted something totally unexpected, a roadie nest full of what I believe may be an undocumented species,

unfortunately they escaped before I was able to research further.

**** End Roadie Sightings ****

Good night.

DR

XOR!

Argh, morning. Must get passport, bus driver had them for border crossing. Odds are that my trip home tomorrow will go much smoother if I bring it with me.

Always know where your passport is. Passports tend to gain weight on tour, check out how big these ones are getting

Pile o Rat gear and the corresponding human (Daniel)

SoundNerdSpeak

Mics and wires and stuff.

JF's rig has a 57 on the Silver Jubilee Stack, an SM57 and an EV Raven on the Marshal Major Stack and another 57 on Marshal rig 3 three that he plays the White Falcon through.

Kick Drum mics are and Audix D6 in the hole and a Shure Beta98 inside

In Chad's world the snare setup with an SM98 up and an SM57 below:

Toms have a custom clamp I made with a SM98, Chad hits so hard that all the off-the-shelf clamps move too much

And Flea's rig uses yet another SM98 grill mounted plus two DI's.One right off the Bass (clean) and a second after his effects (dirty)

End SoundNerdSpeak

Even though this place is a rough load in and a nightmare to cramp arena production into

it was really cool to do an outdoor show. The 15 minute outro jam with Ekkehard made it special as well. Ooooooh, big sound!

Load out over gravel and the first gig of next run is a festival so the gear needs to be divided up, no fun!

3:30 am, 4 hours till lobby call, phone battery drained, laptop battery near drained, Dave Rat very drained.

Good night

Dave Rat

IFYDAASIWTYBMT!

3:10pm. At the gig, Pink Pop Festival. Had dinner last night with Mark (monitor engineer), excellent Indian food in Amsterdam and off to bed. No big party night for me, balance and rhythm is my goal in the turmoil.

**** Highlight of the Day - Raspberries ****

I have never tasted or seen a better raspberry than I had today, they were perfect beyond what I though a raspberry could be. I ate the whole package of them.

The Ben and Jerry's bean bag pillows in "The Compound" were a close runner up and take second place for HOTD. Leif (lighting tech) and Scott were soon joined by myself.

When touring on this level and headlining large festivals means we often get a "Compound" with all Peppers related dressing rooms, production offices, crew room etc. It is really cool to have a place to hang and get away from the fray, even if you can not escape the PA thumping from the other bands. I am going to un escape the Flaming Lips at 5:30 though, I love that band, along with the Pixies, Modest Mouse and Ween, they are one my favorite bands that I have not directly worked for. They did open on a Peppers tour but unlike my many of my other favorite bands, they have never been an official Rat tour.

Nick the Fly finds a car:

Third Highlight of the Day, I talked to Wayne, Flaming Lips singer and he still loves Rat shirt from 10 years ago, got his address and some fresh Rat swag is headed his way! Thank you Daniella!

With each passing day of tour I seem to drop another pattern from home and slide closer to just maintaining basic necessities. I have been doing work almost entirely from the BlackBerry as getting an internet connection is more cumbersome than valuable at this point. It is like swimming upstream to try and cling to things like daily shaving, anything remotely resembling a schedule, consistent healthy eating, reasonable sleep patterns and regular communication with any human that is not within shouting distance. When we stop changing countries on a near daily basis, it will get easier.

**** Issue of the Day - Lack of V-Dosc or even more scary, lack of subs! ****

Especially considering that today is a 'Throw and Go' gig for 60,000. That means we get the stage for the first time at set change and we have to get backline, monitors, main system tuned and dialed while the audience is in front of the stage. With a familiar PA system, it is not a big deal but I have only mixed on this type of Martin Line array twice before and had better than ok results. Also, I try never to subject the audience to the check one two or testing of instruments over the sound system, even if the festival does allow it. When I mix, the first time the audience hears band's instruments through the sound system is when the band hits the stage. What I will do is play familiar music to EQ/tune, ask a lot of questions and eliminate every variable I can.

Going from 44 Rat Subs for 20,000 people to 24 Martin subs for 60,000 people is a bit of a concern.

I do like the Martin better than Vertec rigs though. I will now rename Vertec from the Ford Explorer of sound systems to the McDonalds of sound systems. You can get one anywhere in the world, it will keep you from starving, lots of people love their burgers and I will have one if I have to, but given the choice I would much prefer a meal created by a world class french chef.

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Oh yeah, subs, 24 is just not going to cut it and the main line array boxes go down fairly low. Using the mains all the way down and overlapping the subs is an option I will not be doing. I like to have separate control over all the sub lows on a single eq and fader. What I am going to do is high pass the main system as I always do (between 100 and 160, venue dependant). I will then split my sub woofer send into a spare x-over and send a second subwoofer send as well that has an independent trim, x-over and mute on my side. The second sub send will get added back into the left and right mix via an XL88. Basically it is a sub on an aux send emulation. I do it a lot when I run into Clair S4 systems when they are not configured with subs on an aux.

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

Franz Ferdinand is just finishing up so it is time to get ready to rock.

1:55 am

**** Issue of the Day Part 2 - Wind ****

Technically, sonic projection software will predict system coverage over large areas from giant PA hangs. What it will not predict is the catastrophic effects that wind has on sound, the amount of wind and ways to reduce the bummout factor.

The wind blew sound all over the place. One way of thinking is that wind is an unavoidable act of nature. My experience has been that there are several things that can be done to reduce sonic trauma due to wind.

1) Never rely on just 1 hang per side for a large outdoor show where wind is even a remote possibility. With 2 clusters a side I have found that when wind blows the sound of one cluster away from you, it often will blow the sound of another cluster towards you.

2) Cover extra width. By over-covering you will gain some buffer zone and keep the outer audience covered with breezes and mellow gusts.

3) Minimize long distance throw and rely more heavily on multiple/regional delay clusters. The farther you project sound, the more susceptible it is to wind and environmental issues.

Dave Rat