Like a Crown of Thorns, It’s all who you know…
Part two of our continuing saga in Mexico…..
So I finally had my flight out of Sea-Tac. Except that an ATC delay at SFO held us on the tarmac in Seattle for nearly an hour. It didn’t matter, I was hung over and tired from the hurried tasks of the night before. I slept nearly the entire flight. My itenerary didn’t list what the layover time was. Seems out little delay left me with scantily 20 minutes to make the connection to Mexico City. Damnest thing I ever saw, same flight number, but requiring a change of planes along the way. I take that back, I’ve seen that a few other times. What’s up with that?
I’m shepherded via bus to the International Terminal while they hold the flight for a couple of us that were delayed in making the connection. At least they didn’t page me in the terminal. Another four hours or so to my destination. Thank god for my iPod and the latest Al Franken book. I was out in about 15 minutes. The star’s supposed to be on my SFO leg with his wife (the Tour Manager) and her daughter the merchandise maven. They aren’t there, only two empty first class seats where they should have been. I check voicemail, no new messages.
We’re on approach to Mexico City. My sixth time and the second time this year. Interesting place, though until this trip I only saw the life around a few venues and the Polanco district. Gotta love the El Presidente, though this time, that wasn’t in out plans. We were to bus directly to Toluca on arrival.
I was to meet a promoter rep on arrival. I landed, cleared immigration and customs and proceeded to the terminal. I looked around, no one waiting for me. This is starting to become a pain in the ass. No details prior, outbound flight info fucked up and now no one to greet me, much less drive me the 40 or so kilometers to Toluca. I knew that others would arrive in the next few hours, so I waited. In the meantime, I checked email and voicemail from an Internet cafe in the terminal. Another four hours pass. At this point, I have a plan “B”. I’ll get a room at the Hilton at the airport, call the tour manager and production manager and tell them if they want a Monitor Mel for the tour, they should send someone for me. I had no local contact info. I was starting to get pissed. About five hours after I land, I greet the production manager, FOH sound dude and a few band members. At that point, still no ride for all of us. about 15 minutes or so pass and I spot a guy with a sign for our party. We are informed that the star and his family have been delayed by ATC at SFO and were rerouted and would meet us in an hour or so. About 2200 we meet the rest of the party and begin to head to Toluca. Except they don’t have enough space for all of us and the gear and luggage. They have to hire a taxi for the ride. Not exactly the way I like to start a tour.
About midnight, we hit the Holiday Inn in Toluca. High speed Internet in the room, that’s a good sign. At 175 pesos for access, it’s a bit expensive, even for well healed gringos from the US. The promoter and production staff are already there and had the Argentinian steak house next to the hotel keep the kitchen open for our party. That’s a nice touch. We hold an inpromptu meeting with Jorge and Jimmy, the guys in charge of the production while the band gulps mass quantities of steak and wine. Us too.
We were to have the same production, except for two dates in the north where there was to be identical production. There were still some issues with backline, though we were promised they would be resolved. There were to be lots of promises on this tour. We asked about the production schedule. We were told to wait until the morning. What the fuck? The morning was the gig, we needed to know what time to come to work. They told us 10 am would work, though we had to nearly beat it out of them. We would learn later, while the production heads were in town, the gear and most of the crew would arrive the next day, just before noon though we were told the load out was to start a 0200 that morning. If so, then why were the Mexican production manager and the lighting crew chief swilling Don Julio and Corona at an unmatched pace? It turns out the show in the room that night wasn’t going out until the next morning. Combine that with the story of only two Whole Hog lighting consoles available in the entire country of Mexico, as we were told, and things started to smell pretty fishy. Unknown to them, our pretty big league lighting guy was affiliated with a sister company down there that owned five of them. So much for that story.
We met in the lobby at 10 am, and ended up waiting until almost noon. The band crew consists of four individuals, including myself, with a fair amount of arena level touring experience. We don’t like to be fucked with. If you tell us 10 am, then mean it. Don’t keep us waiting for two hours particularly when you are bullshitting us. They send over a mini van. That won’t work. Five of us are going, plus the 15 or so pieces of gear we brought with us. Ear mon rig, mics, Line Six head, snare, sticks, Motu 828, VS1824, vococder, the fly date version of my workbox in a Pelican 1650, guitars and some other bits. They remove the seats from the minivan, deposit them in the lobby of the hotel, load the gear then summon hotel taxis for the crew. I guess that will work. We arrive at Teatro Morelos just after noon.
Teatro Morelos from the stage.
I suppose now would be a good time to describe the command structure, or what we would soon find (if not already have figured it out). We have our regular production manager, the promoter has a rep, that calls himself a production manager and the promoter hired a middleman for the tech aspects of the production and to hire the various aspects. The show travels in a single 48′ trailer, just like here. The difference, is that we have a sizable 50kva Cat genset that rides in the back of the trailer. WTF? The stages we’ll get locally when the venues don’t have any. The lighting is from Gafe for the conventionals and Navigation for the Cyberlights. The promoter agrees to rent a Whole Hog from Dos Vente, one of the better lighting companies in the country. The squint package is 120k on two sticks, ground support most days though they can hand the front truss if required. And it’s a chore. There are a dozen Cyberlights some ACLS and Molefays. Our squint boy is pretty good.
How the genset was traveling. Note that the gear had to be loaded around it.
There were two FOH mixers for the act. Both well respected mixers, there was a scheduling conflict that required one mixer to cover the first three shows, with the other mixer doing the remaining nine shows. So, we get to the theater and find SGI is to be the provider of the system. SGI was the primary contractor for the big rock show I did down there in July. They had 16 KF850s, 8 SB1000’s, Crown power and a pair of PM 4ks. FOH requires eight gates, eight comps and four multieffects. I require 10 comps, five gates and two multieffects and a drum sub. The only thing that could be considered non standard is that we require 18 direct boxes. We meet our guys. Miguel is at FOH, Arlo at mons and Roberto patching the stage. They are pretty good guys and I’d hire them, particularly Roberto as his english is pretty good. He remembers me from July. Other than lack of DIs, the only issue is that the rig infrastructure is pretty hammered. The snake has 40 lines, including an 8 channel drive snake. We require 33 inputs from the stage, plus three click tracks to the mons. I use every input in almost every mix. In 33 inputs we have 9 that either have unusable buzz, or don’t work at all. It takes them a few minutes to sort it out, with the assistance of my Rat Pack cable tester.
As we enter the venue, we see some things that need to be changed. Lights are still on the deck, the PA isn’t near tall enough for the venue and stacked much too wide. The backline isn’t close to being right. Wrong drums, bass cab and not enough cables. An XP 80 won’t load. At this point, Jorge, the middleman that calls himself the production manager, starts to provide excuses. “This isn’t like the States”, he starts. He’s trying to spin why things are fucked up, by blaming the culture. That has a bit to do with it, but all of us have gigged here before. This isn’t a Mexico problem, it’s a Jorge problem. The backline guy that he hired is pretty much worthless. On a couple of occasions, he’s given me unshielded speaker cables instead of unbalanced signal cables. I tell him if he does it again, I’ll cut the ends off. I’m not kidding.
We do end up getting it sorted, have a good first gig, but I can’t help but wonder about Jimmy and Jorge. Jorge keeps telling us how good he is, and how we don’t know about how things work in Mexico. If this motherfucker would spend less time trying to impress us, and more time doing his fucking gig, things might be better.
The gig went pretty well after we sorted it all out. The fans were appreciative, they sold a bunch of merch and it looked like we had it under control. I went back to the band’s dressing room to get the ear packs and see how it went. It was chaos. As I entered the bands dressing room, Jimmy and another crew guy were in eating the band’s food and drinking the beer. “What the fuck is going on? I demand.
“It OK”, Jimmy replies.
“No motherfuckers, it’s not OK for you to be in the band’s dressing room eating and drinking. What the fuck is wrong with you guys?”
Just blank looks as they keep eating and drinking. I go get our production manager and he and I basically kick the guys out of the dressing room. The show had ended about 10 mins prior, and these assholes were back eating and drinking from the band’s stash and didn’t think anything of it.
Jorge then confronts us, offended that we kicked them out. “They hungry”, he responds.
“Then they should eat lunch and dinner” our production manager replies.
“This isn’t the US, it’s different” Jorge retorts.
“Stay out of the dressing rooms motherfucker!” was my reply.
As we head to the aftershow dinner the band asks “who were those guys in the dressing room after the show?”
We were told that we would have a private dinning room at an exclusive restuarant for dinner instead of catering or a buy out. It was late, but I was hungry and figured what the hell. When we get there, we find that the menu is predetermined and drinks are not included. Not only that, there are at least 50 fans or so, in the place waiting for us. They kept interupping the band for photos and autographs all dinnner long. It was nearly 2 am, this wasn’t a scene for me. We made the promoter take us back to the hotel. The bus was to leave at 11 am for St. Luis Potosi, the next gig.