This Cockring is Too Small
We’re winding down the last couple of installments of the Great Mexican Adventure, or Dave’s version of Sierra Madre. The computer karma at Roaddog Manor, located in the “versatile” Capitol Hill neighborhood , didn’t fare so well this week. The server upgrade was a little shaky and there was lost mail and then to top it off my last Powerbook, or should I say Kenny’s last Powerbook, bit the dust. With my tour notes, pics and my iTunes library on it, about the only things that weren’t backed up. I also lost the cooling fan on my BillGatesXPPro box, nearly smoking the CPU. It took nearly a week for the Mac doodz to download my homemade porn from my hard drive, err I mean fix the Powerbook. Today’s installment really needs pictures so one can get the full effect of the story.
We return you to our regularly scheduled program, already in progress…
Several of us congregated in the lobby cafe of the Chihuahua Westin for breakfast prior to departure. We don’t plan it that way, at least I don’t but usually most of the band, myself and most of the other crew manage to make it down. We were joined this morning by one for the stars of Other band and most of the band. Nice lot. There was various chit chat and before we knew it, it was time to go. The gear was going ahead in a van as the now roughly 25 person touring party would fill both bays with luggage. Other crew had gone ahead the night before. I had my two Dramamines earlier and was ready for some restful slumber with the assistance of my trusty iPod. A few of us lucked out and had empty seats next to us. Within a few miles of pulling out, I was fast asleep.
A couple of hours later, I felt the bus slow to a crawl. Normally that means it’s time to pay the dudes at the Auto Pista or the Mexican version of a turnpike. As I opened the curtain a looked out into the desert, I could see it wasn’t your typical toll booth. Throughout the country at various locations are military check points, where vehicles are stopped and sometimes searched. We’ve seen a few before, though never been stopped. These outposts were typically manned with a few large machine gun placements behind sandbags and staffed by several soldiers carrying automatic weapons. Though a rank and file gringo might be a bit wigged, if you’ve ever toured the world, you’d find this sort of thing is more common than one would imagine, particularly in places that don’t enjoy the standard of living that we do in North America or Western Europe.
We pull in behind a couple of other tourist buses and are told when our turn comes, we are to depart the busses with our documents and line up along the tables under the canopy beside the bus. There were larger signs depicting “No Smoking”, “No Pictures” in International format. Our turn came, we disembarked and stood in our place at the table beside the bus. On the wall behind us were a couple hundred Polariod snaps of persons being caught hiding drugs or people in various way in all different sorts of transport. From the generic and overused false rear wall in load, to some pretty sophisticated means. For example, a great quantity of what appeared to be cocaine or heroin was stashed inside the spikes of one of those huge earth breaking roller machine. The kind that is pulled behind a tractor and the large spikes on the drum break the ground. There was a fake Coca Cola truck that had cases of Coke with false compartments that contained drugs. There were false compartments in busses that stashed humans heading for the US border. It seemed these guys were pretty proud of what they had found. Some the pics had soldier posing with the booty, most of which was drugs, then humans and a few weapons seizures. They had mirrors, they would tap on compartments and parts with small bats, they even had metal detectors. They didn’t have any dogs, though. I didn’t know if they weren’t in the budget, or perhaps they had eaten them previously. I wasn’t going to ask.
As we lined up alongside the the bus, we could see they were stopping everyone this Saturday afternoon. Across the way, they had one guy standing at the front of his car, assuming “the position”, hands behind head, interlaced fingers. They had every door open, trunk and hood and the back seat was being removed. On our side they were unloading some of our luggage in a random fashion and placing it on the table for inspection. They pulled about eight bags and ordered the owners of those bags to report and consent to a search. It was a lot like going through a TSA screening at an airport in the States, except these guys were heavily armed, we got to keep our shoes on and they weren’t confiscating our nail clippers. It’s going along just ducky when I hear Mr Friend bellow from the end of the table.
“Hey, pay attention now, WHO’S BAG IS THIS!?” he basically shouts down the line. Several of us look down, it’s not ours and we resume looking at the pics and making jokes the guards can’t understand.
“LISTEN UP! GET WITH THE PROGRAM! Who’s bag is this?”. He barked again. He had a soldier next to him and they wanted to search it.
After the last outburst, Other tour manager and one of Other stars looked at each other in a “who the hell is that guy” look and went about their business. I’d had enough of Mr Friend at this point and shot back, in a rather dead pan way “they have these things called bag tags, and I’m told they might actually have the name of the person that owns the bag on them. Don’t quote me on that, though.” Several in the party break out in snickers or chuckles, including Other tour manager and Other star. At that point our star looks at the tag and announces it belongs to our prod dude. The Federalies were already elbow deep in prod dudes other suitcase and he was working with them and wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around him. Understandable. They search a few more bags using the newly employed “look at the tag to see who belongs to that bag” approach, then send us on our way. There were four or five busses behind us and a line of trucks in the next lane at least 10 deep. At least nobody got shot though I was tempted to make an offer for them to shoot Mr Friend. We climbed back on and a short while later were at the Juarez city limits.
As we made our way through town, past the airport that made the last one look like LAX, we passed a shopping complex that had a store called S-Mart. I started to laugh. Last night the FOH dude told me that when he was talking to Jose, our production translator about front of house gear, he had mentioned they had “JBL S Mart” and it actually was a Smaart Live release, though I didn’t get the version. I asked if he was sure the dude didn’t mean “esmaart”, some sort of Spanish thing? The guy’s English was VERY good, he indeed says S Mart, just like the store. Between us, it’s now become S-Mart and while we shouldn’t tease him like that, I do think it’s kind of funny.
We are driving through what is the real part of Cidudad de Juarez, not the touristy old style Mexican border village look like Tijuana or the part of Juarez just over the border from Texas. This part of Juarez, in fact most of the city could have passed for El Paso or any other Texas town of that size. They need a city slogan. “Juarez, it’s not only donkey shows and over the counter perscription drugs anymore.” Feel free to use that to promote tourism. Free of charge. It’s the least I can do.
As we pull into the “American Party Jr”, or Fiesta Inn as it’s properly known, Mr Friend informs the party this is Other band’s hotel only, we are to stay on and go to our hotel. That’s funny, because the most recent update from Carlos and HLB say this is the hotel. As the band sits on the bus, the crew disembarks. A few minutes later, Carlos appears asking why they are still on the bus, this is the hotel. Once again, Mr Friend is just pulling stuff out of his ass. I think he just makes it up as he goes along. We ask Carlos what time should we be in the lobby. He doesn’t know, he’ll go to the gig and find out. There have been some delays. We have some lunch, mill around and find a few hours later we’ll have an in at 4:00 pm. I pass HLB in the elevator and he more or less tries to avoid me.
The first thing we see when we show up.
About this gig… It’s in a pollo foro, or chicken forum. It’s a cockfighting ring that on Sunday hosts Mexican wrestling. The stage just covers the ring, which is about 20′ x 20′. It goes all the way to the first row of seats. In fact, the first row has to cross the stage in some parts. It’s similar to the “melody tent” or revolving stage gigs in the eastern and northeastern US. It was more like the old Cape Cod Melody and less like the Celebrity Theaters in Anaheim or Phoenix or the Westbury Music Fair on “Lon Guy Land”.
Taking a video of the “no video” sign entertained the locals.
We get there just after 4:00 to find Other crew just wrapping it up. It had been kind of a rough day for them. The overnight from Chihuahua in the van was rough, they checked into a different hotel than the band and were due to move later that day. That’s where they were headed when we arrived. They were informed in the morning that the production wouldn’t even be loading in until noon at the earliest. It seems that while Other crew traveled at night, the Mexican production didn’t leave until the next morning. Jose greets us and informs us they are working on my snake problems and console issues and that HLB had gone to ElPaso to try and find another console for me to use. WTF? Large format consoles aren’t something you just “go looking for.” Besides, he’d need a truck and a customs doc (4455) to bring it over for the day, though the customs doc is easy to get. Fact was, he was not in El Paso, he was back at the hotel. I just saw him and there was no way anyone was going to switch consoles that late in the day. Yet another bald face lie. That wasn’t the only one of the day. When Other prod asked why they didn’t leave Chihuahua until well after 2:00 am the night before, he was told it was because we played until nearly 2:00 am which lead to Other prod asking if we played until 2:00, why did he see our band in the hotel just after 1:00 am? Good question.
What a nice cockring you have.
It’s ugly. Prison sex ugly. In terms of production logistics this was the least accomodating of the entire tour. The PA is stacked in four stacks at the top of the bowl, pointing toward the bowl or basically right across the ring from each other, back down to the stage. I assist FOH dude because he can’t hear the sound in the bowl where he sits. The previous picture is from the FOH mix position. The lighting is also placed around the top of the bowl. The set change is to be made down a long, narrow, dark vom that leads backstage. Other band set and staged along what could be considered the upstage, and we set our “riser line” across the middle of the stage. It was decided we’d only use the center riser for the star, drums and keys would go on the floor. The key rig was so close to the mon console the left side of the Triton butted against the back of the desk. It was going to be cozy tonight, that’s for sure.
Overview of the stage setup.
View of PA stack and lighting truss. There were four such positions around the bowl plus moving lights spaced equally around the bowl on cases or mounted on handrails.
The crew is going through the snaking system as we start the backline setup. I offer the use of some tools and they decline. It seems there are three or four bad lines outright, with some that are just noisy. They find the bad lines but are having difficulty with the noises. While two are watching two others troubleshoot, I instruct Jose to have the remaining two start wiring the stage. The band is due in about 20 mins and we aren’t even close to having the stage wired, though I was able to set up the ear rig before they started. It turns out that they have a bad main trunk. What we decide is to use our splittler and tails, and switch the trunk at the box and up at FOH. We patched around the bad console inputs are were going to start a line check. By that time the band had arrived and were cooling their heels. FOH dude thought they should just get up and play, but I thought we should go through the lines. That’s about the point where my evening shit the bed.
View from my seat to the cheap seats.
We had the drummer test the kit after we tapped the lines so we wouldn’t have to set levels twice. There was a crackling floor tom. A mic swap seemed to do the trick. We’re using ATM35s on the toms and the sound is pretty good, though I like the SM98s a bit more. The 35 is still a good mic, though. We are using an ATM23 on the snare, a pair of 4033s for overheads, an AT4041 on the hat and for while we used an AT 25 on the kick until it blew up. FOH dude brought his personal Beta 52, which is one ass slappin’ daddy of a kick mic. We’d like to add a ride, snare bottom and second kick but we’re running out of channels in the mons and the tech specs went out before either he or I started. For vocals we are using AT 3300s with the front man on an AT wireless unit. Everyone sings. For DIs we’re at the mercy of the PA company. Most freak when we tell them we need 18. That is one of the things that separate the men from the boys in the biz. Being able to handle what is really a simple requirement without losing it. Back to the cockring…
During the rest of the line check, we find several lines not working. After about the third one, it set me off considering that the patcher or Jose were nowhere to be found at that moment. I turned into ugly fucking American roadie. Unfortunately, most of the band was sitting up in the seats where I couldn’t see them. It was a regretful, unfortunate incident. I blasted the sound crew guys as they got back to the stage. Though I doubt they understood what I said. It probably sounded like “Blah, blah, blah, motherfuckers, blah blah blah damn it blah blah blah.” Not one of my finest hours for sure, but I was tired, in constant pain from a pinched nerve in my lower back and was frustrated with the way HLB had been handling the information flow. It’s no excuse, but those poor audio boys caught the full force brunt of the rage. It’s not to say they were without blame. They should never have brought gear in that shape to a gig like this. At this point it was easier and faster for me to just do it myself, something I was trying to avoid but couldn’t. A couple of minutes later it was fixed, and we finished the soundcheck.
At the end of the check, FOH dude reported crackling in the bass line. I asked if we could fix it later as I was on another task. I didn’t hear it and was still pissed about the setup thing. I took the Minirator out on the stage. I warned FOH to mute and told him I was sending 1k @ a certain level (I forgot what the level was) Most times talking in a line line that won’t yield anything. I should have been more clear to the bass player as I unplugged and inserted the Minirator in the line. He grabbed his ears in shock and was visibly pissed. I’d blown his head off with a shitload of 1k right into the bass channel. Shit, I should have been more clear when I warned him. I apologized up and down. Now I really felt bad. With the tone down the line, if you wiggle the cable you can replicate it if it’s a shield issue. Nothing with 1k so I try 60 cycles. Now it’s sounding like a bowl of Rice Krispies. A couple of amazed faces on stage, but it’s just basic troubleshooting, kids. I apologize again and he’s cool about it. We start final prep for the show.
About 10 mins before showtime it’s pretty apparent that for a near sold out show there are still many that are arriving. We hold for nearly 45 mins. The activity around the stage is like nothing I’ve ever witnessed. And I’ve seen a lot of shit. As the stage is at first row level, people walk across the stage to get to seats, sometimes stopping to look at the instruments. At this point Mr Friend has dubbed himself head of security, but that’s not on his mind. He’s looking for bootleggers. I find Carlos and he gets the right guys to do the right thing. There are vendors selling bottles of booze, beers and chips and snacks that cross the stage once every few seconds. I’m wondering if they’re going to do this at the show.
Showtime comes and sure enough, folks are crossing the corners of the stage to get to the seats and some vendors are coming down sell their wares. I’ve never seen anything like it. I tried to get some pics but it was too dark and I was pretty busy. Not only doing my main gig on mons, but following the band members into the crowd. At one point in the set during an instrumental number, the star is off his centerstage riser and a guy walks across the stage with drinks and snacks. The star takes one of the drinks, has a bit returns it to the fan and thanks him. The trys to give him the drink and some snacks. It was funny as hell. The gig ends and we start a hectic load out down the narrow hall.
Our out has gone well, they’re line checking Other band and we’re in the narrow vom leading off the stage. It’s nearly showtime for Other band as we take down our gear. I give a “heads up” as Other band makes toward the stage. We part and give way to them. The whole time we were with them, I’m hoping no one in the band recognizes me. When I left other band it was under less than desirable circumstances. The tour manager at the time (they have changed a couple of times since then) had misrepresented the gig and I wasn’t getting paid the rate we discussed and due to that and a few other issues I bailed midstream. Leaving them in a lurch. Then there was the history I had with Other stars ex wife about 7 years prior. I’m pretty sure it was before they were engaged, but I can’t say for certain. When I had the gig with Other band, I was told by management not to mention the history. As he is passing me in the tunnel, he says, “Great seeing you again Dave, hope to see you soon.” So much for not remembering me. He’s a good guy, I like hanging with him but the ex wife thing is awkward for me.
We were to leave the gear in the narrow vom. Carlos would arrange for shipping. We weren’t checking it this time. I asked about piece count. I was told not to worry about it. The gig was about 50 yards from the US border. We walked to the fence and looked across. It was a series of tall chain link and jersey barriers with INS vehicles crossing about every minute. We were so close, yet so far away from home.
View of the Juarez/El Paso border from the “American Party Jr”. The line of lights about a quarter of the way from the top of the picture is the US border.