The Crimson Permanent Assurance
It’s time to head back out and introduce the next installment of A Dog’s Tale. Previous segments have included the Mexico and Spanish tours of 2003 and “The Glamor of Show Business” short feature from one of three European legs I did last year. I had originally intended the short to be something different than it was. I knew next to nothing about video or filmmaking, I just picked up a camera and started to shoot and pumped the results into Final Cut. Around 1500 people have downloaded it so far (between 6000 and nearly 10,000 visit APD every month but only about 3500 or so are regulars) and most seemed to enjoy it, but it was nothing like I intended to do and mostly what I didn’t want to do. I’ll have the DV cam again but with better audio and lighting gear and a better understanding of how to use it and the workflow of managing what I shoot and putting it together. I shot way too much gear and not enough people and this time I’d like to focus more on the people and if some are willing, some short interviews to show people what it’s like on tour.
The previous journals from Mexico and Spain focused on my observations of a slightly dysfunctional touring unit. My perspective was interesting because I’d just gotten off a couple of legs of a fairly large, well organized arena tour. On this much smaller gig we had a rookie tour manager, an artist once quite huge, though still very well respected, touring again for the first time in almost two decades and a promoter that turned out to be less than reputable. Due to a variety of reasons, most of that crew including me are no longer with the act. We parted on good terms and have stayed in touch. In fact, the production manager and the lighting designer have become good friends of mine. It’s about time for me to roust the musos anyway. They’re a good bunch of folks, I enjoyed the couple of years we gigged together and you never know, we could gig together again.
On this run however, I’ve returned to an artist that I had worked with for a couple of years. It was the final tour I did before I stopped touring and did the dot com thing for a while back in 2000. It’s a well organized bunch of experienced pros and I’m pleased they have invited me back. Any drama on this one is probably not going to come from our camp, though anything is possible. This time I’m going to try to focus on some more technical aspects of fly date touring and some of the logistics required.
Before you get there, you have to first leave. Leaving town for extended periods of time is something that big time show business roadies get used to doing. The ones that aren’t terminal bachelors usually have the significant other at home to keep things in order, pay bills and make sure everything is OK on the home front. If your a bachelor roadie, you have to most of this on your own. There are the friends and aquiantances that help out, but there’s nothing like being overseas for two months and forgetting to pay the power bill and coming home to rotting fridge full of weird shit. Yum. Touring in the States isn’t so bad, FedEx and online bill pay makes up for it, but overseas FedEx takes a bit longer due to customs and costs more and some online bill pays won’t let you access due to logging in from IP blocks from outside the US as part of fraud prevention. So I like to pay for things before I go.
There’s also this moving thing. I haven’t had to move in seven years and for the seven or eight years prior to that, I didn’t have to move more than across town and in the case of my last couple of moves, not more than a couple of blocks. Moving like that you can do it in hunks, not having to do it all at once. When I moved to the Northwest from Hollywood I was in my mid twenties and didn’t have too much. I ditched most of it before I left and still had a lease left on my LA place so I made the move with two loads over an eight month period. This move to Las Vegas will be different. I’ve got way more stuff and can relate even more to Carlin when he does the “stuff” routine. I looked into jetisoning most of my “stuff” in Seattle and moving to Vegas in a minimalist way. The problem is, the Calphalon and Dyson alone cost more than the rental of the truck and that doesn’t include anything else. The furniture thing would be easier if they just had an Ikea there. Do I really need to move a ten year old, five hundred dollar Ikea couch 1300 miles? Lot’s of balls in the air and leaving on tour for two months doesn’t help. At least I’m working again.
Other readiness items for long term touring of primarily non English speaking locales, something to do. In most parts of the world, particularly in Western Europe the people do speak English as a second langage (just like in California) but they conduct day to day live in their native tongue. While a great deal of the movies and TV are from the US, it’s dubbed in most countries except the smaller ones where it’s subtitled. So to entertain ourselves during the downtime we need to bring our own amusements for long plane flights and bus rides. You need to bring your own English books, movies and should probably bring most of your own music as well. Finding English books and magazines in non English speaking countries is a challenge, though not impossible. I usually hit a US bookstore for a couple of titles, this trip will be “Rebel Without A Crew” by Robert Rodriguez, “Silent Bob Speaks” by Kevin Smith and “Darknet” by JD Lasica. Two books by writer/directors because I’m really a director, this sound guy thing is just until I get my break (inside joke for my pals down in Hollywood) and the newly released “Darknet” which offers “first-person accounts of how the personal media revolution will impact movies, music, computing, television and games”. At least that’s what the liner notes say. I haven’t taken it out of the bag yet, though I’m about halfway through the Rodriguez book and have pawed the Smith book a few times.
I’ll take few DVDs, “The Wall” and “This is Spinal Tap” if only because I’ve had either a VHS or DVD of one or both of those on every tour I’ve done in the last 10 or 15 years and will include “Kingpin”, “The Player”, “Get Shorty” and at least two Monty Python flicks not counting the illegally ripped copy of “The Crimson Permanent Assurance” I have on one of my hard drives. I didn’t steal it mind you, I bought the DVD (a couple in fact) and had to circumvent the copy protection in order to be able to play it from my computer. I say Fair Use, after all in total I paid fifty bucks but the DMCA says I’m a thief for copying what I own two of already. I’m sure the bus will have an ample supply of DVDs and perhaps VHS but we have a German bus (and these guys are good, BTW) usually they’re dubbed or subtitled. The one thing the Euro buses haven’t done yet (BTW, the US far and away leads all other parts of the planet, dare I say galaxy in terms of tour bus technology and comfort) is get sat TV. Given that Direct TV satellites are in orbit over the US (Texas, more or less) it’s just as well as we’d be getting some sort of Euro programming that would likely be dubbed or subtitiled.