Quality Work Day in Luzern
I was wrong, we weren’t flying into Geneve, we were Zurich bound. Good thing I’m not the tour manager. We had what we refer to as a “quality work day” for the first time in several shows. Probably since Umbria.
There were a few heinous dates. Straubing in particular where the FOH tech for the festival PA company decided to check the config with Ramstein on a 24 module X-Line rig at full tilt during line check. We never quite recovered and during the set The Jazz Singer was a bit miffed. It seems that “Straubing Guy” as we now call that particular tech, decided to point the front fills (a couple of those Dynacord self powered boxes from the previous post) basically across the stage, at the downstage foot of the sidefills. The sidefills get Jazz Singer vocal and high hat. Sax during the solos downstage. That’s it. Nothing else. Ever. Or you’ll be sorry. From where The Jazz Singer was standing, it sounded like a full mix was coming from the fills. I was instructed to “take the motherfucking keyboards” out of the fills. There are no keys in the fills, motherfucking or otherwise. I did the gig for two years before this leg, not too much as changed. Particularly nothing in the fills except vocal and hat. Ever.
About that point I thought The Jazz Singer, well into AARP range (with most of the crew and band not too far behind him) had finally lost it. After the gig we determined that Straubing Guy had pointed the fills across stage, changed the gain structure completely during the act previous to our set so that there were rings from out of nowhere that could have knocked a buzzard off a shit wagon. The next day The Jazz Singer apologized and all was well. Since then, we haven’t been able to buy a break, save for a few gigs.
We have companies that try to follow the spec to the tee, but don’t quite have the infrstructure to pull it off. On my previous Euro outings with this bunch, we carried at least FOH and MONs even to the big festivals. Over the last five years there has been quite a change in the budget and we’re getting newer or less experienced promoters and PA companies that while the gig looks good on paper, they can’t quite pull it off and me and FOH dude end up setting up and tweaking much more than we have to with a Varsity crew. We have guys bringing control surfaces that did not know how to program them. All except one of the ones that did know, didn’t speak English. Nothing like trying to tell a guy that doesn’t speak English that the .ses file he is trying to build for you from his band last night is corrupt and it would be easier for you to build your own file. I’m down with the surfaces but FOH dude is old school and just coming to terms with them. He needs a tech to dive into the heart of the thing as he can drive them just fine. We had a few scary gigs.
Luzern though, put an end to that. We had a proper rig with proper crew. Our old touring mate that now owns the backline company we use met us at the airport and spent the day with us working the gig, just like the olden days. This is even though the backline we rent from him was on a truck from Barcelona to Stuttgart and we were using festival gear from someone, while much, much larger, would be considered a competitor. I learned more about the Live 8 gig from London. Our pal worked for that band that lost the pig over London some years back and was able to give good dish on what went on at the gig. All in all it made up for a pretty rough couple of weeks. In nearly three weeks we’ve only really had one real day off, the rest have been shows or travel. It slows up from here and looks likely to become a more proper routing for a bunch of middle aged men like us.
At least we hope it will…