A Barking Dog

Ah the memories.  Back when the line in that song was big, we were doing the arena and stadium tour with that artist.  It was the early ’90s.  Proshow USA was a young company that had no business doing anything more than a club or theater tour but because we were leveraged to the hilt, we had to take it.  We accepted the gig as a subcontractor to the big time PA company.  We were at the Oakland Colosseum on one of many bad dates when a patch error by the primary contractor resulted in the artist’s father threatening to shoot the guy patching.  I got over that shitty tour but the irony is that same vendor that hired use for that gig was was the vendor for the last tour I did in 2006.  And Harry probably still thinks I’m a dick.  Like I care…

I’ve decided to do a short season of ABD, not for old times sake but to pimp my appearance at AES 127 in NYC on the AC Power Distribution and Grounding Seminar.  These days I’ve climbed the corporate ladder (not that it was that difficult) and am now in charge of the music studios and monitor rig of one of the largest shows not only on the block but on the planet.  Or pretty much what I did when I was living in a bed that traveled 70 mph every night.  Last year I had the great fortune and honor of being asked to be on the panel at AES 125 in San Fransisco.  Even though I bogarted the time allotted Bruce was kind enough to ask me back this year.  This stint of ABD will deal with observations of past AES shows, both as an attendee and exhibitor, what it take to prepare a presentation and finally my take on the show from the show floor.

Until next time…

**NOTE**

Can’t believe it’s been three months since I retired ABD…  If you want to see what I’m up to these days I’ve put up a blog chronicaling my racing at the National Guard Supernationals XII Presented by SKUSA next week in Vegas. It’s at http://lokikart.com/purplein1/

This post has been a long time coming and I probably should have done it a year ago. Much like Barton was interrupted while staring at the keys of his Underwood at the Hotel Earle by Charlie Meadows, I’ve been doing much the same but in suburban digs in Las Vegas. Next month I’ll celebrate my 3rd year year in the city of sin and circus shows. I suppose much in the same way that an inmate celebrates that final walk to the electric chair. It’s not quite as grim as Ben and Sera make it out to be, though in my original apartment behind that hotel that rocks hard it certainly could have been. It’s a cold, soul less place that extracts a toll on many that call it home. To me it’s nothing more than a company town, a place for old roadies to go and become part of the corporate machine where mediocrity and low profile are rewarded over risk, skill and expertise.

I’ve had a great time doing A Barking Dog for the last five years or so, however infrequent it’s been over the last year. This post for me marks the end of an era, the last post of A Barking Dog. The stories were true to life, at least how I remembered it to be afterward or how I saw it those times when the posts were in real time. Some of the people weren’t exactly pleased in the way I protrayed them. Bummer, I called it like I saw it. Which is one of the reasons I decided to stop posting. I’d like to keep this gig until either I retire and move to some Del Webb gated community (I’m almost old enough..) or until Ambi and I figure out how to get those couple of acres of land either in Nor Cal or the PNW and start our organic produce farm, with of course, a race shop.

My current corporate overlords, while not as hard core and tight assed as the first place I worked on The Strip still wouldn’t appreciate some of my observations. On a pretty frequent basis I have a “you gotta be fucking kidding me” moment, at which point I turn to one of my colleagues and say “you gotta be fucking kidding me”. It’s an interesting mix on The Strip of audio types. Not a lot of rock guys and not a lot of guys that have done big time stage mons. I think there might be a dozen of us with most of those at the big time music gigs or rooms in town. The production show crews while they have bands and monitors, don’t have a lot of real monitor guys. There are a couple of guys that can do it pretty well but there are also many guys that think they are a lot better than they are. The bands for the most part know the difference. They need rock mons in a theatrical production show environment and a lot of the kids on the mon desk weren’t born when some of us started doing mons or playing in bands. They need real monitor guys on real monitor consoles and that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon. It’s no wonder why some of the younger, higher caliber guys spend a year or two on The Strip then hit back out on the road. I don’t blame them but for an old roadie like me that wants to wind down and spend the back nine of the career working with cool, high tech stuff from the creative angle (these days I’m doing a fair amount of mixing both FOH and mons) back on the road isn’t really a good option.

For a quarter century I based my life on getting the next gig and getting a bigger gig. I had some success and a couple of failures along the way. I had a good run. Just like A Barking Dog. It had a good run, though belabored over the last year or so. At one point there were about 15,000 people a month reading. Now it’s time to turn out the lights and go into archive mode.

Like Shakey says, it’s better to burn out, rust never sleeps.

Thanks for a great run, gang. We’ll see you around…

Instant asshole, just add alcohol…

Over the years I’ve watched many an old, or even middle aged man ride off from many, many successful years touring. Dicko, Perk, Mason and Morrison to name a few. These days I reckon I’m in that group. With few exceptions touring life has no place for old men. Either the road eats them up or of their own volition indicates they leave the road. If nothing else for the sake of their own sanity. Some though, present company included, stay past their expiration dates then wonder why what used to be so fulfilling has turned into a wasteland devoid of any enjoyment. Gotta love what you do but when you don’t it’s no different than being some cubicle rat in an office, counting the minutes until your release from the prison of conformity and Dilbert like ineptitude. At least Dilbert is funny.

At the front end of the career it’s a competitive environment. And that doesn’t change as the years rage on. There are always more people than available gigs though there never seem to be enough GOOD people for those gigs. As one gets on in years, like the seasons, things change. What was important at 25 is no longer important at 35 and things like family start to take priority over things like gigs. What do you think is more important? Making sure your TPS reports are properly filled out, or making sure your kids are healthy and happy? Lumdberg might be pissed, but those reports are a distant second, if not further down the list.

When you’re a young turk in this biz you don’t think about what you’re going to do next year. Let alone when you are 40, 50 or 60. I know I didn’t start thinking about it until Crazy Uncle Kenny’s dot com entered a death spiral and I saw my six figure livelyhood disappering faster than Britney’s panties. Forty years old, no college degree, years of experience in the Varsity of touring audio. Outside of touring, that and six bucks would get me a double tall, low fat, half soy, part vanilla, part hazelnut latte. For all intents and purposes in that case you don’t have a pot in which to piss, as they say. It really hit home when shortly after the dot com was sold for pennies on the dollar and the operators at the time determined they didn’t really need my services. No prob, I thought. While the first dot com bubble burst, it was still a boomtown in comparison to the rest of the world.

I was attending a technology job fair up in Seattle, fresh on the dole of the State of WA just ending a nearly three year run at the dot com, the heart of which I started as a labor of love not quite a decade earlier. Google was advertising a contract position for someone to maintain storage space in either the Chicago or Atlanta data center. Basically, you read a log and swap dead hard drives from clusters. Even though I’d been able to build dot com, build and run the data center infrastructure I wasn’t qualified for the job as a contractor swapping drives. I was Red Hat certified, Sun certified and a former MS certified tech with commercial experience on the Internet since the Internet became commercial. No matter. I didn’t have a college degree, even though most of the kids applying were in grade school and had no idea what a server was at the time I was starting to build the property. While I had the knowledge and experience to do the task, according to the search kings, I didn’t have the most important part. A piece of paper that said that I was able to tolerate four years of school regardless of any real world experience.

That left a mark. And at the same time was a huge wake up call. Had I stayed at Cal Poly Pomona about a quarter century earlier I might have had the paper to get that gig, but I surely wouldn’t have gotten the gigs I did, when I did had I stayed in school. As they say, when you find a fork in the road, take it. And I took this one and that was where I was at the time. The next day I confirmed an offer for a tour that would take me through most of that year. One door closes, one door opens. At that point, the dynamics and structure of touring had changed. Controlled more by the bottomline than quality in and of itself the pricing structure for most continued to decline. What was once a US$2500/wk gig plus PD, business class travel and own room in a good hotel was a US$1200/wk gig, light PD, coach travel and sharing a room with some twenty something concerned with getting the most out of the party atmosphere. Or about where I was nearly two decades earlier.

I suppose that’s standard economics. Supply and demand. It’s OK when you’re 20, or 30. Less tolerable when you’re 40. How about 50? I’ll be there in a few years. At 60? The problem for many of us is we didn’t start thinking of exit strategies until well into our careers. You can milk a good twenty years from the road, but can you do thirty? Or fourty? And at what cost? In the mid 90s there was a very popular band that we had a vendor contract with. They were from Austraila and were tearing up the airwaves at that point. The mon guy from OZ was a family man. He’d been on the road for sometime. At one point during the tour he called home. His six year old son answered. “Hi, it’s daddy” the mon guy stated. To which the kid replied “Who’s daddy?” Within the next couple of days, the mon guy headed home, to my knowledge never to tour again.

My point is to have an exit strategy so at the point you turn 50 you’re running the show instead of changing RF mic batteries and shouting “climber 2 check, fourteen, one-four, check” into a french Canadian’s face just prior to the show. Even the best laid plans shit the bed. Make sure you have a handle on where you wnat to go and how you want to get there. What you are doing at 30 isn’t going to be what you want to be doing at 60.

Been hot as fuck here over the last six weeks or so. Exactly, Dave, how hot is fuck? Well of course that all depends on who is doing it. Opps, sorry strayed from the topic. Guess that’s what I get for not having Tony give me one of them awards. I’m sure he’s not the guy that gave me all these platinum colored records, errr I mean CDs. Actually, very few were “given” to me. Most of them I had the priviledge of purchasing only after I was associated with the project. I wonder if that Tony guy charges his recipients for copies of the award. Touring we did on many gigs 20k punters per night. Most of these theater gigs don’t do 20k punters per month. Dave are you bitter and grinding an axe against the theatrical discipline based on your limited experience with some of those asshats? No, give me another few weeks and let it really fester. That’s not how you do it in New York? Well, Sunshine, do you think it’s because this isn’t a Broadway theater gig is the reason why it’s not like that? No, really…

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity, and fortunately for us, there isn’t much humidity. At least it’s a dry heat… Technically, my first summer here was last summer, though two years ago when I first did the recon down here during Infocomm, it was June and hotter than hell. Hot, hot, hotter than hell, burn you like the mid day sun. Last May, like pretty much every summer for the last 30 years or so, I bailed town to chase the bright lights and glamor of show biz, or at least get a good touring gig where over the course of three or four months I could make most of my nut for the whole year. A year ago this week I was here in town for a week or so, starting my first year at Thee Swanky Dive On The Strip. We had a break between the Euro and US legs and I spent it learning the ropes at the new gig and seeing such comedy favs as Rodney Carrington and Bill Engval.

Other than the insufferable weather, plus the Strip block long walk from employee parking it’s sort of like being on the road living on the bus. But not really. At least a couple of times a week on the way in (or out) of the gig I see many tour coaches and trucks at the docks of the big venues in town. I reflect fondly on the memories, but glad I’m not a passenger in one of those vomit comets. The schedules are different, and that’s one thing that takes getting used to, even after a year. We have basically two modes. Run mode, where we run the show, and dark/creation/enhancement mode. Most shows do the creation mode before the show opens. Now the braintrust that runs our show, even after two years hasn’t quite figured the show out. So they keep changing it. The other shows like ours (or shall I say, the other shows that we are like) don’t seem to have this problem. They tweak, but not to the extent that we do. And we are some tweakin’ motherfuckers. And we change the show quite a bit, too. For the last several weeks we’ve been on “enhancement” mode.

This week I thought I’d give you a chance to see a comparison of schedules between touring fly date roadie, touring bus roadie and production show roadie in run mode. In creation mode it’s like being in pre production touring. You get there early in the morning and don’t leave until late at night.

A Day In The Life….

0600 (we’re doing Euro time here because I think it makes me look cool, or is it kewl?)

Fly Date: You are either at the airport, on the plane already or heading for the airport unless it’s a day off.

Bus Date: Comfy asleep in your rack either at the gig or on the way to the gig unless it’s a day off and you might already be in your day off room. Or in the back lounge regreting you stayed up all night with the lighting guys.

Production Show: Considering where to have breakfast after spending the night in the Artisan/Peppermill/PT’s with the Drinking Club With An Audio Problem.

0900

Fly Date: At the first layover or if you are lucky (or unlucky depending on your outlook) on the ground headed to the gig in some van or minibus that either smells like shit, piss or barf (or a combination thereof) or is way too small for everything and everyone. Or if you’re really lucky, or unlucky, all of the above.

Bus Date: The noise department is just getting up and off the bus to breakfast. The squints have been off the bus of an hour or so but it’s not like they sleep with the amount of krell they do. Hopefully you didn’t stay up with them.

Production Show: Better be in asleep by now, or at least in bed explaining to her that you’ve been really tired lately and aren’t able to perform. Not that it’s happened to me. This week…

1000

Fly Date: You’re either late to the gig or at the gig. If you got in the day before you’re at the gig finding that the locals either a) aren’t there yet or b) there but don’t have the right shit and there’s no hot breakfast catering.

Bus Date: After a hearty breakfast you’re on deck watching chains go into the air and decided where to put the PA so that in an hour or so, after you’ve got the stacks rigged, video or scenic can come in and tell you that the PA is in the “wrong place”, even though it’s the best place soundwise.

Production Show:

ZZZZZZZZZ or trying to convince the gal from wardrobe (or the front office) you’ll respect her in the morning, even though it’s approaching the afternoon.

Noon

Fly Date: Wondering what kind of flat meat is going to be for lunch and wondering if the local production can get it together in time for the band’s arrival mid afternoon.

Bus Date: Wondering what kind of flat meat is going to be for lunch and wondering if the production you brought can get it together in time for the band’s arrival mid afternoon.

Production Show: “All I need is two more hours sleep, honest…”

1600

Fly Date: Hopefully the local production has it’s shit together enough to be able to do the scheduled band check. And with any luck the band isn’t hungover, drunk or in jail and the afternoon goes as planned.

Bus Date: Hopefully the touring production has it’s shit together enough to be able to do the scheduled band check. And with any luck the band isn’t hungover, drunk or in jail and the afternoon goes as planned.

Production Show: Run crew call, start of the day. Hope you got enough sleep. Do your basic check. make sure all is OK, share uncomfortable silence in elevator with gal from wardrobe (or front office). Well, at least you aren’t hitting on the performers. This week…

1830

Fly Date: Lounging in your room or some shitty backstage area because your rooms are in the next county, 40 miles from the gig. You don’t have to deal with the support acts so at this point there is dinner. I wonder what kind of chicken they have in catering for the meal?

Bus Date: Lounging in your bus or some shitty backstage area because your bus is in the next county, 40 miles from the gig. You have to deal with the support acts so at this point there is no dinner. That’s OK, they only want to give you 30 bucks a night to spend a few hours of your already taxed day dealing with them even though if they were hiring you direct it would cost them a couple grand a week, not counting PD and accomodations. I wonder what kind of chicken they had in catering for the meal? Hopefully the merch gal or production assistant will bring something to the console even if it’s stone cold and last in the chaffing dish. If you’re on a good tour, the touring catering goddess will bring you something hot, and if you’re lucky, some food too.

1930

Fly Date: Top of show, everyone look sharp. Hope Elvis stops in a couple of hours.

Bus Date: Top of show, everyone look sharp. Hope there is a 2300 curfew, or least enough disinterest to keep this as short as possible.

Production Show: Top of show, everyone look sharp. The show runs 92 mins and 32 secs per night, though when we improvise it might run 94 mins 45 secs. We like to live on the edge.

2130

Fly Date: On an evening with we better be done by now, we’ve got a 0430 lobby call.

Bus Date: Headliner started about a half hour ago. Hope that 2300 curfew is still in effect and the band doesn’t feel like spending the dough to violate it.

Production Show: Second show started, we’ll be out of here in a couple of hours.

2300

Fly Date: Back in the hotel, and that’s good because the 0430 lobby call you had was really an 0400 lobby call. Don’t worry you can sleep on the plane. and by the way you got a middle seat, last row, it doesn’t recline.

Bus Date: Trucks are lined up, we’re loading this bitch out. Can’t wait for the cold pizza/wings/chinese food in the bus in about an hour and a half or two.

Production Show: Load out? Truck? What the hell is that? We’re heading to the Artisan/Peppermill/PT’s for a meeting of the Drinking Club With An Audio Problem.

0100

Fly Date: ZZZZZZ or trying to explain to the business MILF from the bar that you’ll still respect her in the morning. Even though you’ll leave in 3 hours.

Bus Date: All showered up but there was no soap and the towel was way too small, but you’re lucky you got a towel at all and don’t even start bitching about the cold water in the shower. Or the backline guys, bus driver and merch guy eating most of the after show food. At least there is beer, but wait, it’s warm Coors. (thought you said there was beer?…)

Production Show: The Artisan/Peppermill/PT’s seems kind of dead. Shall we hit Scores, OG or Lil Darlings?

So there you have it, the differences between the various gigs.

More for Gore or the son of a drug lord?

None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord….

We’ve got a repeat this week, The A Barking Dog production of “The Glamor of Show Biz”. Shot on location on tour in 2004 with that British soundguy with the hot wife/tourmanager (gotta love a tourmanager that will show you her tits, with her husband sitting next to her…) turned producer/keyboard player/vocalist that liked to work on “projects”. Would have liked to have finished the posts giving the young turks some advice, but we are pretty busy this month at Thee Swanky Dive on The Strip that dunks 90 lb (how many kilos is that?) French chicks in water nine shows a week. Only worked just over a half day today, about 13 hours. They wouldn’t listen to me anyway. Which ironically is one of the things I’m going to address (no, D Day, not you specifically).

I’d been out most of the year in 2k4. In the break between my summer camp with them sisters and going to Brit dude again, I picked up a mini DV cam and a copy of Final Cut. I was (and still do) use it for candid photography,
a nod is as good as a wink to a blind bat, say no more, know whatahmean…) Then I also stated shooting things on tour. Particularly overseas. Got lots of tape, should edit it someday. We started one fall weekend in Amsterdam, two days off (no gig in Amsterdam) prior to starting the tour. Poland, England (where we were almost deported for no work permits), Greece, Italy, The Carribean, Mexico and other locales. Took me about two months to cut and score it.

High band width version at http://www.roaddog.com/video/glamor_broadband.mov

Low bandwidth at http://www.roaddog.com/video/glamor_low_bandwidth.mov

Enjoy… We’ll be back with new posts in a little while.

From James Gordon, Managing Director, Digico

DIGICO COMPLETES MBO

July 7th was a significant date on the calendar for many reasons, not least
of which for those at DiGiCo was the completion of its management buyout.
The new management team comprises Managing Director James Gordon, Chief
Executive Bob Doyle, Marketing Director David Webster, Technical Director
John Stadius and Company Secretary Helen Culleton.

Gordon explains the reasons behind the first significant project he has
undertaken since his appointment as MD. “We’ve always been a reactive and
pro active company that understands the market place we’re in,” he says.
“However, when you have external investors, there is a need to explain the
ins and outs of decision making processes and that can slow things down.
“The management buyout removes that requirement and means we can focus more
of our time on doing what we do best, making us an even more agile and
focussed company.”

Along with a number of plans yet to be revealed, DiGiCo will be putting a
share incentive scheme in place for its employees. “It’s nice that as a
modern company we’re able to reward the people that work with us and put in
the extra time,” continues Gordon. “We have a lot of staff that work 24/7
for the benefit of this company and they will now be able to share in the
success with us fully. “The potential of what we can achieve with the
technology we have within the company, both current and future, is amazing.
The enthusiasm and drive for success that has got us this far is right back
to where it was when we started in 2002.”

A Barking Dog is still on hiatus but I do have plans to start posting again. I figure if Deadwood and the Soprano’s can have a year or so between seasons, so can I. I mean, if the big(gest) boss at the swanky joint on the Strip can compare himself to JC (no, really) I can compare myself to Dave Milch or Brad Grey. It’s a busy time at the show that dunks 90 lb Euro chicks in water. Due to the terms of my NDA I can’t tell you that we just installed a shiny new PM1D for mons or that we’ll be completely replacing the house rig over the next two months. I couldn’t tell you that we’re getting 150 plus new speakers from my hippie pals in the Bay Area. And no, not Bink or Gramps, my other hippie pals on that side of the bay. We are busy little beavers and we all love The Beaver. Gee, Wally. And I don’t mean that in an Eddie Haskell sort of way, I’d love to be able to Moblog the process but my corporate overlords would shit a brick if I did.

The transition from grizzled old touring roadie to grizzled old production show roadie that used to tour has been very interesting. I’m loving it though some of the corporate bullshit sometimes is over the top. It’s the transition from saying “are you fucking kidding me”, or “you gotta be shittin’ me” become, “well, sir, I’m not sure I see the advantage in what you just stated”. One example would be when Show Boss (great guy, BTW) was first looking at the PM1D and asked me “ever used a board this big before?” Innocent question, though my inclination was “is my fucking new light on?” In corporate speak that translates to “are you not aware of my background?” Over the course of the install, programming and deployment it became rather apparent that yes, Dave’s used a board this big before. It was some of the most fun I’ve had in recent memory. Tough work? Sure, but very rewarding. It’s exactly what I moved down to this god forsaken hell hole to do. I did move some months back from Roaddog Manor behind the hard rocking hotel, just of the Strip to suburbia. I don’t see Penelope or or Eric or Richard in this suburbia, just upper middle class uptight white families with some showgirls and strippers thrown in for fun. But I do have a much nicer apartment and it’s even nicer when Amber comes to town.

In the meantime, Jazz Singer and his entourage are back in Moscow doing a private gig. It’s been just a bit over a year since we were there last and I thought it appropriate to link back to those posts. The posts from the gig with the Russian oil billonare to the pop princess are at http://rex.roaddog.com/mt/blog/moscow_2006/ or the Moscow 2006 link on the right.

Enjoy, we’ll be back soon with all new Barking Dog stories. And bonus points if you get the reference in the title of the post…

In keeping with the tradition of American television creating content and running it endless times, I thought I’d give it a shot since I haven’t written since having sold, err, leased, my soul to my corporate overlords.

Here’s a little chestnut that was pretty popular in the fall/winter of 2004 about a jaunt down south. It was with an acclaimed artist that started as a soundguy and later found fame in front of the spotlight working on various “projects”. Really only one project, but it’s lasted several years. It’s a true to life tale, just as I remember it. Of course, the ultimate irony here is that currently, some 3 years later, “Mr. Friend” is now the production manager. Three years ago “Mr. Friend” couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a road map. Hope he found a map.

http://rex.roaddog.com/mt/blog/mexico_tour/

No fair peeking…..