Hmmmm... well, I woke up to a ticket on my car from street cleaning. Bastards.
The thing is the street doesn't seem any cleaner... but this basically set my
mood... ask Scott, who two or three blocks from my house said "Dude if you
don't stop bitching I... look, just give it a rest... I can't take this...".
I guess I WAS a little edgy... and the ride to DeKalb didn't help much either
as we were stuck in traffic and at a full stop for stretches of time due to
construction and people having accidents IN the construction area... HOW CAN
YOU BASH UP YOUR CAR DOING UNDER 5MPH, I WANNA KNOW!!!
We were heading back to Otto's alright... last time we were there one of the
speakers (the one facing the mix position) had a fried driver in it, and we
joked about if it had been fixed or not... I thought not and dang if I wasn't
RIGHT... Mr. Blotto had been in since we were there last and those guys carry
their own PA with them so they remove the boxes hanging in Otto's and when
they're done their crew puts them back up... so this time the blown driver was
on the far side, trouble is the one facing the mix position sounded blown
too...
The center speaker was ok, so in the middle of the room it sounded pretty good
but still, I had my work cut out for me with the sides just throwing high end
and no body or warmth... Dave and I basically rewired the PA with our own EQs,
etc. because the house stuff really is substandard and in the process gave
most of the mix position a much needed cleaning... we swept all the
(literally) piled up set lists, board tape, cigarette butts, empty cigarette
packs, beer bottles, magazines, bottle caps, cellophane wrappers, band-aids,
dust bunnies, every sock that had ever been lost in a dryer and just plain
DIRT off the floor, wiped down the racks (also COVERED in dust bunnies) and at
one point Dave even found Jimmy Hoffa... I mean there was more trash than an
entire season of "Melrose Place" underneath and behind that board...
Anyway, with our changes complete I fire up the CD player to get an idea on
the house EQ and while I'm routing the channel I notice (and I'll try not to
bore you all with too much techie jargon here) one of the sub groups on the
board is not seeing any signal, which is not a major setback but it sucks just
the same, especially in an already somewhat restricted situation as far as
gain structuring is concerned... in other words, I was swimming without one
arm, only three appendages to keep my head above water...
That's when the equivalent of having to tread water with Mama Cass Elliot
on your shoulders started... the board began to cut out for no apparent
reason... the CD volume would slowly drop and then go silent. "Not Good" I
thought...
Again, without going into a lot of technical terms for the methodology used to
right the situation, after a lengthy process of deductive reasoning the
problem was solved... some VERY high-tech stuff...
... I hit the board with my fist... *poink*...
Actually there was some sort of electrical short in the console and Dave and I
determined that if there was enough signal flowing through it the board would
not cut out... small favors...
Maraat hated his monitor sound for a change... (jus' kidding Mike) but the
sound check of "Liberty" didn't sound awful enough to warrant any further
tweaking before I had some bodies in the room so we left it at that and
several of us headed off to play some Golden Tee (see the Bogart's R.R.P.) and
others went in other directions... anywhere but the band room... ick.
"Shakedown" was the opener of a six song first set and it was long and jammin'
which gave me some time to tighten up the mix and walk the room... and the
other two songs that come to mind in the first set were "Ramble On Rose" and
the closer "Music"... both reached thunderous jams and left the pretty full
house clamoring for more...
Second set highlights for me were definitely the jams out of "Playin'" and
"Terrapin"... this was a '94 show so the jam after "Terrapin" was stretched
out and I used to love it when the Dead did that... "Drumz/Space" got scary
and then a telling "Last Time" materialized out of Space followed by "Stella
Blue"... I've said it before, I'll say it again... John Gives Good "Stella"...
and the ever-present-these-days "Sugar Magnolia" to end the set... "Liberty"
was the encore and DeKalb was once again deprived of an elective encore due to
time allowances... sorry DeKalb... you must be built on a Native American
burial ground with the luck we have out there...
We packed up our gear, Dave and I returned the PA to it's former technological
state (with a slightly more organized wiring job) and we headed back to
Chicago to sleep in our own beds before heading out for Champaign friday
afternoon...