I was watching a program about time travel on the ol' cathode ray televisor
the other day and one of the eggheads they were interviewing summed up time
perfectly I think... he said "Time is nature's way of making sure everything
doesn't happen all at once."
That's so brilliant, I would have thought a hippie had said it.
I'm reasonably sure I don't need to tell any of you this, but time is a
constant... thanks to Einstein and a few other guys who had nothing better to
do with their day it has been proven that time's not inflexible, but it IS
fairly out of reach for the common simian to effect in any corporeal sense...
H.G. Welles wrote a piece of fiction about an inventor who builds a device to
travel through time, and certainly we've all entertained fantasies of what we
would do if given such a machine...
... for me, the Watkins Glen sound check would be top of the list, followed
by going back far enough to be the first one to pull the 'Flaming Bag Of Dog
Poop' gag...
... but according to the Discovery Channel even though Stephen Hawking and
Carl Sagan have thought about it a whole bunch and furrowed the expansive
brows on their massive craniums many a late night over it, time travel as it
relates to the human experience still can't be accomplished.
Now I don't want to sound like a complete whacko (it's a little late to care
about that in some of your eyes, I realize), but I have to disagree with the
luminary minds of our time as their theories relate to the Dark Star
universe... and that's why I'm here talking to you again...
... because essentially, no one else will listen.
First off, before I get rollin' here... I'm not trying to say that the
experts are entirely wrong about time because the last thing I want to do is
enter a battle of wits with anyone (for much the same reason I don't go to
Vegas; I have very little left to wager), so please... if you're working at
NASA or MIT, don't write to me in order to take issue with the topics in my
column... and for that matter, I guess I'll tell you upfront I'm not going to
make any revelations about wrinkles in time and Wellesian Science Fiction
come-to-life here... but we've got lots of gizmos at our disposal in DSO
which allow us to CHEAT time, speeding us up by allowing us to skip steps in
our daily routines or as in the bus's case allowing us to sleep through it
altogether...
... although the bus covers time AND space, really, so it's more of a TARDIS
(a few of you, probably tapers, will get that reference - I'm not going to
explain it any further for fear of never getting another date as long as I
live)... and... well...
Um... OK... so maybe the whole 'travel' part of my time topic was just to
suck you into reading my boring technical BS about the production behind Dark
Star Orchestra... I'll cop to that... but this IS about time and technically
it does involve a whole lotta travelin'... so I'll make it fun, you'll see...
and along the way as always, I'll attempt to demystify this shadowy world of
show-biz in which we live...
We are constantly watching and trying to beat the clock: Breakfast time,
lunch time, set-up time, sound check time, waiting time, repair time, dinner
time, door time, show time, intermission time, curfew time, break-down time,
travel time, cell phone time, time zone changes which effect all of the above
and somewhere in there hygiene time...
... gotta have hygiene time...
... so basically we're often trying to fit thirty hours of life into your
garden variety twenty-four, or as one of my college professors used to call
it, we make a Blivit. I might have used this term in a past writing, but so
that you don't have to go back through (as one person I talked to recently
called it) "that huge pile of trash (I've) written already", here's another
entry in the new but extremely popular ever-expanding DSO DICTIONARY:
Blivit (blih-viht) - (noun) The product of stuffing ten pounds of sh*t into a two
pound bag. See "DSO 2002 Summer Tour".
And now for your further convenience and to save wear & tear on that mouse
button -
THE DSO 2002 SUMMER TOUR (An Excerpt, Anyway)
We bit off an adult sized portion last year with long tours running almost
one right after the next and very little downtime in between, and in the
midst of those tours we bookended the JamGrass Festival with an hour-long
acoustic opening set and hour and a half electric closing set each day we
were on the bill, which was something like eighteen shows I think, I can't
recall... it's all getting kind of blurry now...
... mind you, that just might be my eyes and lack of sleep, I've been staring
at this damned screen for what feels like days...
... but even after considering all the logistics and obstacles involved in
being a part of the Jamgrass tour, we thought we'd make a go of running with
the Big Dogs...
Wanna hear about the JamGrass thing? Suuuure, why not? You're at work right
now anyway, right? So why not spend a little of your day readin' about a
little o' mine... pad your time sheet - Lord knows you're entitled!!!
Hang on a minute, come to think of it you might want to get some more coffee
and if no one's eaten that rasberry-filled powdered sugar bizmark that's sort
of dried out in the box by the coffee machine you'd better grab that too...
... we're gonna be here awhile... you might miss lunch...
... and if you do, it just brings you closer to the experience that IS
working for Dark Star Orchestra.
Those JamGrass days generally started about 7:30am with Pete our road manager
walking through the bus rousting the technicians and crew... currently that'd
be myself on house mix, Chub Carrier on monitors, our lighting tech Bryan
Adcock, and our merch/roadie Scott "Bones" Jones, also known as The Canadian
Thunder...
Now folks, I'm going to be honest with you about a bit of my history because
as Arlo Guthrie used to say, I'm not proud... but years ago I got into this
business for the free booze, the hours, and to meet a few women... shortly
after getting stuck in the quicksand that IS showbiz production I found out
that the girls wanted the cutie with the guitar, not the guy in the rear with
the gear... but since it was too late to study and become a virtuoso on an
instrument, I sold my soul and became the acoustic alchemist you know
today... over a decade and a half later I quit drinking...
... so I didn't get the girls and now I don't want the booze anymore... but
at least I still had the hours, right?
Flash forward to JamGrass '02 - There Go The Hours. (Cue Porky Pig)
"Abeh-dee, Abeh-dee, Abeh-dee, Abeh- THAT'S AALLLLLL, FOLKS!"
*Groan*
Look...
It's not that I'm opposed to seeing 7:30am... I've stayed out until that hour
many, many, MANY times...
... I just hate to BEGIN my day at that time is all.
(My picture's gonna end up on a dart board in an office somewhere for that
joke, I just know it.)
So anyway, Pete would kick us off the bus and out into what was often
ninety-eight degree heat and two hundred percent humidity... already, at this
hour of the morning, it was often too hot to move or even BREATHE, for that
matter.
After a proper union-approved period of scowling at the sun, bitching about
the heat ("It ain't even 8am yet!") and stale cigarettes over coffee in the
hospitality area backstage, Pete would signal us when our gear began coming
off the truck... we had between 8am and 10am to accomplish what we usually
schedule six hours to do (say it again with me - "Blivit")... we set up the
same amount of gear you see on the stage at a Brent-style show, set up all
the microphones, ran the cables for the electric set (that's forty inputs for
you tech-ies out there)... PLUS we carried a monitor console, a house
console, a snake which connected the two desks (a big fat cable about 2" in
diameter and about 250 feet in length for running from the stage out to the
mix position), and all my racks of electronic gizmos which had to be uncased,
set up, and plugged in... because of the amount of musical equipment we play
through and because we were on stage twice per day, we had to carry the
consoles in order to fit the schedule and get jobs done in a fraction of the
time previously possible, which I'll explain more completely in a minute...
After Bryan helped with the unloading of the truck he would start getting our
tapestries and the JamGrass banner put up, and then he would get a ballpark
focus on the lighting which if you think about it even for a second is
damn-near impossible given the time of day... poor Blinky... but the man's an
artist, I'll give him that...
... if we were lucky, we would just be finishing the cables and lighting
focus when it came time for us to push all of our stuff back, often not
having heard a single note from the band through the PA (the drums and guitar
amps were set up on rolling risers to facilitate this movement, to make room
for the other acts)... I mostly checked my lines with a set of headphones,
having only the noise of stage techs using the "F" word (ESPECIALLY when we
played New Jersey) to determine if my stuff was wired properly and I was
getting signal to my console at the mix position from each line on the
stage...
Then we'd be "on break" for about an hour or so while various others (John
Cowan, Sam Bush, Peter Rowan, Yonder Mountain) would set up some gear and
maybe adjust the monitor rig (again which was a whole separate set-up from
ours)... during these hour-long respites, I don't remember sitting still too
often... it always seemed like I was running back and forth from the mix to
the stage dealing with some minor to major technical difficulty (and we're
talking about venues like Riverbend or Alpine Valley, where it's like running
a football field - UPHILL)...
...(IN THE HEAT)...
... but enough of this parenthetic interjection.
(Wow... real FIVE-DOLLAR term there, Sport! IS THAT EVEN A WORD?!?!)
(Ed. note: amazingly, it is!)
Shut Up.
What was I saying?
Right... so about a half-hour before doors opened, we got the stage back and
hurriedly set up our acoustic set (an additional eight or nine channels for
those geekoids keeping track) and maybe we got a fast line check if we were
lucky... fifteen to twenty minutes later we were on for the first set of the
day.
As I've described before (or maybe I haven't - it's been awhile), each
instrument or voice you hear on that stage has a corresponding channel on
each of the consoles... there is a splitter (like a junction box) which sends
the signal to Chub's monitor console and to my house console at the same time
giving us independent control in order to do our respective jobs... because
we usually had to use a different system every night, each time we go into a
new hall we would have to find that sound again from scratch and get it to
sound right (whatever "right" may work out to be for an intended time period,
etc.), then when we get all the individual sounds to our satisfaction we put
them into a context you're used to hearing (which is of course called a mix).
This takes time... sometimes a lot, and sometimes too much... which is why we
build out our schedule to allow for such variables. The usual load-in, set
up, and sound checking time as I mentioned already is about six hours, but on
the JamGrass tour we were expected to get it all done in two hours and some
change...
How did we set all this stuff up, wire it, AND get all the sounds? And in
less time than it usually takes us on a "solo" gig? The answer is fairly
simple but as always with one of my explanations, there are mind-numbing
technical overtones that'll cure insomnia... and I've mentioned it already,
so I'll attempt to keep it short:
As I said above, we leased and carried consoles.
There, that was easy... wasn't it? OK... so there's a BIT more to it.
By carrying the consoles we could keep our settings at both house and monitor
positions, the consoles going right back into their cases without being
cleared at the end of the show, so that for all intents and purposes our
sound checks were already done once the console was wired in and it was
determined that all lines were passing signal.
"What's the big deal?" I hear you ask, "Aren't all of those boards alike?
They certainly all look the same to me: CONFUSING."
Glad you asked...
Each brand of console sounds different and even different models of console
by the same manufacturer can sound radically different from one another (and
for some odd reason it often equates to how much the stupid things cost, go
figger...); You can't just take a mic and put it through five different makes
of consoles with the knobs all adjusted the same and get the same sound out
of each one (Side Note: This is also true with speakers) because consoles are
like cars or computers or, well, anything you would buy that happens to cost
a pant-load of money... and as with all manufacturers, each company thinks
THEY know how to best put one together and at times they even try to
innovate...
... if I had the time and you had the patience, I could list a half-dozen
"innovations" over the last decade that have made me want to set fire to
certain consoles followed by harassing the CEO of the company at his home
with a bullhorn...
But so... um... the actual tones and shapes of sound you hear at a Dark Star
Orchestra show come from the musician's adjustment of their instrument
onstage and then my interpretation of that sound based on a "catalog" of
tones I have in my head (kind of like sonic paint samples) relating to
different time periods of the Dead as well as basic taste, for lack of a
better term... this catalog comes from decades of listening to records,
radio, and other live mixes and using my mental sampler to store sounds away
for comparison to what I'm hearing at a later date...
... by the way, this professionally incurred habit combined with being taught
selective listening in order to pick apart a mix for said cataloging/live
mixing has effectively ruined my ability to appreciate music on a fan level,
so if you really love music choose another field of work...
By carrying the console and not having to get those sounds every night, I
saved well over an hour of work every day (Side Note: Chub got to keep his
monitor console but due to cargo space issues we were forced to give up my
house console so I'm back to building from scratch on a different console
every night, which is a bummer for me as I am a lazy, LAZY man)... all I had
to do was get the mix (which I had been refining every show and I knew
sounded good to me) adjusted to the speakers-du-jur, which was often a simple
matter of EQ or crossover adjustment...
"Oh sure," you say "EQ or crossover - That's what I would have said too."
Was I calling the guys on the Discovery Channel 'egghead'?
As I said previously, all consoles sound different and all speakers sound
different, so in order to make our saved mixes on the monitor console more
uniform from night to night we got another little time cheater... the band
has gone to using what are called In-Ear Monitors, which are custom-molded
earplugs each musician wears that are wired into a belt pack radio receiver
instead of using speakers on the stage infront of them... these headphone
mixes are stereo for each performer and can be changed to suit each
individual taste... we still have a few wedges on the stage because John
never cottoned to having plugs in his ears, and we still use a monitor or two
back by the drummers to give them some low-end thump to the kick drums so
they can feel it like they're used to doing, but for the most part we've done
away with wedges...
Good stage wedges, like most things on this planet, cost about equal to their
quality... and they're heavy and someone's gotta carry them, so as a result
we never owned our own monitor rig, per-sé...
Too big an investment, too big a pain in the ass... but the In-Ears are a
completely different story.
Each musician's receiver pack is fed from a transmitter on the side of the
stage which is in turn wired into the monitor console... each night the
console is put away in it's case without being reset and the next night with
minimal tweaking, each musician's mix comes up the same as it was the night
before, even though we're in a completely different venue and things may be
placed somewhat differently on the stage... because it's a headphone-like
mix, distance and obstruction between the players no longer plays as integral
a roll in how each musician will hear the others around the stage... it has
really helped Lisa to concentrate on her harmonies without the bass rig
thundering in her head, three feet away... and with less sound sources
throwing random noise around the stage all the volumes on the stage have come
way down because the performers no longer need to blare over other sounds to
hear themselves play or sing... this move has also cleaned my job up
significantly as a result, not having so much bleed to deal with on the
stage...
... guess I should explain 'bleed'... bleed is when you get a secondary sound
source leaking into a mic intended for another sound; So for example, the
cymbals often bleed through the vocal mics because the sound carries that far
and the vocal mics are that sensitive...
(Side Note: If you already know some of this stuff I'll be getting into
advanced acoustics in future papers, check back later.)
Now, BECAUSE there is less in the way of bleed (which is, incidentally, a
natural occurrence as far as your ear is concerned, even for me and my
selective hearing problem) and because the performers are more isolated due
to the plugs in their ears, we have some mics out on the corners of the stage
to pick up the ambiance of the room so that the band can have one of the most
important ingredients necessary for the music of the Grateful Dead: The
energy from the audience.
One more important note: This set of mics is blended in to each performer's
mix to their own desired level so that they can hear things more naturally,
but this doesn't mean it's a pipeline to the band's ear so please don't yell
at them because it's often blended pretty low and you'll only succeed in
irritating the people around you... we have E-mail... if you want to talk to
us try that instead, it works infinitely better.
Back to the JamGrass thing (remember that?)... after we were done with our
acoustic set, we were in a holding pattern for about seven hours while the
other acts performed... when we signed on for this tour we knew the schedule
was going to be hard and that we weren't going to get very much in the way of
sleep from night to night while we were a part of it, but one of the things
we sort of figured on was being able to take a nap during the day...
... uuuhhhh...
All I can say is, try tearing yourself away from listening to Yonder Mountain
or Peter Rowan to go take a nap... just try it, and then we'll talk.
Essentially, it can't be done.
I tried... I even TRIED to try... but seriously, it was so much fun listening
to every act and it was such an honor to be in the company of all of these
great musicians that we as a band have been fans of for such a long time,
that sleep became a laughable concept...
... and after prolonged sleep deprivation, EVERYTHING becomes laughable... I
was usually so punchy by the day's last set that I'm afraid most of the other
engineers on the tour thought I was patently out of my mind, twiddling my
knobs and faders while giggling to myself or the occasional unwarranted
outburst of profanity...
After the band performed the closing set for the night our crew would fall to
breaking the equipment down and the DSO caravan was usually ready to roll by
around 1am, on to the next venue to get up and do it all again the next day...
... the next long, looooong day.
Thirteen or fourteen hours, give or take... do you spend that much time at
YOUR office? Think about it next time you want a spot in the show-biz
world...
Speaking of long hours, have I made you miss lunch yet?
So let's see here... I've told you about a few of the gadgets we use to cheat
time and I've probably effectively bored some of you to tears (making time
stand still in a sense), so I think that about covers it for right now...
I've proven my point, or whatever it is I was doing... I think...
... I can never tell, but as long as you got something out of it I'm happy.
(If this were a TV show or something I could do a fade or that wiggly video
thing to convey the passing of time... but essentially this writing sits, we
play a few more shows, and Eddie calls wondering where the new copy is that I
promised him last week... I'm so lame... by the way, that book on the history
of procrastination I've been working on is coming along juuuuust fine...)
I was trying to figure out how to wrap this all up, and I had one more idea I
wanted to leave you with in order to bring us back to my initial point and
maybe, just MAYBE lending some support to my opening topic:
By taking us all (the crew included) on a musical journey every night with
their talents and our collective Dead show memories, through the power of
coming together and shaking each other's hand, dancing with a stranger for a
song with the music we hold most dear thundering around us, each of us is
taken where we want to go and even a few places we've never been before that
seem familiar...
... now, I don't know about Einstein or MIT... but to me, that's time travel.
I'm sitting in my hotel room in Columbia, SC. right now and it's 5:30am... as
I re-read this for the thousandth time making minor changes and then changing
things back I noticed that in that long list of different types of time I had
forgotten to list one...
"Sleep Time".
That is indeed what I must do now, kids... I'm going to send this to Eddie
via the phone lines whether it's finished or not and get some rest as we have
a show to do today...
Damn I wish I could turn back that clock NOW.
See you around the playground!
~Cameron Blietz~
DSO Sound Engineer