The Grizzled Old Soundman & the Wide-eyed Boy

It is often the case that we start down a career path full of excitement and enthusiasm, and the price we pay after a decade or two of experience is the loss of some of that enthusiasm; the wide-eyed wonder and excitement that propelled us down our chosen path in the first place.

We can forget our sense of gratitude for the opportunity to do something that we love and that we are good at. We become jaded.

My last cue for a typical performance of Beach Blanket Babylon (out of about 300 “computer cues” and countless mix cues) is a simple one: start the CD player for the exit music on the band’s final downbeat. And that’s right on the downbeat, thank you. NO DEAD AIR!! (It’s the little things that seperate the men from the boys.)

Anyway, working Sundays is not something I usually do at BBB, other than to talk my understudy, friend, and colleague Mr. David Bucky Cat Allen through his shift of two performance over the phone. Usually one or two calls does it. Rarely is the Sunday that some issue or technical aspect doesn’t arise that requires at least a preliminary chat around noon before all the fun at Club Fugazi begins.

But with David on vacation I had the distinct honor of running the two matinee performances of BBB. (“yeah right” I thought as I walked to work)

Matinee performances are not everyone’s cup of tea. Most probably not my cup of tea. Nonetheless, I managed the 12–hour turn-around from Saturday night’s performances and was committed to making it through the day and going home as soon as possible.

The unique aspect of the matinee at BBB is the allowance of young tykes to the performance (no alcohol served, the dick joke thinly veiled by adding the word “Tracy”, and the Witch Doctor’s lack of an erect banana).

So thus it was that I sat listening to the band playoff at the end of the second show yesterday, dreaming of dinner and a smile from my sweetie waiting at home, with my finger on the GO button of the CD remote, cued and ready to start with It’s My Party on the moment of the band’s final downbeat.

Out of the corner of my eye I spied a young man of nine or ten just outside my booth peering in at the flashing lights, pulsating meters, and glowing touchscreen indicating the status of the sound coming into 32 mono channels, 4 stereo channels, 8 DCA  busses (ahem – digitally controlled amplifiers), 16 mix busses, and 8 matrix channels (I could certainly go on with the specs, but, to the reader’s relief, I shan’t).

I wanted to let the boy know it was okay to look, but I was coming up on the last cue of the day and well, you know… NO DEAD AIR and all, so my focus remained primarily on the band’s playoff.

Right before I was to take the cue the boy blurted out "That’s so cool!" as he stared into my den of technology.

I took my cue, the CD started, I looked at the boy, smiled, and said, "Yes, it is cool!!".

He was a shy lad, I think, so he didn’t quite know what to say beyond his exclamation of coolness. I was about to show him how I could move the faders without touching them, or how I could call up EQ and dynamics curves for each channel (well, two processors each for each channel, but I promised you, dear reader, that I wouldn’t…) but the boy moved off with his family toward the door.

So there I sat, tired and hungry, my hearing in threshold shift at the end of a long day, capping a long week, one more of thousands and thousands (and thousands) of performances gone into the ether. What was different now was that some of that boy’s excitement lingered and I remembered how it felt the first time I saw a mixing console. The excitement of mixing my first gig. The feeling of “making the magic happen”.

I looked at my rig, one that I have fought and worked hard for years to acquire, and realized what a lucky SOB I really am.

That little boy’s wide-eyed wonder was the perfect end to the week. I was able to walk home with my sense of gratitude firmly in place.