I hate New Years Eve. With a passion. And that’s just for a “typical” New Years.
New Years Eve, 2008:
7PM show
Instead of the usual canned opening announcement, John goes live in order to give the crowd the kind of New Years Eve greeting for which they’ve paid. “Peter Gunn” is cued up tight. Not a millisecond of dead air between his last “…Babylon!!” and the downbeat of “Gunn” from the iMac. We’re rockin’ now baby.
The show goes well, the crowd is enthusiastic but not too juiced, despite the cheap champaign. Nary a “toot” is heard from the noise makers, a party favor provided to the New Years revelers that has always been a bane of my existence.
After a relatively short run-through that afternoon of the special New Years Eve tag (after several days previous of programming and rehearsal), it seems as if this might be not too bad a night – as New Years Eves go.
It didn’t feel right.
Still, a nice standing “O” for 7PM and a crowd that generally appears ready to go get stupid drunk somewhere else.
What could possibly go wrong?
10:15 PM Show
Boom!
Nobody’s going to accuse a guy for running too loud on New Years Eve. The crowd for this show comes ready to party. This is where they’ve come, those so inclined, to get stupid drunk – part of the hundred-and-something ticket includes a bottomless glass of sweet champaign. In oneness with the boisterous crowd (that includes former Secretary of State George Schultz), I feel myself leaning into the gas peddle of the sound system – let’s open ‘er up and see what she can do!
This isn’t a blue-haired matinee crowd, these people are loud. I’m louder.
On New Years Eve, this is my job.
At the end of the second show comes the pinnacle of the evening, the cous de gras, the much-anticipated New Years Eve Tag.
This year the tag was “all live” instead of one short live song followed by playback of the current popular and very annoying song edited to go on for eternity (at least 7 minutes) as backdrop for people parading around onstage dressed in the current events of the waning year. Sound for this tag is no backdrop. Hello Mr. Soundman.
Not only is it live, the bit ends with all hands on deck, all mics on stage. By the end of the number, if a mic isn’t turned up to eleven, it means that its turned up to twelve (see “Spinal Tap”).
Pay no attention to the man in the little booth, because he’s got both hands on every mic input and sub-mix possible, at any moment the whole damn thing could go wildly out of control. It just me n’ my baby now.
We’re livin’ on the edge.
The sound of the talented cast and band fill every space and waft toward the heavens with Beach Blanket Babylon’s own special New Years Eve version of Le Miserable’s closing of Act 1. Shivers run up my own spine, dad gummit.
The piece is intended, in its own way, to evoke the spirit of the election of Barack Obama – that being the spirit of hope, of a better day tomorrow – and, perhaps accidently, strives toward true inspiration. It’s a moment in any case. One where everyone is at their best, pushing it just enough to make it something that’s never been seen before on that stage, or anywhere else.
There is a gasp from the crowd, a momentary silence, followed by an uproarious ovation, sending forth an adrenalin rush that courses through my veins in spite of my loathsome disdain for the holiday. The moment allows me full access to my emotional attachment to the sound, the music, the collaboration, and the response. This is why I do this stuff anyway, right?
Gosh, this New Years Eve might be one of the best ever!
After Party (thump-thump)
It’s all downhill from here (foreshadow). The hard part is done.
Happy New Year, I’ve made it! All I need to do now is sit around watching people stumble around while a couple CD’s worth of thump-thump music plays for the amateurs “dancing the night away”.
What could possibly go wrong?
Present for the second show, tag, and after party is my colleague and friend, David Allen. Called to work for no particular reason and for any reason, he is the second for the evening, ready to move at a moment’s notice as the situation may require.
Ten minutes in…
I look at the board clock, 12:15, still a-ways to go, but it’s just a babysitting job from here on in. I’m kicked back in my chair in the booth, anticipating the trip backstage with the mic case, through the blatantly drinking crowd, to collect and store the wireless mics.
I can wait a minute or two longer, the mics aren’t going anywhere, nor are the people.
Seconds later a huge raptor shits on my head. At least that’s what it felt like. With that feeling came a loud SPLOP! directly in front of me.
Things start moving in slow motion. For what seems like several seconds (a few milliseconds?) I sit, stunned. What the….??
I look up, no huge raptor. Nobody. Nothing.
I look down. The entire right side of my Yamaha M7CL-32 digital mixing console – my baby – is covered in liquid.
I feebly lurch for some paper towels and cocktail napkins, the panic brings me clumsily to my feet.
I look over to David, screeching “G.., Get a towel!!!”
David overcomes his own momentary disbelief at the cruel fate life can hand down from on high, with not even a whisper of a moment’s notice, nor any clue of the cause. Just because. As he finishes processing this, he looks up at me and asks, “A, A towel”?
Darkness and panic close in. “I need a towel!”
David is gone in a flash to retrieve a towel, I do what I can with the paper towels, cocktail napkins, and now an old rag.
“I’ve got to shut down. This is bad. Nobody gets to dance now.” I turn down the music. It doesn’t really matter if I turn it down. With a digital board, if it still passes audio, turning it down isn’t going to save it, turning it up isn’t going to hurt it any more. Still - “Nobody gets to dance and I’ve got to shut down NOW!!!”
But it isn’t my decision to make. There are orders of authority, people in charge. I’m not in charge.
David comes back with two bar towels and I tell him to get John. “Let him know I have a… problem”.
John and Linc, the general manager arrive at the sound booth. John is ready to allow me to shut down, but this night it is Linc who makes the call to remain up.
Linc, of course, has a different picture of the situation than I do. The M7 is a tool and an asset. Something insurable and replaceable.
But it is my baby. Blood, sweat and tears – all three have been shed for this board to be here.
During the commotion, attracted by the lowered music, a drunken stranger with a foolish grin on his face takes his place at the row of people now gathered around me, not two feet away, while I stand hopeless and trapped in my little sound booth, watching my baby lay wounded and hurting. “Saaayyy!!!,says the drunken stranger,”Not bhad, but howsa ‘bouught twiice ahs muuch? You gahdda tuurbo button (hic)?”
The man is well beyond getting a hint or a clue, and everybody else is tolerating him. In frustration I bark “Get this guy away from me!”
I’ve been in this 4X6 sound booth at least six hours now. I’m wondering where the firggin’ Red Cross is for guys like me that have to endure this kind of torture. People are crowded around. They are sucking my oxygen. I can’t breath. Some wander over and ask for the music to go louder. I’m trapped.
I’m oughta here, this is bullshit, I think. “I’ve got to get out of here”
“Yes, Tom, I think that’s a good idea.”
Leaving, I add to the holiday spirit, saying, “I am completely disgusted”.
For I was.
I made my way through the party-goers to the green room. Scared away the three people already there, and sat alone in the green room.
I think to myself, “Did I just put in all this effort, do the best I could, give one more year of my life to the sound system for this funky little show… for this? To have my primary tool, my ax – my baby – completely abused by some nameless, faceless, and graceless drunk? HUH?
Yes. The answer is yes.
So I sit alone while the party bumps along downstairs, trying to decompress and get over myself. A daunting task.
After about 40 minutes Jayne comes up and gives me a hug. Instead of being mad because nobody knew where I had gone, she is just glad that I am safe and with her.
And she got it about baby.
I, of course, realize what a great New Years Eve it really is just for that…
What, are you crazy?
This New Years Eve sucked. Big time.
But I am still a very lucky guy.
Not so much for a certain sound board.
To the man or woman that deluged myself and every piece of equipment in my sound booth with your foul liquid; that made ground zero my baby; who must have known what they had done and chose to be a coward about, I say: A pox on all your electronics. May you wither in tech support hell.
Good day, and Happy New Year.
Until next New Years Eve…
Filed under Fun Stuff, The Soundman Chronicles by 
Understanding that the intricacies of modern sound systems and complex audio signal flow are truly known to only a “select few” (the few, the proud…), I offer the following advice:
Before one cuts one’s own off by expressing, on-camera and on-mic, the wish to do the same to another, please consider this -
When you have a microphone strapped to your chest, there can be no expectation of privacy!!!
A microphone is NEVER really “off” (well, there are some exceptions, if it’s a condenser mic it does require 48V of phantom power, but lest I geek out while making my point, I shan’t digress further).
Whispering doesn’t help. THERE’S A MIC STRAPPED TO YOUR CHEST!!!
Claiming your crude comments were “highly private” is ludicrous. THERE’S A MIC STRAPPED TO YOUR CHEST!!!
Like, Duh.
Sheesh.
Thank you, and as always –
Have a Nice Day
Filed under Chastise Man, Comic Relief, Humorous, News, People, The Soundman Chronicles by
There are so many reasons to hate New Years Eve. Even before I had to work them, I never really liked it. It either meant that I would soon be returning to school after the Christmas holiday, or attending some party that would most likely not come to any sort of satisfying end or rewarding experience. There’s something decidedly melancholy about New Years Eve.
Unless you’re drunk, then it’s really just pathetic.
But I digress.
As it turns out, for about half of my adult life, I’ve found myself sitting behind a sound console in the first hours of a new year, babysitting a CD (and even a tape back in the day) of dance music. (Talk about melancholy!)
The kind of dance music that makes me want to commit some form of violence, as I feel the music itself does to the inside of my head:
BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM
It makes me want to BA-BOOM on something. I hate it.
But it is my job, and I grudgingly appreciate that it means something to others – indeed some can even discern the subtle differences in the BA-BOOM – so I insure that the kick, snare, and hi-hat are easily heard, sit back, and put in my ear plugs.
In any case, by this time in the evening, I have spent the past 12 hours rehearsing, tweaking cues, and running shows, culminating with the final New Years Eve “tag” to the world’s longest running musical revue called Beach Blanket Babylon. In a heavily programmed, repetitive gig like anything associated with the term longest running, it’s the kind of seat-of-your pants extravaganza that only an experienced sound mixer like myself can pull off year after year.
That’s right – my ego gets a little BA-BOOM!
That is until the short, blond twenty-something woman in her high-heels and little red party dress staggers over to the me as I sit behind my $20,000 digital live sound mixing console and interrupts a conversation with my sweetheart to ask, in a slightly condescending tone – as if to make clear her dissatisfaction with what she perceives as my particular choice of BA-BOOM – “Are you the DJ?”
No, I’m not the DJ.
And Happy New Year to you too.
BA-BOOM.
Filed under Chastise Man, The Soundman Chronicles, Things That Make Me Cranky by
So, you wanna be in show business…
5:10:30:00 – Stage Manger calls and tells me the “orange” mic hasn’t been handed backstage prior to its hand-off to Albert for the Barak Obama bit in the political number. We’ll have to use the backup mic.
5:10:32:12 – I acknowledge and patch in the backup into HHO’s channel 11. WHOO-A!! Am I on top of this or what?
5:10:33:00 – During the start of the Paris Hilton bit I see Val (onstage) finally realize she needs to hand back the orange mic.
5:10:33:45 – Being the “brilliant idiot” I am I think I will circumvent disaster, since HHO is now backstage, by going back into the patch menu on the board and patching the orange mic back into its regular channel.
Stay with me here – as we watch disaster unfold in mere milliseconds
5:10:40:00 – Moments before Albert’s cue the call light on clear-com comes on. I assume (ass-u-me) that John is just trying to tell me that the orange mic has made it backstage and to Albert as well. “HA!” I think, “I’m on this puppy!” I ignore the call. (There was no time to answer it anyway before…)
5:10:40:30 – Albert’s entrance. No sound from the orange! What could be wrong? I KNOW HE HAS THE ORANGE MIC!! I go to the patch screen and once again re-patch HO into Ch. 11. The problem must be with the board because I KNOW THAT ALBERT HAS THE ORANGE MIC!!
5:10:40:40 – Continuing to assume (ass-u-me) that a) ALBERT HAS THE GODAM ORANGE *%@#&!! MIC and b) the board is being awfully slow re-patching (remember, it’s a computer too, and can be slow at times… right?) I decide to reset all patches to finally get the orange mic patched.
5:11:01:00 – I do what any freaked-out, muddle-headed soundman would do. I hit “scene one” recall on the board to reset all board functions into a “preset” state. Which it does.
5:11:01:02 – No sound. At least no amplified sound. I seem to remember the tinkling of the piano in the background. Someone in the audience gives off a plaintive “hey!” sounding a bit hurt, as if the soundman has just left and gone home. In fact, there is evidence that the soundman never showed up.
5:11:01:30 – With the blinding speed of a 1980’s vintage Atari computer, my mind realizes the havoc I have just unleashed and I get the band and mic faders back up in what seems like slow motion. This is becoming a roller-coaster ride and I feel like I’m going to throw up.
5:11:02:00 – Tim comes out as John Edwards on cue, his mic works, the band works, sound is back (sans efx – I get the efx returns patched back in after I reset my brain and make sure I am still a part of the show – whole minutes later)
5:12:03:00 – The dialog with Val after the political number is off-mic because at this point only God knows which mic she is holding (and he’s not telling ‘cause he’s rolling on the floor laughing). Actually it was the backup mic she had which, as we know by now, wasn’t patched in because I KNEW THAT ALBERT HAD THE ORANGE MIC!!
So, it’s like this: Val started the snowball by not handing back the orange mic in a timely manner. I took the snowball and made a snowman. A nice, big, ugly snowman.
If I had just stayed with John the Stage Manager’s initial advisement that Albert would be on the backup, we may have made it through with only a bump instead of a train wreck.
For that I take full responsibility. Take a look at that picture up there. Train wrecks hurt.
Now, I’m sure there’s a lesson in here somewhere….
Hmmm…
Filed under Chastise Man, Mumbling to Myself, The Soundman Chronicles by
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.
Filed under Chastise Man, Something Nice to Say, The Soundman Chronicles by
