Does anyone else find the use of mannequins in museums and other historic locales to be a bit unnerving? We took a stroll through the grounds of Edinburgh Castle today, and although these were not particularly creepy mannequins (see the ones in the Inquisition Court in Lima, Peru for a better example of yikes) I'm still slightly unsettled by the blank stares of life-size paper mache people. Do we really need to recreate the scene of Robert the Bruce's coronation as King of Scotland with these things?
I'm starting to think that British eating habits are even worse than Americans. So much of their food is smothered in some kind of thick sauce or cheese, everything comes with fries or chips...Styrofoam take away containers brimming with a greasy pile of something. And to top it off, most of it tastes like crap and no one understand the meaning of spicy. Well, except the Indian places--those are alright. Oh well, maybe it's no worse than the states, but it certainly doesn't seem any better.
Big-time arena tour rolls on, with not much of note to mention. The big machine cranks its gears smoothly and the train motors down the track and all other appropriate imagery and metaphoric hyperbole. I am learning new things every day though, which is cool. Tuning drums, taking apart amps, rewiring guitars...and just generally learning how things work at this level and doing my job better because of it. Oh, and a drill was probably the wisest tour investment I've made so far. A little manual turning won't kill anybody, but in a time-sensitive environment a little power drill action is essential.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
"The hospitality in this country is as warm as the weather. "
Back on the road, back in the game, back to the grind. We're a few days into a full UK tour supporting the Kaiser Chiefs. They're probably one of the biggest bands in the UK right now and it's a full production tour which means they travel with their own lights, sound equipment, stage and catering. Not counting our bus they have one band bus, three crew buses, and six trucks transporting everything and everybody. The load-in and start building the stage at 6am most days and usually don't finish breaking everything down until 2-3AM. I can't even imagine how many hours some of the production guys are working. The arenas we're playing are anywhere from 5-12,000 people which makes it the biggest shows I've ever done, aside from some of the festivals we've played. We're a bit like 2nd class citizens here, which is understandable but takes some getting used to--it's their show and we're just here to play and stay out of the way. It's super professional though and everybody has been really cool and helpful. In a way it's kind of boring though, but not in a bad way, per se. It's just not the same unpredictable excitement and craziness you'll have on your average US club tour, which is great purely from a work perspective. Everything flows and the show goes well and you're in and you're out and you're done. It becomes more like work: you go into a building for eight hours, you do your job well, you kill some time bullshitting with your co-workers, you eat lunch (or dinner, as the case may be) and you go the fuck home...to your bus. It's not a shit job, but it's still a job.
In the UK a bachelor party is called a Stag Party. It's basically the same thing we do in the states--sometimes it's just one night, sometimes a full weekend of drunken, rowdy events etc. But over here there just seem to be so many of them going on every weekend. Hordes of ladies trudging luggage into our hotel this afternoon; gangs of drunken, horny dudes chugging beers in matching t-shirts egging each other on. We had a couple beers at Hooters earlier and they were everywhere. There was even one table of ten or so dudes in matching bathrobes. It's quite the ritual.
Which way do you look when you cross the street? It's just something you never even think about until you end up in a country where people drive on the left (UK, Japan, Australia, etc.) Thankfully they write it on the street at the edge of the crosswalk sometimes ("LOOK RIGHT"), but I'm still surprised I haven't been nailed yet. I've also noticed that in these countries people are more likely to walk to the left when they're coming toward you on the street, on the stairs--pretty much any time. Once I get home, I have to remind myself to stay to the right in similar situations.
Oh, did I ever mention how the El Camino is still big in Australia? It's not called an El Camino...but it's a god-damned El Camino, and people pimp them out n' shit. It's ridiculous. Also, thank god we left before all those crazy forest fires.
British girls wear too much make-up.
We're in Nottingham today with a day off. Show tomorrow at the arena down the street, then onto somewhere else equally gray and Britishy.
In the UK a bachelor party is called a Stag Party. It's basically the same thing we do in the states--sometimes it's just one night, sometimes a full weekend of drunken, rowdy events etc. But over here there just seem to be so many of them going on every weekend. Hordes of ladies trudging luggage into our hotel this afternoon; gangs of drunken, horny dudes chugging beers in matching t-shirts egging each other on. We had a couple beers at Hooters earlier and they were everywhere. There was even one table of ten or so dudes in matching bathrobes. It's quite the ritual.
Which way do you look when you cross the street? It's just something you never even think about until you end up in a country where people drive on the left (UK, Japan, Australia, etc.) Thankfully they write it on the street at the edge of the crosswalk sometimes ("LOOK RIGHT"), but I'm still surprised I haven't been nailed yet. I've also noticed that in these countries people are more likely to walk to the left when they're coming toward you on the street, on the stairs--pretty much any time. Once I get home, I have to remind myself to stay to the right in similar situations.
Oh, did I ever mention how the El Camino is still big in Australia? It's not called an El Camino...but it's a god-damned El Camino, and people pimp them out n' shit. It's ridiculous. Also, thank god we left before all those crazy forest fires.
British girls wear too much make-up.
We're in Nottingham today with a day off. Show tomorrow at the arena down the street, then onto somewhere else equally gray and Britishy.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Last Dance Down Under
Our set gets bumped back an hour and a half in the schedule to 4:30PM, so we don’t actually head out to the festival site until about 12:30PM. Fine with me—a little more like an actual tour schedule. I had completely intended to get up early and work out, but it didn’t happen. We get to the site and it’s another horse track, or something like that. It’s the smallest site they squeeze the festival into on the tour, which makes things look a little crowded—but at least it’s easy enough to make the short walk from the stage to the backstage area, even if it’s still a blazing 100+ degrees out. Like the Adelaide show we’re sort of inside and enclosure of sorts, only it’s not really any cooler this time. Ryan, Jon and I get everything set up on the floor behind the stage, but we still have an hour before we can get to one of the drum risers and get things prepped in the ‘on-deck circle’ back stage, so we head back to the air conditioned, portable dressing room. It’s just like the airport—you need to get there early enough in case anything goes wrong, but usually you just end up sitting around waiting. And even then, something will go wrong in the last second that you couldn’t possibly have planned for…which you’ll hear about in just a second.
For big festivals like this there’s usually a little village of mobile dressing room boxes. They kind of resemble the little foreman offices you’ll see on construction sites. Thankfully today the air conditioning is kicking nicely. Ryan and I use some leftover lunch tickets from a previous day to grab some food. Might as well take advantage of the free meals while we have them, right? Catering kind of sucks, but we eat. It was particularly fun trying to explain to the server why I didn’t want her to pick up my bread roll with the same tongs that were just sitting in the gravy-covered beef slices.
Everything goes smoothly until changeover, and then quickly things take a turn for the ridiculous. Reggie’s amp won’t make a sound, but it turns out to be something loose in the amp’s input jack, and thankfully this amp has parallel inputs so I can just jump the cable to the other side. Easy. Now Jon has problems getting signal from one of the keyboards, so that eats up some time. Finally we get everything more or less set with monitor levels and we’re ready to go just in time. Once on stage everything seems to be going alright. I didn’t get my guitar world wheeled right into place where I wanted it, so that’s a bit of a hassle but dealable. All sounds good, only a few monitor adjustments. During the 4th or 5th song we here Owen’s bass cut out for second, but it comes right back so we let it go. Then, near the end of ‘Hurricane Jane’ it just drops out completely. And I’m in action, scrambling to figure it out—unplug his pedals, check for loose input jacks by shaking connections, try plugging directly into the amp, try a new instrument cable—but nothing seems to work. I’m thinking maybe it’s the head so we quickly borrow a bass head from the next band but that still doesn’t work. All of a sudden we hear sound coming from somewhere…it’s the DI signal coming through the monitors! Then we take the DI out of the loop and we can get signal from the bass cab, but not both at the same time. So, it’s either the link cable of the jack on the DI box. We settle for all DI signal and crank the volume up in the monitors for Owen and get back to the show.
All in all the band only had to cut one song from the set, but it still felt like forever. Situations like this make me feel like an idiot—even if the problem is unforeseeable and totally not my fault, I feel responsible somehow. It’s like any small lack of skills or knowledge I might have is quickly and obviously revealed for all to see, and when 30 seconds feels like 10 minutes you can sense everyone’s eyes trained on you, watching and waiting as you totally screw everything up.
I thought about sticking around to catch a few more bands that night, but inspiration was waning. There really weren’t that many bands on this tour that I actually wanted to see. I caught Neil Young once, which was great, a few songs from Fantomas, and a set from Cut Copy. Aside from that I wasn’t really hurtin’ to see Dropkick (although I heard they are a really good live band) or really anyone else. Unfortunate or sad or jaded as it might seem, I just don’t get that psyched up to watch bands anymore—especially when it’s really hot and I’ve already worked a show that day. Maybe if it was someone I really wanted to see.... In the end Ryan and I had a few drinks, caught dinner and caught a shuttle back to the hotel which was actually fine with me because I got to watch most of the Australian Open men’s final on TV. The Open is held in Melbourne, so it’s been big news all week. Plus the semi’s the other night had been particularly good—it reminded me how much I used to enjoy watching tennis. Nadal and Federer duked it out and then we headed downstairs to the after party.
We were staring down a 4AM lobby call for the airport and 30+ hrs. of travel home, so there was nothing left to do but stay at the after party until 3:30, run upstairs for drunk shower time and pack and get the hell out of there. This is what you do when given a situation like this, and this is exactly what we did. Had our free drinks, caused our ruckus, said our goodbye’s to friends and laughed and grumbled our way to the airport.
All tours should be like this—sadly they are not. G’day mate, I’m off!
For big festivals like this there’s usually a little village of mobile dressing room boxes. They kind of resemble the little foreman offices you’ll see on construction sites. Thankfully today the air conditioning is kicking nicely. Ryan and I use some leftover lunch tickets from a previous day to grab some food. Might as well take advantage of the free meals while we have them, right? Catering kind of sucks, but we eat. It was particularly fun trying to explain to the server why I didn’t want her to pick up my bread roll with the same tongs that were just sitting in the gravy-covered beef slices.
Everything goes smoothly until changeover, and then quickly things take a turn for the ridiculous. Reggie’s amp won’t make a sound, but it turns out to be something loose in the amp’s input jack, and thankfully this amp has parallel inputs so I can just jump the cable to the other side. Easy. Now Jon has problems getting signal from one of the keyboards, so that eats up some time. Finally we get everything more or less set with monitor levels and we’re ready to go just in time. Once on stage everything seems to be going alright. I didn’t get my guitar world wheeled right into place where I wanted it, so that’s a bit of a hassle but dealable. All sounds good, only a few monitor adjustments. During the 4th or 5th song we here Owen’s bass cut out for second, but it comes right back so we let it go. Then, near the end of ‘Hurricane Jane’ it just drops out completely. And I’m in action, scrambling to figure it out—unplug his pedals, check for loose input jacks by shaking connections, try plugging directly into the amp, try a new instrument cable—but nothing seems to work. I’m thinking maybe it’s the head so we quickly borrow a bass head from the next band but that still doesn’t work. All of a sudden we hear sound coming from somewhere…it’s the DI signal coming through the monitors! Then we take the DI out of the loop and we can get signal from the bass cab, but not both at the same time. So, it’s either the link cable of the jack on the DI box. We settle for all DI signal and crank the volume up in the monitors for Owen and get back to the show.
All in all the band only had to cut one song from the set, but it still felt like forever. Situations like this make me feel like an idiot—even if the problem is unforeseeable and totally not my fault, I feel responsible somehow. It’s like any small lack of skills or knowledge I might have is quickly and obviously revealed for all to see, and when 30 seconds feels like 10 minutes you can sense everyone’s eyes trained on you, watching and waiting as you totally screw everything up.
I thought about sticking around to catch a few more bands that night, but inspiration was waning. There really weren’t that many bands on this tour that I actually wanted to see. I caught Neil Young once, which was great, a few songs from Fantomas, and a set from Cut Copy. Aside from that I wasn’t really hurtin’ to see Dropkick (although I heard they are a really good live band) or really anyone else. Unfortunate or sad or jaded as it might seem, I just don’t get that psyched up to watch bands anymore—especially when it’s really hot and I’ve already worked a show that day. Maybe if it was someone I really wanted to see.... In the end Ryan and I had a few drinks, caught dinner and caught a shuttle back to the hotel which was actually fine with me because I got to watch most of the Australian Open men’s final on TV. The Open is held in Melbourne, so it’s been big news all week. Plus the semi’s the other night had been particularly good—it reminded me how much I used to enjoy watching tennis. Nadal and Federer duked it out and then we headed downstairs to the after party.
We were staring down a 4AM lobby call for the airport and 30+ hrs. of travel home, so there was nothing left to do but stay at the after party until 3:30, run upstairs for drunk shower time and pack and get the hell out of there. This is what you do when given a situation like this, and this is exactly what we did. Had our free drinks, caused our ruckus, said our goodbye’s to friends and laughed and grumbled our way to the airport.
All tours should be like this—sadly they are not. G’day mate, I’m off!
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