That was never two minutes
I always read The Hussy’s blogs, as it’s often the only way I find out what’s going on. Usually they’re quite entertaining, and often they describe gigs from a very different perspective than mine. James has, perhaps foolishly, agreed to let me give my side of the story for a change.
Last Thursday was a gig in HWUSA. I was in the dressing room after the soundcheck with The Turn, when James asked me if I’d seen any good bands over the summer. No doubt there have been plenty, but liken his question to this: What were the highlights of your working week in June, July and August? I’d be surprised if you could remember one or two things. It’s the best I can do, anyway. I could tell you about lots of complex things about sound equipment, specifications, weight, relative merit, etc because I have to know. I might be hanging tonnes of speakers above people’s heads, or wiring an industrial power supply, for example, so these things matter. I can’t abide paperwork, so it’s just easier not to kill people at work. I don’t often remember gigs in any detail much after the event. Ask any touring engineer about places they’ve been and shows they’ve done, and they’ll tell you about how good the food was or how much of a nightmare the venue was, or how drunk they got afterwards. The Turn is supposed to be good.
Occasionally you will get a truly outstanding show. This is inversely proportional to your age/experience of live music. When people ask what my favourite gigs of all time are, what they’re really asking is “Name some of your favourite days at work in the last 17 years?”
What I actually said to James when he asked me what I thought of Japanese Graffiti was that I liked it more each time I listened to it. It was the same with Super Pro. I hear (some of) the new songs evolve to a certain extent live, and become familiar with them in that form, and then they go in to the studio and I don’t get to hear them again until they give me a CD, so often it’s a bit of a shock to hear the familiar in a different light. I think it’s the best album The Hussy’s have made, and it should (finally) get them the recognition they deserve.
I took my mate Sam’s album into work the other day (Architeq – Gold+Green, it’s really good too) and despite being on continuous play for weeks, the best comment I could get from anyone was that it was “fine”. This is pretty high praise in live sound engineering world.
It’s not my dream job, but I’d love to present a festival TV show. Most entertainment technical people are extremely opinionated about music, and I’m no different. I wait in eager anticipation for a call from the BBC.
Every time I’ve been to Heriot Watt, there’s been an incident of some sort. A couple of times band members had food poisoning, the time before last one of the stage monitors stopped working. It adds an edge that you just don’t get going to other venues. This time the entire right-hand side of the PA system kept cutting out during the show.
The technical staff at the venue are not to blame for this. On each occasion they have done their best to fix the problem as quickly as possible. It’s happened to me in another venue during a sold out show with 2500 punters, just as the Star Turn came on. Software failed and it took us over 30 minutes to find and fix the fault. I’m sympathetic for anyone in that situation, and hopefully I didn’t make it any worse for the HW techs. Equipment will fail, and sometimes it happens during a show. This week, it was one cable.
Ask yourself, what would you do in that situation? For the PA tech, first you have to figure out where the problem lies, diagnose the cause, and try to implement a solution all within the shortest time possible, ideally without anyone noticing or stopping the show. As the band engineer, I have to consider whether to stop or not, but I’m relying on the house staff giving me status updates of the problem all the time, some of which can be quite contradictory as the process unfolds. The vibe was quite good in the room, so do I risk killing it altogether and stop the gig, or persevere and hope that it’s fixed quickly? In the end, I decided to persevere, as we had definitely found the problem, but we needed to make sure the band weren’t playing when we fixed it, as the PA would be off for a few seconds. One of the “golden rules” of entertainment is not to let the audience know its all gone tits up, so I decided to tell Chris what was going on. Chris is not a fan of loud noises (yet plays the drums), so rather than monitor speakers on stage he wears in-ear monitors, a bit like ear-bud headphones. This means that I can talk to him without anyone else hearing me from my mixing desk, and he can let the band know without having to broadcast the problem to the whole audience. Then it’s up to Fili to come up with a reasonable excuse while someone frantically changes a cable. It’s all over in a flash (not literally though, one hopes), then the band can continue with a now fully working PA system. Next time, and there will be one, I might do things differently.