From AZ to CA with a couple of gigs along the way

When I said that I couldn’t wait until I left Santa Fe and made seem like I was excited to get to Mesa, I was being overzealous. Mesa was 110 degrees in all day long today. It was so hot that I had to cover all gear with thermal blankets to reflect the sunlight that was cooking things like consoles and turntables. It was so hot that I reapplied sun-block every 20 minutes and still ended up a little red. It was so hot that I ran out of sweat. It was hot.

Don’t give me that “but it’s a dry heat” shit. In Ohio, the people complain about 85 degree temperatures with a relative humidity that makes the air feel like its 90 something degrees. Guess what… 110 degrees is hot regardless.

The gig was great, though. The people of Mesa, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, and even as far as Tucson and Flagstaff came in droves, suffered the heat, and were welcoming and friendly to our band of nomads and musos.

Two more gigs to go, San Bernardino and San Diego. Both are sold out at more than 45,000 tickets per show. That isn’t a bad way to end an already successful tour.

... and here he is, folks... the hardest working man in showbiz...

San Bernardino. This SHOW was a huge success. These people had no idea of the clusterfukish problems going down on the technical side.

"E-Rock, please detail the clusterfukish problems going down on the technical side."

I'd be glad to.

After the long drive from Mesa, AZ to San Bernardino, CA I wake to the bus stopping at our destination diretly behind the stage. I pull myself out of my bunk, stagger to the stage to see how the local crew was coming along with the assembly and rigging of the P.A. As soon as hands were shaken, the locals disappear and we are left with a half-complete sound system and 90 minutes until the doors open and 50,000 insane hip-hop summer campers rush toward the stage.

What to do in a situation like this? Just do it. We go the system up and running (probably better and faster than the yokels that own the thing) and start positioning the backline gear and prepping the mics.

Problem here, no signal there, buzz... humm... click, whistle, pop. Everything that could go wrong, did.

Then the recording guy shows up asking me how to get a 3 way split out of a 2 way snake for recording.

note... this is why E-Rock rocks the fat ass...

My console was a Yamaha M7CL which has 16 output options on it. For this show I was using 6 outputs for monitor mixes, so I used the remaining 10 outputs to send a record feed. Instead of just sending a line out and forgetting about it, I mixed the show into pro-tools. 10 channels of input into a digi002 and a MAC G5. Someone else can do the final mixdown, but there had better be a subtitle on that dvd that reads "E-Rock rocks"

Back to problems.

Look at this, smokey gear is never good. It's a little difficult to see, but this is a clearcom unit that was smoking inside the rack. No clearcom today, guys.

Smokey gear, pushy musos, useless stage managers, and E-Rock and company stepped up to the plate and hit a home-run. The last show is tomorrow, but tonight I'm going to relax in my room at the Crowne Plaza - San Diego. I'm debating over room service booze, or hotel bar. The decisions that a roadie must make are endless and unnerving. Cheers.