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Report from the Main Stage |
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After Rat Sound’s Jon Monson asked me to work the main stage at the Coachella Festival, and I accepted, he said he needed one more patch person. I suggested Peter Franco, who called me later to say thanks, and “We’re going to have fun!” I answered “It’s going to suck. But I believe that you will be able to get through it, and that’s why I recommended you.” It turned out we were both right. The days were long and wearing, as I had known they would be, but it was great to see old friends, and make new ones. |
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Peter and a raft of other folks handled patching and mic-ing, and moving monitors around, while I spent most of my time communicating with bands and crews, mixing monitors for the acts that did not have someone to do that, and following Jon’s plans to navigate the sprawling assortment of needs that each band had. |
Steve Walsh, known to many of us as Moby’s monitor mixer the past couple of years, manned a Yamaha 4KM stage left, as did I. In addition to working the whole weekend for Rat, Steve was hired by the Foo Fighters to attend their rehearsals, and give them a ultra-special super-swinging monitor mix. That also got him into a nicer hotel than us!
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Sightlines were an issue, so after Steve finished with the Foo Fighters on the upstage Rat desk, it was whisked away and we rolled in the console for Oasis, while Joe Campbell ran monitors for the Prodigy on “my” downstage desk. Afterwards I congratulated him on how quickly he set up his mixes before his band went on, and he laughed “I didn’t have much choice, did I?” |
That is the name of the game at festivals, if you cannot afford your
own desk. Run and gun. Point and shoot. Quick, but hopefully not too dirty. Jon
Rat showed us his way of warp-speed trouble-shooting. Get a 50’ XLR cable.
Plug it into the channel on the desk. Now do you have the input?
Okay.
If you do, now that cable gets plugged into the split. How about now? And so forth,
until you discover the break in the chain, such as a sub box across the stage,
or the XLR cable running to it from the instrument. Jon and I both agree that
when time is of the essence, you may not even have time to do that much, but just
run the long cable from the instrument to the split and DO THE SHOW!
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