| BACK
TO EUROPE
With Suicidal
Tendencies
By Chris Kathman
PSW Live Editor |
1 2
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Click here
for part 2 | Click
here for part 3 | Ireland,
Scotland
& England
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“The first festival to ban crowd surfing was the
Lowlands Festival in 2000. The experience at that festival was that the vast majority
of the audience was very relieved at this policy.”
–
from the Dynamo Festival, Netherlands | The original
call came from Tommy Rat. Which made me remember a drummer named Beau Hampton,
many years ago, who I learned a lot from, and who said, “Everything I‘ve
ever done, every job I’ve ever had, and every bit of trouble I ever got into,
started with a phone call. Think about it, isn’t it the truth?”
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Suicidal
guitarist Mike Clark, happy to have landed at
Heathrow.
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Suicidal Tendencies had lined up two weeks of European dates, and Tommy could
not substitute for their regular tour manager/FOH mixer, Tony Cooper, who was
about to start the Warped Tour with MxPx. They both assured me that the band members
were lovely guys and not a problem to travel with.
I had not been to
Europe since 1999, and had just been thinking how much I missed it, so I said
yes. | We have just completed two open air events, the
first being the Dour Festival in Belgium, and then yesterday’s Bospop Festival
here in the Netherlands. I used Midas
Heritage desks at both shows, driving at massive speaker arrays: first the Meyer
M3D line array, with MSL4 in-fills, and then the Renkus-Heinz/STS
Synco touring system.
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Mighty M3D subs
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I had wanted to mix on an M3D system ever since last summer, when I saw a Barenaked
Ladies show that used them. It was not a disappointment, slamming a very wide
field of clarity out to the crowd. The Synco rig was also strong, clear and powerful
throughout its entire range. | At one point in the middle
of the set in Dour, I paused, and thought about how we take for granted the increased
linearity that exists in properly assembled post-millenial systems. I can do a
line check on headphones, set up a rough mix on the faders of the Midas, dial
up auxes for effects, and then un-mute when the band is announced, without the
kind of uncertainty that existed years ago on many festival systems.
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M3D mains and MSL4 fills
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You just never knew. Would immediate howwwwwwhooo-ing 200 Hz feedback happen?
Would there be a harsh, barking 630/800 dog that you would have to whirl and quickly
ditch on the graphics? Right now, our hotel in Weert is about half a mile from
the Bospop festival, and I can actually hear the Gothic tones of the lead singer
from “Within Temptation” quite clearly. She sounds great! The Synco
mains are kicking butt. (To use a very technical term.) |
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Studer submix and phone link to radio station, Belgium
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At Dour, when I went to the FOH position and met Bruno Denis, I noticed an
oddity off to the side, a Studer mixer that included an archaic dial telephone,
which Bruno explained was the feed to a radio station broadcasting the event.
In a situation like this, at an outdoor presentation, I don’t mind my
stereo mix going out on the airwaves, as it will represent all the inputs fairly
proportionately. | At a smaller indoor club gig, I may
well reduce or eliminate the drum overheads, if too much stage wash is entering
them, and possibly cut back the guitars in my mix, if the players’ Marshalls
are already blistering the room.
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Bruno Denis
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Yesterday, when we arrived at the Boshoven site, I went to the stage to meet
the local sound company people. I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of In
Extremo, a European band in midshow mania, made up of not only your standard metallic
bass-drums-guitar-with-skinny lead singer, but featuring three other burly dudes
lurching around, totally tattooed, no shirts, wearing kilts, playing modified
bagpipes and a belt-mounted wooden harp! |
And their house mix was incredible, the acoustic instruments layered
clearly with the rock ones. We were told that this fusion of old
and new is currently quite popular in Germany.
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