Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Ireland, Scotland, & England

C.K. and XL200

In between the shows in Ireland and the show in Scotland, we boarded the HSS Stena and travelled back to the town in Wales with the longest name in the English language, which I shall not attempt to reproduce here. From there we headed toward the English seaside resort town of Blackpool, which was not all that different from any seaside town on this side of the Atlantic. Lots of people consuming sugar products in the day, and alcohol at night, and enjoying being a long way from their day jobs.

The event that Suicidal Tendencies had been booked for was called “Holidays In The Sun” and was a multi-day punk rock extravaganza, in a gigantic old building, with many different performace spaces. We went by in the afternoon and dropped off the gear and merch. I haven’t seen so many spikes and Mohawks since I was mixing Screw 32 and AFI at the old Trocadero in San Francisco. Punk is a religion that people are still being converted to every year, same as jazz or rockabilly. It doesn’t matter how long ago the Sex Pistols came out, that sound still makes sense to the kids sprawled out on the traffic circle outside the venue.

Louie of Concert Systems

Inside was an acoustical nightmare. About forty feet above us was a glass ceiling, that had been draped with some circus-y cloth that did not exactly seal it off. The men of Manchester’s Concert Systems were there, Daniel Seal presiding, with Sean Busby-Little with me at FOH, and just plain Louie on the monitors. I was happy to see the Midas XL200, but it was scary to only see a fraction of EAW 750 mid-high cabinets protruding above the heads of the crowd, from where they were stacked atop subs set on the ground.

The band was not scheduled to go on until half past midnight, so we went off to the hotel and rested for a few hours. Bus driver John Asten, who provided yeomanlike service throughout the tour, pointed out a favorite pub as we drove past it on the motorway, The Tickled Trout, one of many colorful names we saw in the UK.

Sean Busby-Little and John Asten

The gig went off OK, except for some action near the end, where the locally-supplied RF mic seemed to fail and Mike Muir went to the hardwire spare. It was really difficult to see him from FOH, when he jumped off the stage and interacted with the crowd behind the barricade.

The sound company guys sincerely thought he had hurled the RF mic back onto the stage, but our backline tech explained after the show that it had been the less fragile 58.

There was still a problem, and I understood where the sound company was coming from. They had a valuable mic that has gone down, and until it is opened up at the shop, none of us knew whether it was fixable or not, and they wanted someone to take responsibility if it wasn’t. But, at the same time, I did not appreciate it being implied that Mike Muir had abused the mic, which I had not seen him do at any other gigs. One of the sound company guys said to me, look, you know these mics, they don’t just suddenly stop working. And I had to answer, not just to be difficult or automatically defend the band, but because it’s the truth, well, yes, sometimes they do just stop working - just like a car, or a garbage disposal, or a bass amp.

I will always be grateful to promoter Jennie Russell, who stepped up calmly and said, “Right, you know the drill, you take it back to the shop, and send me the repair bill, and if it can’t be fixed, then we’ll talk about that.” Case closed. Chris Kathman and band free to go. Thank you, Jennie!

Our gig in London was downstairs at a venue called the Mean Fiddler, I had been there once before, when it was still called LA2, London Astoria 2. There is no detectable ventilation, which makes for a classic sweatbox show. I was drenched from head to toe after the Suicidal set, and I wasn’t under the stage lights like the guys were. I asked guitarist Mike Clark afterwards, “How can you guys still play, when it’s that wet!” They are troupers, who delivered an exciting set to a packed crowd of roaring long-time fans.

Laura Burton and Liam Halpin

Laura Burton was the FOH tech, while Liam Halpin handled monitors. You know you are in a venue that hosts some extremely hardcore crowds when the entire mix position is wrapped in wire mesh to keep out bottles and cans that are apparently sailing through the air sometimes!

I was very happy to get back on a Soundcraft Europa, which to me are great sounding consoles, that unfortunately never sold well, due to the hugeness, weight, and reliability issues. Everything worked on this one, Laura assured me, and I made use of some of the built-in gates, which I have always felt worked really well.

After London, we proceeded on to Colchester, which bills itself as the oldest town in England. Our hotel, the George, was hundreds of years old, has no elevators, and the floors of our rooms were charmingly warped and hilly. On one of the stairwells, there is a cross section of wall sawn away to expose the original “wattle and daub” construction, very similar to how wasps build a nest, with mud and sticks. The George was doing business when Los Angeles was just a bunch of orange groves and desert.

Even in such a charming town, I could find an Internet café. The uniquitous cups of tea were available, and unlike our own country, ashtrays are provided and it is OK to smoke while you surf. The hotel was an easy walk from the venue, the Arts Centre, which was very well equipped, as one finds throughout Europe in venues that receive cultural subsidies from the governments.

Chris Secker

Simon Deacon

I met Chris Secker from Audio Plus, and Simon Deacon, who I think is a freelance but often works at the Art Centre. Both desks were Soundcraft, the FOH a K2 and the monitors an SM16. I saw that someone had been thinking, using some wooden blocks to raise up the mid-high cabinets of the Renkus-Heinz system, and get some intelligibility out over the crowd.

Elevated Reinkus-Heinz mains

Chris explained to me that the R-H rig lives there in the Art Centre, but Audio Plus also has a sizeable Turbo inventory. We talked about how they love their XTA crossovers and have tweaked them to where, as Chris said, they are a “giant tone control.” The system is presented to the performer’s engineer really close to how anyone would want it, and then that person can make comparatively minor adjustments on the graphic. The Arts Centre is an old church, and I brought out the RF vocal mic to ring out the most echo-ey frequencies. I knew that at the show, I would keep the overall volume at no more than I needed to get over the stage volume. By this point in the tour, I was using my molded 9dB plugs at some points during the sets, when my ears would start to get really pressurized. Even just having them in for a couple songs relieves the fatigue, and I can take them out again. ST makes a pretty big noise onstage between the Marshalls and the monitors, but once the crowd came into the room, it was not a bad night, at all.

I asked our backline tech, Justin Devillier, to take a picture of myself and Doumé Septier, the King of France and the ST merchandise seller, outside, in the church’s ancient graveyard. Doumé has a tattoo on his shaved head, of “War Inside” - part of the title of a Suicidal Tendencies song, “War Inside My Head.”

I will close with an unauthorized copy of the lyrics to the song, that are credited to someone named Louiche as co-writer with ST bandleader Mike Muir. I don’t speak for what Mike may have been thinking when he wrote the song, but to me, one of the greatest challenges we all face is dealing with not only the external conflicts that confront us, in our working and personal lives, but the ones inside our minds. And those are the ones we actually have the most power over. Here’s a toast to healing that destructiveness, and moving on towards creativity, and taking responsibility for our own thoughts and feelings.

“War inside my head - can you sense it
War inside my head - can you see it
War inside my head - can you feel it
War inside my head
Can you hear the pain
Can you see the pain
Can you sense the pain
Can you feel the pain
Can you help the pain
Can you fix the pain
Can you hear the war inside my head …”

And, lastly, lest ye think me overly sensitive –

SEVENTEEN INPUTS, BABY!