Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Vol 4

263 DESIRE

DESIRE

The next day was another media day, but at least this time there was no crack-of-dawn radio show on the schedule. I sat in the lobby bar, where my friend Crystal–the bartender from the other night–kept me well hydrated while a parade of rock critics and journalists took their turns with me. If I'd wanted, I could've done it at BNC's offices, but I think it was a lot more fun to sit in the bar where we could see the people going by and a terrific woman brought us drinks than to be stuck in some conference room with stale coffee and no doubt a flock of hovering publicists.

Digger put the schmooze on each one before or after they spoke to me, and steered one or two to Ziggy, who was entertaining in the suite upstairs, from what I heard. It was a little tiring talking to so many people, and answering the same questions again and again, but really not high on the difficulty scale. It seemed to me as we went up the fame scale, the questions got dumber and more repetitive. Or maybe Jonathan had spoiled me.

Or maybe I was just bored. I used to be terrified of talking to reporters, afraid of giving something away. But this bunch didn't seem very muck-rakey. Not a single one asked if I had a girlfriend back home.

The last one of the day was a guy from Musician who was doing a big story on stage set-ups and was going to come to the Forum to see ours. He hopped into the van with us for the ride back to the Forum. We were in the back seat of the van, me all the way in by the window, Bradley (the reporter), and then Chris who sat with his legs sticking into the door well.

"Who's your main sound man, again?" he asked. "Russell Peters? He worked with Wickenham and those guys, didn't he?"

"Who?" I asked, but Chris seemed to know what he was talking about.

"The Wall of Sound guys?" Chris asked. "Yeah, he might've mentioned something like that. But this set up isn't crazy like that."

"Crazy like what?" I asked him.

"The Grateful Dead used to have this insane setup where they had all their amps, like, up on stilts and stuff so that the sound came from above, and they had no monitors or mixing. Each instrument had its own stack, basically, and it was self-monitoring since the band heard what the audience heard."

"Wow. What was the point of that?"

"They didn't like the way the sound got muddy with echo in all the concrete stadiums they played, and so this is how they dealt with it." Chris gestured like he was pulling taffy upward. "Not stilts. What do you call 'em. Scaffolds. Man."

Bradley nodded. "Yeah, it was legendary. They had two rigs actually, and it took so long to set it up that they had to have a crew leapfrogging ahead of them on the tour so that it could be set up by the time they got there."

"That must've been fucking expensive," I said.

"It was. Which was why they quit doing it after a while," he said. "Plus I think monitoring and mixing technology was starting to improve."

Chris snorted. "I suppose we could ask Petey about that if he was around then."

"He knows his stuff, that's for sure," I said. I haven't said much about Russell Peters, I know. Honestly, there wasn't much to say. He was a professional, through and through, and didn't hang around with us much. If anything I got the feeling he didn't care who we were or what band, all he cared about was that the sound was good. So far, it had been tremendous, as far as I was concerned, so I stayed out of his way and didn't criticize. He talked to Colin and Paco and some other roadies more than he talked to me. It worked, so I didn't mess with it.