TWELVE: Italian Stallion

Well, it’s been a while since my last blog post. Sorry for falling off of the blog wagon. I suppose I’ll catch you guys up to speed on what’s been going on in the WHY? camp.

My last post spoke of the Zurich incident, so I suppose I’ll start from there.

The show in Fribourg went really well. I didn’t have much time to walk around the city at all, due to all of the previous drama that happened in Zurich. Great PA in the room at Fri-Son.

ITALY

Italy was really great. I had heard some horror stories from some other people about how it’s really hard to be vegetarian in Italy, catering at the shows would be bad, people would be rude, etc. Turns out none of this was true. Spirits were a little low due to our misfortune, but Italy ended up being very relaxing for all of us.

PADOVA

On our day off after Fribourg, we arrived in the outskirts of Padova at our hotel. For the next few hours, we napped, grocery shopped, and relaxed around the area of the hotel. After that we shot a promotional video for the Tel Aviv show (LINK). If you haven’t seen it, it’s quite ridiculous. I highly suggest you check it out. This is one of the reasons I love touring with this band. Morale still remains somewhat high even after devastating events. Even if things aren’t going so great, we can still keep having a good time. After the video shoot we walk down the street to the neighboring restaurant. I had a magnificent fungi (mushroom) pizza. This was probably one of the best meals I had while in Italy. Definitely one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had. We eat, have some wine and some laughs while the night winds down. Post-dinner, I skyped for a while, and made a rough edit of the Tel Aviv Promo. Again, I really suggest you watch this. Much to my chagrin, I even have a line in the video.

The next day, most of the guys took the bus to Venice which is only about 20kms away. I really wanted to go, but alas, work kept me in the hotel. Yoni and I finished editing the video before heading into the city for the show that night. There wasn’t anything really special about the show that night. Not great, but not terrible either.

**Sound nerd section**

The PA at the Padova show wasn’t that great. Lots of bad frequencies in the room due to it being a concrete box, warehouse type venue. I mixed on a Yamaha LS9, which I’ve managed to get quite quick on, but I HATE HATE HATE it when I’m forced to use the internal graphic EQs. It’s a nice feature, but it takes way too long to get to them when you need to pull out a frequency that starts feeding back. Also, I didn’t even recognize the brand of monitors at the place. They were very sub par and even with a flat EQ sounded very tinny. Needless to say, it took a while to ring out the system.

//end sound speak

ROMA

After the Padova show, we loaded up the bus, and headed out to Rome (I really want to watch the HBO show Rome by the way. Let me know your thoughts on it). At this point, I still do not have any clothing from the robbery. I found an American Apparel about 5 kilometers from the venue. Austin and I decided to walk to it and see a little bit of the city. To our surprise it was right near the Coliseum! I hadn’t seen it since I went on a EU vacation at the age of 12. It’s really hard to appreciate things of that magnitude at such a young age. After I load up on drab colored t-shirts, bright colored boxer briefs, and solid black socks (some white white stripes at the top), we head back to the venue; another 5 kilometers. We walked for quite a while that day (this will become common for most of Italy).

Back at the venue, I check in, and decide to walk to the day room to take a shower and finally put on some new clothes. The guys were all snickering about the shower situation there, which intrigued me a little bit. I show up, get the key, walk up to the room and take a peek in the bathroom. The shower, bidet, and toilet were all in the same place. I kind of rationalize this with the idea that maybe the shower spraying on the toilet keeps it clean, but then I think about if you have to go to the bathroom after you’ve taken a shower, you have to sit on a wet toilet seat. The strangest part about this is that the toilet paper was in there too. Soaking wet. Such a terrible design. After my very strange shower in the toilet, I head back to the venue. We load in, set up and get going like we do every day. The show was only about half full, and according to the guys was much smaller than their last time in Rome. We’ve kind of attributed this to it being a Wednesday night. Where as, last time it was on a Friday or Saturday.

**Begin sound speak**

This night I mixed on a Digidesign (now Avid) Venue. I’m a little torn on my thoughts of this digital desk. Lately, I’ve been able to get mixes that I’ve really liked out of them, but I always seem to have some sort of problem with the I/O. Another thing that really bothers me with them is how sensitive the digital potentiometers are. If you barely turn the knob at all, the value you’re changing shoots WAY up. Also, if you pan something, when you go to reset the pan with the knob, it’s almost impossible to get it back to center. It’s always either +1 or -1. Never back to zero. I know at that level of increment, it won’t sound like it’s one way or the other, but it frustrates the hell out of me. Maybe I’m just anal retentive. Anyway, the room had a nice PA, but I feel like there was a limiter set on it. I kept feeling like I had to push the system really hard to get an appropriate volume. Oh well. More on why I don’t like mixing on digital consoles later.

//end sound speak

FIRENZE (Italian for Florence)

Florence! Such a beautiful city, but definitely a tourist trap! We awake in Florence next to the venue. We get up, take showers, and talk about what we’re going to do for the day. My girlfriend used to live in Florence, and has traveled all over Italy and the rest of Europe, so I talked to her about what we needed to see. We talk to the promoter at the venue and he tips us to the proper bus to take into town. Again, we were on the outskirts. We take the bus into town and immediately start seeing beautiful cathedrals. Two of note were the Cathedral of Santa Maria and the Duomo.

Italian shows start really late, and have definitely given us plenty of time to walk around the cities and see the sights. In Florence, I tried to shop for Hillary, but was thwarted due to the high touristy prices. After our lengthy excursion, we head back to the venue. The show again was a little under attended, but I guess that’s what happens when you don’t tour a country for 2 years, and are playing a lot of shows on weekdays there. The show that night was also a sound nightmare!

**Begin sound speak**
We have a monitor engineer this day. This is something I’m usually excited about. It makes my job a lot easier, and allows me to focus more on the sound out front, than spending half of my time worrying about the monitors. Today was NOT the case. During sound check the monitor engineer starts adding everything to his monitor extremely loud. It’s very frustrating for me because I kept thinking it was coming out of the mains. They also started ringing out the monitors extremely loud while we were trying to set up our gear on stage. Not cool. They also didn’t have any graphic EQs for the monitors. This wouldn’t be a problem if it were a great system, but it wasn’t. My mix position was also terrible. I was up agains the right wall, with a very high lighting booth to my left. The floor also slanted down, so I was actually as high as the mains, which were aimed down at the crowd. I had to keep walking out into the crowd during the show to make sure my mix was ok. Again, another under powered system that I had to push a little too hard for comfort. Definitely one of the most frustrating shows of the tour.

//end sound rant

TURIN

We show up in Turin to a very strange setting. Our bus is parked next to the venue, but it looks like we’re in the middle of nowhere. Just a huge field next to the venue, and one lonely road. Turns out the city was only a few blocks away, but it was a little disorienting at first. We get in the venue, and I upload the Tel Aviv promo (which again, you should totally watch). After that I walked to buy some cigarettes, and look for laundry. I don’t have much to do, but when I’ve only got 7 changes of clothes, every clean set counts. Laundry is closed for siesta. We walk back the venue and get a shuttle to the hotel for showers. We shower and take our clothes to a laundromat that’s open. Before the show starts we head to a restaurant that the promoter set up for us. This was the worst meal of the tour for me. We get in and see all these people getting these great authentic Italian meals. The wait staff gives us an abridged english menu, puts ketchup and mayonnaise on the table, and gives us paper napkins instead of cloth napkins! They acted like we were little kids that couldn’t take care of ourselves! How rude! (said in a Stephanie Tanner tone of voice). I get the vegetarian pizza I order and all the vegetables on it were cold. It tasted terrible and the crust was way too salty. It seemed like they had all these premade frozen cheese pizzas, microwaved it, put the frozen veggies on it, and popped it in the oven for about 10 minutes less than they should have. UGH. Anyway, we eat the meal, and I head back the venue. Turns out while we were gone we get ROBBED AGAIN! WHAT THE FUCK? At least they didn’t steal a lot this time. Only some merchandise that was left unattended. 4 CDs, 3 shirts, and a few vinyls. Not too much loss, but still very annoying. The show that night went pretty well though. Not great again, but not terrible. I feel like morale is slipping even more at this point.

**sound nerd section**

The PA was really great at this venue. Soundcraft MH3 (which I love), Klark Teknik EQs, BSS comps, Drawmer gates, mmmmm….. The PA itself sounded great. All Turbosound everywhere. The room however, was a hard one. Glass, concrete, and tile don’t necessarily make the best sounding room to mix in. Also the mix position was up in a crows nest that was a giant bass trap. Overall, it didn’t sound that bad though.

//end sound speak

SENIGALLIA

Senigallia was CRAZY! For some reason that night I didn’t sleep very much. I only got about 2 hours total, so I was definitely out of it. We load into the venue as soon as we arrive, and the bus takes off to find a parking spot. After we load in and have some breakfast, we walk to the day room. I lay down while the others are taking showers and end up forcefully getting tucked in by Yoni and Josiah(see video “Tucking Snake”). After we all shower, Doug and Josiah and I check out the nearby Castle that was previously a Jail. Definitely pretty cool. After soundcheck, everyone else goes to dinner, and I go to the hotel room, nap, and skype for a little while. Very refreshing. I was feeling pretty low at this point. Having not slept, and feeling down and out. I leave the hotel and head back to the venue after nightfall. I feel like everyone in the city was completely drunk that night. They really like to party in Senigallia. We made some friends and had another mediocre show. The energy was fine, but the house sound tech was a little bit drunk, and a little to liberal with the strobe light. After the show, we enjoy some nice grappa, and hang out for a bit before taking off.

RAVENNA

We get to Ravenna, Check into the hotel, and Yoni, Doug, Austin, and I decide to walk into town. Again we’re on the outskirts. We walked for about an hour and a half into the city along roads with no shoulders. Not the most pedestrian friendly city to walk to. We get there, have some great street food and take a cab back to load into the venue. People had told us that we would be disappointed with this one, but it ended up being quite the opposite. Great sounding PA, great sounding room. Great sounding show. We ran into a few technical difficulties with a bad mic cable for Josiah’s vocals, and the Wurlitzer acting up and making some buzzing noises throughout. Our friends we made in Senigallia came out to the show in Ravenna that night. It was nice to see them again. That show was definitely better than the previous ones in Italy from my perspective.

The next day we had off in Ravenna. We take a bus into town and another one to the beach. We walked along the beach for a few hours. I collected some sea shells to bring home, and grabbed a slice of pizza. Pretty relaxing. After that, we take the bus back into town and walk around. We saw some great mosaics at the museum.

After seeing some sights, Yoni and I went gift shopping. Ravenna is much much much cheaper than Florence, so I was able to pick up some good stuff for reasonable prices. We stopped and had a beer before hitting up the grocery store and heading back to the outskirts where the bus was parked. After we get back to the bus, we have a nice evening playing ping pong and having some cocktails. It was very relaxing to just hang out and chat for the evening. We left around 2am to head to Slovenia.

LJUBLJANA

So today, we’re in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I haven’t got to see much of the city due to spending time on this blog post, but hopefully after sound check I’ll get to check it out a little bit. The venue today is in kind of a punk squat type area.

Overall, our time in Italy was really great. Good food (for the most part), beautiful sights, and nice people. I feel like at points I was in a low rut, but I think it’s a combination of exhaustion and stress. I’m definitely ready to get home, but also excited about the new cities we’re going to in the upcoming days. It’s been a really long tour. I don’t care who you are, 8 weeks away from home is tough for anybody. It’s trying on your sanity and your health. After a certain point, you lose all track of time and location, and just give into the rigors of touring. We found a great rhythm before the Zurich incident, and I feel like we’re close to getting back on track.

I’ll try to blog more often from now on, I promise.

Also, the tour is winding down. Would anyone want me to keep blogging in-between tours? I’m not sure how interesting I am, but if people would read it, I would write it. As much I like numbers, I’ve really enjoyed keeping up (or trying to) with this blog, and wouldn’t mind keeping it going. Anyway, let me know your thoughts and opinions.

Cheers guys!