MTVu and Bamboozle
05/11/08 | by harfordsound
The final 2 shows with All Time Low.
I woke up today and things felt different. No Rocket Summer, no Sonny, no anyone. I walked off the bus and wondered over to this massive stage. Yep, it was HUGE. This show was pretty big too. Camera’s everywhere, crew talking, the works. This was the filming for MTVu’s campus invasion. Over 4,000 ticket presale. However, thanks to the crappy weather, we only had around 2,000 kids show up. It was a little bit of a bummer.
Anyway, we had all morning to soundcheck and get everything up and rolling. All Time Low played 4th, right before Cobra Starship. It was pretty cool how everything was set up. Each band set their drums up on a rolling riser and it was left pre-wired. When your set time came along, you would just roll your drum riser out, patch in a multipin snake and be good to go. Sound checking each band in advance seems like a good idea in practice, but in reality, it takes a long, long time… The 2 acts after ATL went an hour over their time, and caused our sound check to be cut short. We ended up rushing, and really making life hard for me… FOH was a DigiDesign D-show, and I had never mixed on one before. And, to top it off, since we were rushed, I didnt even touch the board during sound check.
The crowd was at it’s peak right before ATL’s set. We had around 2000 kids there. The band strikes their first note, and bam. Silence. I had my faders way to low, or so I thought. I push everything up, and something still doesnt seem right. Yup, only half of the PA is working… The house sound dude, scrambles and figures out that the dbx 160a for the right side of the PA was not working… It somehow lost power during the set change… So, he gets it up and running and everything is going smoothly. Well, as smooth as you can be with 9 JBL vertecs per side. Wow, it sounded like an AM radio! To top it off, we had 30mph winds blowing the sound everywhere. It sounded like the mix had a phaser on it ah FOH… I was not having a good time. I just dealt with it and did the best I could…
The set went fairly smooth though. No failures on stage. But, since this was going on TV, ATL couldnt cuss at all. It made for quite an interesting set. They had to change the words around in some songs to make it work, and they couldnt use their scrims on stage. I was laughing at them as they tried to keep it clean on stage. But, if you want to see their set, it will be on TV May 12th!
BAMBOOZLE!
The best way to sum up this show is simply: wow. We had over 15,000 kids watching ATL’s set. Now, they werent just watching, but they were rocking out. EVERYONE in the crowd knew the words and was singing along! I was completely baffled. It was an amazing experience and I really enjoyed it. We had a great day for the show.
But, as always, something had to go wrong. Since this was the last time I was mixing ATL for a few months, I decided to crank ATL’s intro! I had the fader maxed out and everything was rocking out. Then, just as the band kicked in, I lost all bass. I asked the house guy “where’d the bass go?!” He was a little confused, and proceeded to check my EQ settings. Yep, everything was fine. He radioed the monitor guy, and figured out what was going on. I managed to take out 12 sub amps all at once. Blew the breakers all at the same time. Man, I rock! But, we got the amps back on mid way through the first song, and all was good. The rest of the set rocked.
And thats it! 8 weeks of touring has finally come to an end. I look forward to waking up in my own bed tomorrow morning!
Tour Wrap up and pictures coming soon…
