Pearl Jam pre-production

We set up for Pearl Jam today, even though they're not playing until tomorrow. This is partially because tomorrow is the first big show of their tour (they played a small club in Missoula yesterday) and so a lot o fteh lighting and sound equipment is new and they all ahev to get the timing down and get used to everything. The other reason is because they are going to do some filming and want to do it the night before the show.
So after the load in, the majority of us just hung out in camp and kept ourselves busy, and as an added bonus we got to listen to Pearl Jam play for almost 2 hours, part soundcheck and part videorecording.

Dave Matthews Band, Day 3

Today I got back to the Gorge and actually went out into the crowd to watch Dave. Apparently he comes out to the Gorge for 3 days in a row every year (he even released a live DVD of one of the shows a couple of years ago) and he really enjoys himself while he's there. Tonights show was a completely different set than Fridays (and probably Saturdays too, I don't know) and he played for 3 hours and 15 minutes. He always rents out the winery next door for himself, his family and the band and pretty much sells out all his shows at the Gorge, he's big business for the people there, probably why they didn't want us staying and fucking it up for them. I just don't understand why now, seeing as though this is the first time they've pulled this crap, and as a result, we were short on bodies.

So short in fact that they pulled people out of the audience to help out, which ended in several people in flip-flops ( I still don't get this countrys unhealthy obsession with those things) "helping out", which consisted of them taking pictures and calling their friends telling them they were on the stage rather than working. This weekend definately pissed a lot of people off!!

Amy Grant

Woke up this morning, left my tent standing at the Gorge and drove to Maryhill to go work Amy Grant. I didn't have to be there until 10 so I could get up at a decent time and make my way down there. On the way in Yakima, I stopped to get some breakfast and found a McDonalds that looks like the buildings used to, with an arch on each side so that when you looked at it from a certain angle, it would look like an M. I didn't think those still existed!?

Amy Grant was very unimpressive, I must say. I knew I wasn't going to like her stuff when I signed up for the show, but I do have to say it was nothing special. I dare say the highlights of her show were when she stepped aside and let her bandmembers sing covertunes like "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Big Yellow Taxi".

After the show I didn't feel much like driving back, so I joined a couple of the others at a campground we've procured for ourselves and slept in my car. Luckily I carry my futon mattress with me and the back of my car becomes a very comfortable bed!

Dave Matthews Band, day 1

Today started a three day weekend of Dave Matthews Band shows out at the Gorge. Today also marked a big fuck-up in the Gorge's mangerial decisions, regarding their workforce.
After 80 + people drove up to 3 hours to work the Gorge this weekend, and after we set up the DMB stage, we were told that, unless we were working showcall (a total of about 6 people) we couldn't stay on the premises, and couldn't come back until 2 pm Sunday. Sunday we could then watch the show and we'd load out and that would be it.
Of course, people were pissed off and many said that if they left now, they wouldn't come back Sunday, because it just wouldn't be worth it.
Luckily, i am also on the crew for the Maryhill winery tomorrow, and we can spend the night, will be gone all day tomorrow anyway and then come back a little earlier on Sunday. So, I got to hang around the campsite all day,

watch somebody being interviewed right by our camp, and enjoy the show from backstage, where yo can't really see much, but the sound's just as good as if you were in front of the stage, and we can actually watch the crowd gather, and seeing 25 000 people fill the Gorge is fun.

Coldplay

Those who know me know how I feel about Coldplay, and it is a fair assumption to make that the only way I would ever go to a Coldplay concert is if I were paid. Well, that's exactly what happened!

ERM, the second company I work for that does concerts in the area called me up yesterday to ask if I could work the Coldplay concert today, it's money so I said yes!

The band did have the most elaborate lighting set-up I have ever seen, including huge spots that scissored down behind the band, creating silluettes.

I have come to the conclusion that Coldplay have 2 major problems:
1) Whoever decides which songs become singles should be fired because the non-single tracks they played were actually pretty good, where as their singles are all whiney and god-awful!
2) their live show is interesting, but their video department is entirely too over produced! Video walls at concerts are there for the people in the back to be able to get a closer look at the band, not for on-the-fly music video shooting!

All in all it was an ok day, but had I not gotten paid for it I would never have gone, and I definately wouldn't have paid to go see them.

On a very positive note though, at 2:30 in the morning, on my way back home from the gig, I called into the End and won 2 tickets to see Franz Ferdinand in Oktober!

B.B. King

After finishing the Jack Johnson load-out at 12:30 am this morning, I got into my car (I had luckily packed up my tent and everything earlier) and set out on the 2 ½ hour drive to the Maryhill Winery where I arrived at 3:45 am, laid down in the back of my car for about an hour and slept so that I could get up and be there for my 5:00 am call to start getting ready for the B.B. King show. If it wasn’t for the fact that I could come home and sleep all day the day after, this would not have been a smart thing to do, but I did manage to work all day on one hour’s sleep after having worked a concert the day before.
Luckily, the equipment arrived in waves and we did have a decent amount of downtime in between unloading trucks, so it was all do-able. Again, hammocks were hung up underneath the stage and a lot of naps were taken.
B.B. King took the stage at 7 pm, or at least his band did, he came on and strapped on Lucille at 7:15. I was on show-call so I didn’t get a chance to experience the show from in the audience, but I got to see a B.B. King show nonetheless (kinda from the side, backstage)I love this job, in one week I got paid to see two of Britain’s most important Heavy Metal bands, and a legendary Blues guitarist, you really can’t beat that (well, you can if you throw in meeting the artists, but that very rarely happens, and has yet to happen to me). Surprisingly, the Winery only sold about 2000 of the available 4000 tickets to the show, but the empty seats didn’t seem to bother B.B. at all, he played and talked and laughed with the crowd and for an almost 80 year old diabetic, put on one hell of a show.

Jack Johnson

Today brought me back to the Gorge for a Jack Johnson concert. For those who don’t know who Jack Johnson is, one of the crew put it best when asked that question saying “Jack Johnson is music that makes women wet, kinda like John Mayer, but more”. Now that made perfect sense to me, and although it is not true for every woman, I am sure that every guy that got dragged to that concert did get some that night. As for the music, It was good enough that I didn’t mind listening to it, but I definitely wouldn’t have paid to go see that. Songs like “I wanna lay you down” and “Do you like my pecs?” makes you really wonder about what’s happening to the world of music sometimes.
Johnson did contribute a very nice cover of Sublime’s “Bad Fish” to the recently released Sublime Tribute Album, and as part of his encore, I do have to say it was the strong point of his performance.The Gorge was sold out for his show though (23 000), and every one on the crew was amazed by this fact, saying that this was the best selling show all season (then again, Pearl Jam is coming up in a couple of weeks and I’ve heard that tickets are going for about $400 on Ebay right now)

Ozzfest 2005

I answered an ad online the other day regarding working shows as a stagehand. I figured it was probably the House of Blues again, since I keep finding those ads, but figured I’d apply anyway, just in case. Good thing I did. The company that ran the ad is ERM, they staff the White River Amphitheatre, a venue located on the Mukkelshoot Indian Reservation in Auburn, just South of Seattle. They were looking for people to work Ozzfest. Of course I was on board, now if only I can find some more of these companies, I’ll be set and make my living as a roadie, but for now it’s definitely a very nice addition.
The routine was pretty much the same as always, unload the semis, help set up the stage (equipment, backdrop & props, etc.) wait to be cut and told when to come back to pack everything back up. This was my first time with the company, so I didn’t get show call, which is where you’re part of the crew that performs set changes between acts and is on standby in case anything needs to be moved backstage. The difference between ERM and House of Blues is that I don’t have backstage access during the show if I’m not working, but I can enjoy the show for free. (It’s great, I get paid to attend a Black Sabbath/ Iron Maiden concert!)
To be quite honest, I wasn’t too impressed by the venue, but I did enjoy the show. Right as I was coming out onto the lawn, there were a bunch of people huddled around an Ozzy look-a-like who was posing for pictures and signing things (the sad this is that most of those people though it actually was Ozzy). I had to take a picture because from a distance, he really was quite convincing, if you ignore the fact that he had absolutely no security with him, and the passes around his neck where not official Ozzfest passes (which of course you wouldn’t know unless you saw people backstage wearing the actual ones, like I did).
Interesting moments during the show include Killswitch Engage telling us that we are all ugly and our fathers should’ve pulled out, Rob Zombie doing his rendition of “Jessie’s Girl”, Mudvayne taking a moment to thank all the stage crew for all their work, a sign backstage anouncing the time of an AA meeting and a single solitary clock on the wall of the loading dock with a label proclaiming “Official Ozzfest Time ( I don’t care what your watch says)” It was interesting to see that Ozzfest is apparently 10 minutes ahead of the rest of the world.
Highlights were, of course, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. Both legendary bands I have never seen before. Maiden went all out with a set consisting of a changing backdrop for each song (they only played songs off their first 4 albums) several stage additions for running around on, an animatronic statue of Satan, a 10 foot Eddie who came out and interacted with the band, and of course, my favorite thing a band can do, they talked to the audience, explained things, told anecdotes, it was just great.Then came Sabbath, most of the set I had to listen to from backstage, since call for the load-out is always during the last 45 minutes of a show, but they played “War Pigs”, my absolute favorite Sabbath song and I was happy. Ozzy is surprisingly active on stage running around like “a retarded 5 year old” as one of my co-workers put it. But it was true, he was like an overly excited kid, thoroughly enjoying the attention and the whole process of being on stage. As we were loading his stuff onto the stage and setting it up, I did notice that he uses a teleprompter. I guess all the years of all the shit he’s done to his body has taken a toll not only on his speech and motor functions, but his memory as well. Amanda thinks it’s cute, I just think it’s interesting; the prince of darkness singing karaoke to his own songs.

Endsession 119

A couple of weeks ago, local band the Lashes were played a gig at a venue called Neumos. They filmed this gig in order to use it for a music video later on this year. As with most local bands this year, The End announced that there was going to be an Endsession with the Lashes. I figured it would be earlier that afternoon, since that’s usually how it goes. For some reason it was scheduled for 2 weeks later.
Anyway, they were randomly giving away tickets again, as they always do with Endsessions, and I figured, asking for them can’t hurt, people do it all the time and every now and then it works. It worked this time. I called Dick Rosetti and asked him if he had any passes left, he asked me if I’d like to go and that was that.
Apart from their current single “Sometimes the sun” I hadn’t heard anything by the band, but that has never stopped me from seeing a band before.
They played an acoustic set of about 7 songs, some older some newer, including “Sometimes the sun” and it was very enjoyable. Ben, the frontman, decided that it was getting way too hot, and when someone suggested to him he take his thick jacked off to cool down, he exclaimed “hey, just ‘cause the weather changes doesn’t mean I have to” which I thought was a very interesting way of looking at it. Then again, this from a man who wears three belts and still has his pants hanging down threatening to fall off?!
In lieu of laminated passes, the End handed out customized T-Shirts this time around, and after the show, we all lined up to get them signed by the band. Carrie, my sister in law who I take to all of these, had them sign her converse instead, which went over real well with the band, who said she was the first to ever hand them a shoe to sign.

Bob Dylan

This weekend was my second gig as a stagehand. This one took place at the Maryhill Winery in Goldendale, WA. This place is technically closer to Seattle than the Gorge, but because there is no direct way to get there, it does take 4 hours through the middle of nowhere to get there.
Maryhill is a small windery and vinyard that happens to have an ampitheatre on site that can house 4000 people. They put on 4-5 concerts a year and this year they started out with Bob Dylan.
Now Bob Dylan is not someone I'd pay money for, but in thi scase I got paid to be there so all was gravy! He does mumble horribly and I didn't know any of the songs they performed (his mumblings actually all pretty much sounded the same, no matter which song the band was playing) but is was a pretty ok show.
Since there was about a 6 hour gap between us unloading and setting up and the show, we had nothing to do during the day. Some of the people left to go check out the national park that is in the area, I on the other hand hung out under the stage in the shade (it was 105 degrees) and several of us hung up hammocks that we had brought and just lay there napping until the show. Hanging in a hammock underneath the stage is a very interesting place to witness a soundcheck!
I do have to say though, that I wasn't too impressed with Dylan himself. He never came out of his tourbus (not even for soundcheck) until a couple of minutes before the show, even his band walked around backstage, checking out the scenery, getting something to eat and chatting with people. Then, after their encore, then band rushed to the tourbusses and peeled out of there with a police escort, leaving the fans shouting for more and by the time the houselights were turned up, the band was long gone. One of the guys backstage commented that that was the fastest he had ever seen a band leave after a show.