Some Truth

Chapter 16

Carrying On

Back to nineteen eighty and shortly after moving out of our "band house" on State Street. I got a call one day, from one of the people at Custom Audio Electronics, offering to sell me all of their inventory of stamped, prepped and screen-printed metal stock, circuit boards, I.C. chips, faders, potentiometers, diodes, resistors, connectors and everything necessary to build their mixing consoles, as well as, even the patents for their console technology. We met several times, and I bought it all and hauled it away. They had invented the "Little Lite", and it had become an international best seller for them, consequently, they no longer needed the labor intensive bother of constructing the mixing consoles to be extremely profitable. Great bunch of folks with astounding mental capacities going to waste, but getting rich at the same time.

I bought another complete thirty-six channel CAE console, in perfect condition, off of Freeman James, a Detroit bass player who had played on a Rolling Stones tour, and this, combined with my now expanded old board which was still in excellent condition, as well as me busily putting together all of the components that I had bought off of CAE, brought me up to three complete front-of-house consoles, with two of them being thirty- six channels, of which twelve each were the parametric EQ with built in limiters, and one board a forty-eight channel mixer, built completely of parametric EQ channels, with all three consoles mixing into eight submasters and a stereo master, with a "talk-back" module. I was "Big Time".

Around that same time, another P.A. company was going out of business, and selling off their equipment at fire sale prices. I bought most of what they had as well. Rather, I should say I bought what was up to my standards, and left them with basically a lot of junk to fend off onto prospective buyers. I didn't know any of those guys, but judging by their lack of wisdom in buying audio electronics, it was no wonder they were out of business.

I bought a couple of "Show-Co" bass bins off of them that interested me. In testing the sonic qualities of the cabinets, I found them to somewhat sloppy and just too boomy. I redesigned the guts to them, reloaded them with two Cetec Gauss six hundred watt fifteen inch drivers each, and adjusted the path of the folded bass flue, making them true, one complete twenty Hz cycle, at one Db, at thirty feet from their fronts, cabinets. I then designed and built, or actually had a cabinetmaker friend of mine, Jimmy, build them, as I was too busy, two more, slightly deeper cabinets of the same basic design, to my specifications to be loaded with a single Gauss twelve hundred watt eighteen each.

The stacks of my cabinets on each side of the stage were all reverse loaded, indirect horn type fixtures, except for the high-end horns and tweeters, and comprised a height of sixteen feet on each side of the stage, all in one stack, or two stacks, side-by-side at each side of the stage eight feet high each, for a total of four stacks. The speaker stacks were much less bulky than many competitors' systems, but much more efficient, powerful, far reaching and pure sounding, than their front loaded cabinets which I always thought sounded too "in your face".

Beyond just the quality of purity that my system reproduced, decibel for decibel, compared to the overall cubic footage of the cabinets required by my system, and the cubic footage of my competitors systems, needed to efficiently fill a given venue with more than high enough sound pressure levels to be overkill, for the restrictions of state laws controlling both indoor and outdoor sound pressure levels at concerts for paying public, my system took up a third less space. That saves space in the transportation of the systems. Transporting them is expensive, and with my systems requiring less space I could easily lease smaller trucks for less money, thereby charging my customers less, and undercutting my competition, as well as being more pleasant to listen to, and satisfying everybody all the way around, including AC/DC and their requirement of four watts of power for every pair of ears in the audience, the main reason I'm nearly deaf.

As well, by me concentrating on squeezing every iota of efficiency out of my cabinets, and every other component of my systems, the reproduction and broadcast of the program material, the audio coming from the bands' efforts, shot out through my system more rapidly than it would through my competitors systems. Therefore, the faster response time, measuring in only nanoseconds to some few milliseconds, depending on the systems mine was compared to, allowed my systems to cover a much longer throw, in other words a deeper, as measured from the extreme back to the foot of the stage, venue, with less discernable time delay taking place. Making the reproduction as close to "real time" as possible. Therein reducing, and often eliminating, the need to "fly", or hang from the roof girders, time delay cabinets, to serve the audience members seated the furthest from the stage. This saved the promoter and the band even further money, and made me that much more competitive.

You can't judge gear by the promo brochures, and the magazine ads, you have to know by education and experience, about the musicality and the durability of the electronic circuits inside that black box, or that the design concepts behind those cabinets will suit your needs and desires. There is also newer and better gear coming out weekly, and if it is equipment that will be ultimately worthwhile, you better divest yourself of your dinosaurs and mastodons, and keep up with the current trends by investing in the newer apparatus.

I personally held off too long before investing in equipment from the DBX line that Harmon Kardon bought out, now called Harmon International. DBX's compressors and EQs, were and are, ideal, highly efficient, relatively low cost, and extremely musical sounding gear that allows the engineer to concentrate on the mix rather than be fumbling with the outboard gear. Now, DBX offers the Drive Rack P.A. as well, which puts five pieces of rack equipment in a single unit, which is able to do a good part of your prep work for you, and then suppress feedback during your show. It also gives you a better frequency crossover system than what you can normally lay your hands on, for much less than the cost of a White Labs system built for sensitive laboratory work, and demanding a king's ransom. Plus giving you a much lighter outboard rack. Weight robs you of the efficiency of your money and energy, in transportation and labor costs.

The money you save buying that one unit over the cost of the five individual units is outstanding. The technology behind it is phenomenal as well. Waiting to find out other engineer's opinions, instead of investing in one piece of DBX gear and finding out for myself, cost me probably two thousand dollars, just in missing out on the low introductory prices. I always regretted that loss, because after finding out just how good their electronics were, I never ran out of reasons to own more of it. I am not trying to sound like an ad for a particular company here, I'm just trying to hammer home a point.

Although I could easily set down a list of reliably stellar companies producing sound equipment, the point I am trying to get across is that with some newer developments, you just have to bite the bullet and take a chance on it, or pay more in the long run to own that same gear. Generally though, the longer a manufacturer has been in business, the better educated their research and development department is, and based on their own experimentation and research, the better sounding and more stoutly built their components will be.

Also, a very important point, they possess the patents on their technology so that other manufacturers cannot copy them. That is the biggest reason I am a fan of Crown amplifiers, they, and they alone, own the patents on their technology. I have never had a Crown fry on me during a performance, and I have put them through Hell. They are also a major factor in obtaining that transparent sound I am so fond of. They are extremely efficient and they just sound musical and pure, and they have the patents all locked up; Nanner, nanner, nanner, phluubt! Yes, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Dad always told me that, then he added, but only one right way; of course he said that was his way.

Professional equipment is just that. It is premium built, laboratory tested to exceed in its' use under all possible operating circumstances, and it costs a premium price. Most equipment for sale in catalogs, on the web and in music stores is semi-professional equipment, because musicians are starving artists, and can't afford the good stuff. Most equipment sold to churches is semi-professional because churches don't know any better, and they want it heavily discounted, and the equipment in a church isn't going to get the extreme use and abuse that a working P.A. company's equipment will see on the road, traveling a hundred thousand or more miles a year.

I have been noticing that most small P.A. companies are using semi-pro gear these days, and that being mostly Shure equipment, from what I have seen. I can't get up on my soapbox without stating that the first "P.A." system I ever owned in my first band, back four dozen years ago in 'sixty-four was a Shure Vocal Disaster. They called it the Vocal Master, but there was nothing masterful about it; it was simply a pile of junk. Consequently I have been very shy of Shure equipment ever since, maybe even to a point considered harsh by some.

Shure only regained any market position they had lost when the Beatles' first American concert was inaudible, because it was played through Shure Vocal Masters, after a photo of Mick Jagger holding a Shure 58 over his head singing toward it was internationally published. At any time, there was no way a Shure 58 would ever stand a side-by-side comparison with an ElectroVoice RE-16, DS-35, PL-95 or whatever model number EV labeled it with. There is no way the engineer can re-introduce frequencies into the signal coming from a vocalist's mic, that the microphone is incapable of sending to him. There's also no way to remove completely a built in peak from that mic's signal without detrimentally affecting the rest of the signal coming from the mic. Too bad for you, if you are a vocalist stuck with using a Shure 58.

ElectroVoice builds clean, flat sounding mics, letting the sound engineer EQ the signal of the singer's or instruments' vocal or audio signal to the resonance of the P.A. and the room the P.A. is set up in. Yes, professional EV mics cost easily, three times and more, than what Shure mics do, but you DO get what you pay for. Shure likes to decide what the engineer's EQ should sound like before he even buys the mic or sets the P.A. up in any venue. No engineer knows what any untried venue or audio source is going to sound like, until he hears it, or sees a spectrum analysis of it through his P.A.

This makes me wonder why Shure thinks they already know that the microphone should have a drastic peak built into it at 3.7 kHz., which is a wonderful frequency to build feedback on, the soundman's greatest enemy. I do like the Shure 57 as my preferred snare mic, however. I'm not on a rag about Shure, I am simply a purist who doesn't care to have a manufacturer censor the audio frequencies I want to hear, or introduce further complications into the mix than what the venue I am working in is already providing me with.

Chapter 17

An Interlude

Shortly after expanding my console and system, I quit Midwest Natural Foods to run my company, Aardvark Audio, full time. Part of the reason for me quitting is that the owners of Midwest, Henry???? and David Rock had sold the business to Balanced foods, out of New Jersey, and as the name of the business changed, so did the management. I got along with the new manager, Steve Giordano just fine, but I got along with his dazzlingly lovely twenty something year old daughter, Andrea even better. Come on now, you're not supposed to tell women's actual ages. They might forgive you for kissing and telling, but they won't forgive you if you reveal their age. I couldn't see making my new boss also become my new Father-in-Law, and that seemed to be the direction Andrea wanted to go in. That may have been fine, because I do have a thing for Italian women, and especially beautiful Italian women, like Andrea, and as well, it may have ultimately been a better decision.

Andrea had a sensually husky voice to go with her exquisite body, could cook fantastic meals, and was great in bed, being willing to try anything, although she never had orgasms. What is it with you Catholic girls anyway? But at least she didn't fake having them either. The stumper for me was that she had told me that she had been a whore in New York City, and I wasn't ready to pick up where I had left off with Deb. I'm not saying that Andrea would have reverted back to prostitution, or that I felt I had to require fidelity, or feel secure in the idea that the woman I was with was mine. Nor am I saying that Andrea would have ended up being a cheating slut, because I honestly think that she was simply being very open, up-front, and sincere with me, and letting me know the pain and injury in her background.

I thought she was opening up to me with the idea in mind that the only way to start a serious relationship was with total honesty. That's the way I took it, and I'm quite sure that it's how Andrea meant it, and I respected her for that, as it was a quality in a woman that I had as yet to come in contact with, before her. I was just simply still too heart sore to take any chances yet, and for me not being ready, when she was, it wouldn't have been fair to either of us. I tucked my tail and ran, and I will always wonder just how big a mistake I made in doing so, because she was a real sweetie, smart and aggressive, and I'm sure Andrea would have been far better than the alternative I ended up with.

Now, I'll tell you my original thought in writing my story down. I had thought that I would make it a kind of exposé of names, dates and events of a decadent nature, about all of the rock stars that I had worked for. As I've gone along though, I have realized that, being the basically honest person that I am, I can only tell you about the things that I have actually witnessed, and that most of the events that were of a sexual nature, took place behind closed doors when I wasn't present. You see a sound guy usually isn't quartered on the same hotel floor, or often even at the same hotel, as the band. Beyond that, he usually has to be back at the arena loading up the P.A. gear to drive his truck to the next show.

If he does have an in between night that allows him to loll around, he's more than likely catching up on all the sleep he's missed out on for the past twenty years, or just the past week, rather than partying with the band. While there are a few exceptions, the majority of rock stars aren't really very raucous, but pretty much are just lonely guys in a strange town who don't know anyone and therefore keep to themselves. So when it got down to it I wouldn't have had much to write about to begin with, and the few nasty stories I could tell, you've probably already read about in the magazines and newspapers. So... you're stuck with my dirty laundry.

The apartment building I had been living in wasn't the greatest place, but it suited my needs. I had two pair of Red Eared Wax Wing birds that I had inherited when Deb and I split up, and had become very close with them, and they extremely trusting of me. They weren't high maintenance pets, and I could be gone for a couple of days on a gig and not worry about them when I filled their reserve feeders. I came home from just such an event to find them dead. The landlord had seen fit to have an exterminator come in and spray all the apartments in the building, without any advanced warning, or any permission, and it killed my birds. That did it for me, and I started looking around for somewhere else to live.

One of the local bands I took on and did sound for had a drummer in it, Bill, that told me about a house in town that rented rooms, and he gave me the address. The following day there was an ad in the Snooze sporting that same address that gave more detail, and a phone number. I called and set up an appointment to go talk with the out of town owner's son, Chris, who lived at, and managed the house. All went well, and a week later in the fall of 'eighty-one, I was living in a nice, second floor, airy room that faced East and overlooked the street, with most of my furniture and household goods put in storage.

My first evening there, having spent the day unpacking boxes, setting up my Killer stereo, putting books and knick-knacks on shelves, getting my reading lamps and floor lamps situated by my two arm chairs, putting fresh linen on the bed, and the lamps on the bed stands; generally just nesting and making my new living space satisfactorily homey, while enjoying some good blues playing softly on the stereo. I looked up to see a girl standing in my doorway. Looking around, she said, "Nice. So you're the new guy, huh? I saw all the boxes piling up in here for a couple of days, so I knew Chris rented it, but I didn't see any sign of human occupation." I told her that I mostly work nights, so I wouldn't normally be around this time of day, and I introduced myself.

She said, "Well, my name is Con. Constance, actually, but everyone calls me Con." I asked, "And which do you prefer?" "Con is fine." she replied and turned and went into her room and closed the door. She had sort of an aggressive kind of abrasiveness about her that was a little unsettling, and her abrupt closure of the conversation followed by a seemingly irrevocable departure seemed somewhat rude. A half hour later she was standing in my doorway again. "By the way," she blurted, "where do you work?" Looking up from the book I was reading, "All over." I replied, then explained to her, "I set up P.A. systems for bands and run their sound for them, so where ever the gig is at." "Oh." she said, and was gone again.

I read for a few more paragraphs, and snapped the book shut. "Yes, Rude." I said to myself, and stood up, crossed the room and went out into the hallway. Her door was closed, so I knocked...loudly. She opened the door with a startled look on her face, mouth open. I said, "And where do you work?" She snapped her mouth shut and said, "Oh...uh, I work at the Ann Arbor News." "So, you're a writer?" I asked. "Uh, no, well, yes I am, personally. I majored in journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago, but at the News, I just take down the ad copy from people calling in ads on the phone."

I can be rude too. "Kind of a waste of a four year education, isn't it? Didn't they teach you Who, What, Where, When and Why at Northwestern?" Her cheeks were flaming red by now. "What do you mean?" she asked. "I mean that it seems kind of rude and monotonous to me for you to come stand in my doorway each time you think of a new question to ask, rather than inviting yourself in, sitting down and striking up a normal conversation that gets the five "W"s out of the way in one fell swoop, like anyone else would. Are you packing up to move, or did you just move in too?" I asked, looking over her shoulder and seeing her room in quite a state of disarray.

"I'm getting ready to go to Greece and marry the guy I've been going with." She said. "If you're here, what's he doing in Greece?" I asked. "He's Greek, he lives there." she replied. I had her on the defensive, and I could see that she was getting ticked off. "Well if he lives there, than how on Earth did you meet him?" I asked. I felt as if I had to keep asking questions if I was going to get any details out of her, and she worked for a news paper. Fucking typical. Beside that, she had ticked me off first with her rudeness, and I wasn't going to lose anything by rubbing her nose in it.