A few hours later and things havent changed much. We all went to dinner in honor of a band members birthday. ALL of us went to dinner. All 12 of us. I cant remember the last time that the band went to eat all together let alone the whole band and crew. Chiles. It was the preffered spot this evening. Being as how we are in a parking lot mall type complex in boise, idaho. Whatever. Tommorow seattle. Then seattle again. And then after that portland and then some other places and before you know it I will be home or out with someone else. I am excites at the prospect of working with verbena again. 6 or so years later. I really hope that comes through and that my mixing the party thing on the 27th doesn’t screw things up. I understand if it does though. The world doesn’t revolve around my schedule. I revolve around it. Or some shit like that. Went to the mall today with LD, E Rock, Rage and Scotty. Good times let me tell you. Good times. E Rock loaned me some dough and I got a new pair of shades finally. My old ones are just so scrathced to hell that seeing through them is like looking out a frosted glass window. Now I am in the back of the bus by myhself listening to music and writing. The Big Lebowski is playing up front and I have it tuned in in the rear for my viewing pleasure. I just polished off a pint size bloody mary and had some valium so things should chill out some in the next few moments. I of course am thinking and worrying about this that and the other only some of which is actually under my control. Or maybe it is all under my control and I just choose not to exert it. I don’t know. I am no fucking philosopher. I am just a sound guy. Nothing more and possibly a bit less at times. It depends on what is going on at the moment. Currently I am liking the following things; behringer tube mic pres cranked to within an inch of their lives. Cheap samson large diaphragm condenser microphones. And any thing else I can get my hand on. I have come to the realization that at this stage of the game I can not afford expensive toys. I simply don’t have the 2 grand to lay out for that mic pre, eq, comp in a box. I don’t even have anough money to buy the comp alone by itself. But I have an ok mic collection for what I am doing as well as a few ok compreesors and some other outboard. But its not what you have its what you do with it. Or some such shit like that.

I have an ounce of good weed. I mixed a show on the new Meyer Milo boxes at the Warfield in san francisco. Those boxes are really amazing. A pm4k and 2 tc m5000 were also of note. But those boxes sounded amazing. It was a big room but the covereage was fantastic. 4 flown per side and 4 stacked on the deck per side with 2 msl2 used for infills. Really nice. And a great crew. The system tech was awesome. Actually listented and responded to what I needed. Nice.


I should have been listening.
To every word you said.
Oh what have I been missing.
Wishing that you were dead/
I didn’t mean to be stupid/
So far from home.
Oh what have I been learining.
By beingg all alone.
Every little thing.
Every little thing.
Every little things gonna tare you apart.
When you were younger.
Sweet my life away.
I was trying tom keep the door locked.
Now rea;lize that’s a mistake.
Every little thing.
Every little thing.
Every l;ittle thing.
Is gonna tear you apaprt.
Every little thing that you do seems so beter tan anyhing I can do.
You get the point if you know what the fuck I am talking about.
Sitting on th4e bus outside of hamerstein ballroom in nyc.
I live here.
I have not been to my apartment.
We leave for boston at 5am. Its now 2:45am.
11 vdosc per side flown with 3 dvdosc per side on the bottom. 6 subs per side ground stacked.
2 prism per side as near fills.
The best rig I have heard in that room.
Certainly better than the kf 750 sb 100 rig I used a year or so ago.
A PM4K with a BSS varicurve with the wired remote head.
Neat stuff.
Bss, drawmer and summit were on dynamics.
And a TC500,2290,PCM70,SPX990,H3K were used to slick things up a bit.
It was fun.
Big odd shaped room. But it sounded ok.
People seemed to like it.
We bought an Audix OM5 for paul to replace the beaten up Beta 58 I have had him on for the past year and half. I think the OM5 has a smoother top end response. I think it will work better for paul and his voice.

Yeah, rock and roll.
Been to 2 zoos since I got here.
Cant remember the last time I was at a zoo. And now 2 within 5 days. A new record.
Yet another record.
Now I want to go to new zealand.
Because it is further away from ny than australia is.
I think it is further. It seems further.
Like you have to fly to australia and then fly there and it takes a few hours to get there from here so in my mind that makes it further away. And that’s what its about. How far can you go. How far away.
So far so good though.

Radio show then live show tomorrow.
Live show is at the metro. Where the band played on Saturday night.
There was something going on at the club on Sunday so they moved it to Monday.
Whatever.
Should be fun though.
That club was fun.

Its like being commited.
Or in prison.
Or incarserated.
You have all these things you do in nomral outside life, all these responsibilities.
They all seemingly disapear.
For a while I cared about what was happening outside the little life I have made here.
Then I didn’t care so much.
And on one hand I feel more out of my mind than ever before.
But sometimes I think just the oposite.
Then I remember that I havent factored in the real world.
We fly home tommrow.
Tonight was the last show of this little trip.
2 in japan and 5 in australia plus a live radio show.
I really don’t feel like going home.
Normally I would be psyched to be going back home.
Even after only 2 weeks. Which is nothing. But I just start to think.
And that’s where my thoughts go sometimes.
On the other side of the planet and its just the same shit here.
Un fucking believable. That it is the same stuff here as there.
As far away as I can go, besides new zealand, and this shit is here.
Now I have to go to new zealand. Just to know if there is any place on earth that I wont follow me.
And only then will I have the proof that I want.
Or the that I think I want.

More rubish from my mouth.
I talk more shit then anyone I know.
And I don’t fucking care.
Cause as someone said before me, math is money.
Show some fucking smarts and find out where that came from.

Back home now for a week or so.
Fucking blackout last night.
Black outs are a big deal in NYC. The last one I remember was in 1977.
I had coincidentaly just bought a flash light because I was going off to sleep a way camp.
And I was staying at my grandparents apartment in brooklyn. And Bang. The lights went out.
I remember my brother was at my moms house at the time. I think he was taking a bath and the lights went out and he screamed. So the story goes. Last night I was not in the tub. And I did not scream.
I was on the couch, computer on chest, ac on full.
I heard the pitch of the ac change for about 2 seconds. Then the lights flickered. Laptop lost network connect and switched from ac to battery. Then it was quiet.
Except for the constant noise from outside my window. Which was close. Because the ac was on.
Eventually I opened the window and even the door and hung out on the terrace and smoked and watched the darkened city skyline. Then I eventually passed out with my portable teevee in hand in bed watching some dating show. It was either that or the news. And the the news had nothing to tell me that I didn’t allready know. But now there is power. It came back to me around 8am.. I clicked on a fan and went back to sleep. Which is what I am going to do now very shortly. Taking a snooze.

The suatralian rmable that has now turned into the london ramble. At themoment. Later on it will be the english ramble and then maybe perhaps the german ramble. Perhaps even the rare airport ramble will be sighted. But that is a rare and seldom seen these days ramble. Reserved only when excess time at the airport allows. And with this bunch that generally never happens. But who know. Off to the matt snowball to pick up the gear and wheel it across the street to john henry for them to rehearse. Why I am setting gear up for a rehearsal is beyond me. I thought my rehearsal days were long behind me. But the way things sowrk or rather don’t work in this organization who the fuck knows. I will stop now before I start to get nasty.

Hotel room in Belfast, Ireland. Holiday In. I like them. Consistent. And good free breakfast.
-only later was I to find out that the holiday in that we were at did NOT offer the free breakfast WTF?-
The subtle differences between one chain of hotels vs. another. Whatever. A welcome change from the bus. Not that the bus is bad, but this is just better. And the bus is simply up the block and so was the venue. And we don’t have to be out of here till 11 tomorrow. Short drive to Dublin. Tonight was fun. It was ok. A glorified bar with a lot of p.a. but it wasn’t set up properly.

A few shows later. Today we are in holland. The festival is called Lowlands. We played a 5 thousand capacity tent. A nice PA. I don’t even know what the boxes where. The desk was a heritage 3000 and there was a ton of outboard. Including my new favorite vocal rig. A summit tube comp with a bss 901 in front of it. Totally allows me to control the 3k bursts from the lead vocal. I ususally wind up riding the eq quite a bit with him, but with the 901 into another good ompressor it does the job for me. Yeah whatever. So now I am sitting in a somewhat muddy field listening to the eels. I walked over and saw a few songs from Rancid on another stage before we got booted from the deck. So be it.

Where is this beauty that people speak of?

I think we are starting to peak.
Here sitting in a bus kin a parking lot in boise, idaho.
This is where we are starting to peak.
As they play wiffle ball in the parking lot.
And as I sit here and listen to music and type away for a few minutes.
A week or so into the Interpol us tour and it seems like we have had more days off then days on.
The rhythym keeps getting brokrn up.
I of all people don’t like 7 shows in a row no days off. But 5 is just fine.
We havent even had that. At least I don’t think we have. I am not totally sure here.
Nothing much to speak of about anything here.
I have seen a bunch of interesting things. Some of them even sounded ok. And some of them didn’t make a good first impression. This that and the other.
Scared of bums….
I am fucking tired.
Hows that sound.
Got to play with the new Nexo geo line array courtesy of thunder audio in detroit. That and the new lake audio system processor. That processor is amazing. Especially when you use it with the wireless pc tablet and can walk around the room and eq it from wherever you are standing in the room. The eq on it is also amazing, though I didn’t spend much time playing around with it. Chicago was good. Chicago sound brought in 12 apogee boxes and 8 subs whose model number escapes me. But it just sounded great. And the boxes were ground stacked and mix position was in a less than ideal location. But it was awesome. One of those nights that both you and the band were totally having a good time. Everything was just there. No fuss.
It was all there and then some.
I am fucking bored here writing.
I don’t want to think about this stuff let alone write about it. And here I am doing a bit of both.
We are on our way to seattle to the showbox. A flown nexo system that had a gamble desk the last time but rumor has it that there is now a midas XL3. Wont know until get there tomorrow afternoon. 2 nights.

typical night.
stoned.
worked.
came back to a hotel.
tonight it was melbou,australia.

I just said out loud that I don’t care about being home anymore.
It makes no difference.
Maybe I say that because we have had these sweet aprtment style hotels while we were in australia. LD and I have been sharing rooms the past few tours and this is the sweetest thing so far. 2 bedrooms living room kitchen and all that shit. A fully furnished nice apartment. I even have a teevee in my room in this place. This place is sydney. As opposed to the other places. Good show tonight. Really good. They were so good tonight. One of the best in a long time I thought. Totally relaxed. It came off as effortless. Another PM 3000 and a bunch of old martin boxes. But there was a ton of headroom. The processor was an older 2 space omni drive and it was glowing yellow. But it sounded surpirsingly good. The room cleaned up nicely with 1100 people in it. I even wound up putting some of the 160 and 120 back in. and a bit of 3k.

And now it is a new day.
My first day off in I cant remember how long.
See that’s what they try and do when you are on tour.
Get as many shows and stuff crammed into the smallest available space.
That means things like flying into a city and playing a show the same day.
And few if any days off.
But today we are off in sydney.
I think some of us are going to the zoo.
And you have to take a ferry to the zoo.
Which should be interesting.
Ferry rides are usually limited to our euopean adventures

Hi.
My name is harley and I write peoms.
Actually I lied there.
My name is harley but I don’t like lettuce.
And at the moment I am in a hotel room in Brisbane, Australia.
And it is very early in the morning and if I was able to go to sleep now I would be saying that it is very late at night. But I am leaving for the airport to fly to someplace else in about half an hour. I hope we are staying there for 2 nights. I hate flying and then staying in town for only 1 night. The whole process of flying is such a pain in the arse. Especially with everyone and their gear and the all the other crap that airports have. Airports are the most unfriendly places. People act as if they have never been in a situation where someone wants to check in and has luggage. This just seems to drive them mental. And then what to do with the luggage. Which is guitars and bags. Always an ordeal. From the biggest airport to the smallest.
Fucking pain in the arse.
Now I am really tired.

Had them bring in a new desk for me at this club in Brisbane.
Not that there was anything wrong with the trusty old Soundcraft 200 they had.
But I wanted something with a few more features, inputs and modern conveniences.
What I wound up with was a Crest X8.
That and a bunch of Drawmer comps and gates and a few DBX 160 made the night more enjoyable.
Tonight they are playing the second night of 2 at a club in Melbourne.
Adamson boxes, CA12s and a PM3000.
None of it being my first choice, but it all seemed to work.
Except when the lo-mid amp would thermal, then reset.
And then thermal again.
And again.
And this was of course after the guy who installed the system and had hung out with me by the desk for 6 songs had left. Leaving me to hit the call button on the com. Only to have that go unanswered.
With a little luck tonight things wont be as dramatic as last night.
But who knows.
Tomorrow we are off to Sydney. And another PM 3000.
They sure like their 15 year old mixing desks down here.
As long as everything works ok then the desk is fine.
It just seems that it is getting more and more difficult to keep a PM 3000 working these days.