The Roadie Show

Legends!  These guys were laid back, relaxed and could still sing and play their asses off!  I’m always impressed when someone kicks ass for as long and as hard as Crosby and Nash.

The crowd begs for another encore

This is the kind of show we love to do - easy.  The band plays on nice carpets instead of risers, travels with a bus and trailer instead of a semi-truck…  it’s wonderful.  The audience was thrilled by the performance and demanded several encores! Here’s a look at a few pics from the show. You can always view more of my pics from the music world at the RoadieShow Flickr page!

Graham Nash and David Crosby rock out

The all-important guitar hand-off.  The bread and butter of a guitar tech’s paycheck is earned at this exact moment!

David Crosby waves goodbye after the final encore.  Job well done.

It’s been one hell of a great September for the RoadieShow guys! Lots of work and lots of play make Iggs and Rand happy!  I’ve been meaning to write a detailed post after every gig, I swear… It turns out that loading and unloading a 53 foot semi-truck by hand can wear you out!  One of these days Iggs and I will set up a time-lapse camera and show the world how long and physically demanding our workday can be.

Ok, enough complaining.  On to the update!

Podcamp Philly 2008

Adam, Paul and Rand Host a live episode of the Best Damn Tech Show, Period.

PodCamp Philly is back!  The guys from the Best Damn Tech Show hosted another smash hit live taping.  We drank beer at 3 in the afternoon, discussed news and reviews in the world of tech and made a ton of new friends.  We networked and partied our asses off… Tons of fun!

Kenny G

Kenny G is terribly pleased with himself.

That’s right, folks…  the one and only Kenny G!  Himself!  In the flesh!  Iggs and I walked in to this gig thinking it would be a piece of cake.  In the past few years we’ve worked with all the ‘Big Hitters’ of New Age/Smooth Jazz including John Tesh, Peter White and Rick Braun.  Those gigs were all easy, no-stress events with relaxed performers and happy crews.  Kenny G is a fucking Rock Star!  We built two small towers in the audience for Kenny G to climb and stand on several times throughout the show.  We ran multiple spotlights with several cues while he ran all over the house.  Iggs had to somehow light a tenor saxophone on a stand without spilling any light onto the floor around it.  We built a giant video screen that featured live closeups of Kenny G intercut with text that described to the audience exactly who he was and what he was doing:

“Kenny G holds the World’s Record for the longest note played - 45minutes 12 seconds”

“Kenny G is one of the original investors in the Starbucks coffeeshop chain”

“Kenny G is a pilot and often flies to his own gigs”

If you look to the left of the sleeveless bass player you can see the tenor sax bathed in light

In short, Kenny G knows who Kenny G is.  And he’s a New Age/Smooth Jazz badass.  He never messed up, never had a technical problem, never lost his cool.  He even gave away a saxophone onstage after playing it for the lucky audience member who won the raffle!  That Kenny G is damn good at what he does…

Daryl Hall

Daryl Hall of ‘Hall and Oates’ fame still has the voice and the chops

Daryl Hall came out with a top-notch band, great gear and a HUGE FUCKING WALL that is an exact replica of his barn back home.  Luckily it was mostly made out of foamcore and was relatively easy to construct.  Mr. Hall has a lot more hits than you realize - take a listen to your discography and you’ll be surprised that you know the words to most of his songs.  An entertaining show for sure.

A personal note - My old friend Mutlu opened up for Daryl Hall.  He’s a great musician and has some really cool sounding new material!

Mutlu rocks out with a little help from the keys

A great month of gigs.  More to come!  Stay tuned…

News
Ex-Google engineers launched the new search engine Cuil www.cuil.com to ho-hum reviews amidst a massive PR release. With it’s slick interface and huge index they may have been expecting more but its poor search results, many have written it off already. You might want to try ask.com for better results which isn’t saying much. To give you an example, a search for the “Best Damn Tech Show” bring up a Wikipedia result in the top spot that links you to a page that doesn’t even exist. Nice one.

Friend of the Tech Show, Ted Stevens the longest serving senator in congress has been brought up on charges (7 counts on failing to disclose - not for being a douce as most people thought). We’ve put together a highlight reel or some of his Tedisms courtesy of Jon Stewart over at our partner broadcaster Comedy Central. http://blog.indecision2008.com/2008/07/30/top-5-daily-show-ted-stevens-moments/

Iris on the Virus
Apple gets pie in the face from security researchers over a failure to act on patching serious DNS BIND flaw.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/29/apple_dns_patch_mia/

Schmidt Faced

Response to Gary Vaynerchuck

Rachel’s Soy Sauce - Dishing up the gossip for the gals

IBM facilities hosting 3 week tech camps for gals after hearing of the decline in female tech engineers http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080731/BUSINESS01/807310312

American Association of University Women Education Foundation is hosting a tech trek camp for 14 year old girl at Stanford University http://www.mercurynews.com/campbell/ci_10036148

Reasons girls should get into tech: hotter more intelligent guys-brain before brawn ladies, you get to travel, go to sweet conferences, meet really interesting people and be a part of the ever changing growing and evolving tech community. the internet is our own little ecosystem plus you get all your drinks for free…trust me, I know! :]

Around the World Wide Web
China had every intention of opening up access to the world but we’ve learned that they’re still at their cencorship game - apparently Best Damn Tech Show, Period is still on that list.

Portugal (cue Euro techno music) has grabbed 500,000 of the latest Intel produced Classmates PC which is a bit of a slap in the face for OLPC

Site of the Week:
www.chrisbrogan.com

Here’s a few pics taken by Iggs and Rand over the course of our 2008 season.   Let us know what you think!

Deborah Harry, of Blondie fame.  She’s really cool and does a lot of benefit shows.  She’s been hanging around with the band Spiraling a lot lately…  Let’s hope they do something together!

Ladies and Gentleman, REO SPEEDWAGON!!!!  A true rock show, complete with giant drum riser, spotlights, projection screens and two kick drums.  ROCK!

Arlo Guthrie - A Legend.  In Iggs’ words: “A true entertainer and totally cool guy and crew. We look forward to this show every year.”

Henry Fucking Rollins.  You read that right.  He’s the man, just take a look at his promotional poster:

He’s a cool guy, legendary for his appreciation of Roadies.

Sinead O’Conner.  According to Iggs: “One of the best sounding shows all year.”  Check out the size of the hole cut in the kick drum!

Thanks Craigslist!  I answered yet another post and landed a cool gig with a staffing company based out of Washington, D.C.  They sent me to handle Video Assist duties at a 4-day corporate gig in a hotel ballroom.  Early AM start times but easy work and decent pay. Here’s a look at the finished stage:

Here’s a pic of ‘Video World’, where I spent most of my time.  Luckily, it was located backstage:

Trust me, it looks more complicated than it is.  We had two projectors shooting video on two rear-projection screens, two cameras, a small audio system and lots of convention-goers.   There really wasn’t a lot going on, just some basic camera switching and powerpoint presentations.  I met some good contacts, had a few laughs and (most importantly) got the job done.

Check out some pics I’ve taken with my new Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ4.  I’ve had my eye on it for awhile…  Iggs picked up an earlier version last year and he loves it.  Amazon.com offer it for only $200 so I had to grab it!  The last few posts have featured pictures taken with the TZ4, all of which are viewable on my Flickr page.

www.flickr.com

Man, it’s hot outside… Iggs and I have been in full summer mode! We’re doing a lot of dance recitals, graduations, festivals and ethnic events. If you’re into 7 year old’s doing ballet to the story of Alice In Wonderland then you need to come chill with us this month. Lots of kids dressed as animals…

One rock-ish show we’ve done lately was John Densmore’s Tribal Jazz. John Densmore is the drummer from The Doors - and a really nice guy. He seems to have lived a happy life on a beach in California, thriving in a world filled with meditation, drum circles and alternative medicines. He walked into the theatre in sandals and a white cotton smock-like outfit, wearing a gigantic smile. The one thing he didn’t have with him, however, was a drum kit.

No Problem!

It was actually already known that he would need a rented kit. The odd thing was he had no preference as to what kind! Most drummers that rent gear are VERY specific about the gear they play on. We often have a backup kit with a variety of different sized toms and cymbals to choose from. He loved the kit we had rented for him but still needed one thing - drumsticks! Luckily we had a pile of used sticks that were left behind. After picking his favorite pair he got the band together and started jamming. He put on a great show, I recommend checking out Tribal Jazz.

Time to get some rest, working with Gordon Lightfoot, Boz Scaggs and a slew of dancers this week! What a crazy job we have…

Here’s an awesome pic of Rand with a sweet Marshall stack and Hartke 4×10 bass cab we were using as part of “ROSfest.”

We worked with 10 different bands for this “prog-rock” festival. It was 49 hours at work in a 72 hour period, but hey…we were at a music festival, not an office! In between each act, Rand and I and the rest of the crew would head to the stage and get it ready for the next band. We had between 1 1/2 and 2 hours to get them set up and sound-checked so that their set could start on time. Once one band runs late, all the following bands start late. That means our 16 hour day turns into an 18 or 20 hour day. I’ve done those before and it is not fun! Needless to say, our crew rose to the occasion and all 10 acts got started on time. Of course, that doesn’t stop the evenings’ closer from running late. F*#kin’ rock stars!

I’d let her backstage…

Shared with Flock - The Social Web Browser
http://flock.com

When you have to rock the hardest, try it.