All Is Quiet On New Year’s Day? Not If I Can Help It, Bono.

Last November I got a phone call from long-time friend and ex-roadie Jim Laing. We used to drive around in a succession of beaten up trucks, supplying PA systems for mostly ungrateful wanna-be pop stars up and down the Eastern seaboard.

Jim had recently come back from ten years living in Brisbane and was working as an occasional two-man quartet along with his brother Ritchie.

“Hey Dunk,” he said, “It’s Jim. ‘Ol’ Lizard Eyes’ is back. How’s the Duncan Disorderly Experience going? Got anything on for New Year’s Eve? Wanna do a gig with us?

“Ritchie’s organised a New Year’s Eve gig at the Phillip Island golf club. We’re looking for someone who can warm up the audience, play some music and join in the fun during the night. So naturally we thought of you …

“er, actually no-one else answered their phone!”

Well, how could I refuse an offer like that? “Thanks Jim – Let me just check my diary.”

I reached over and opened it up, and a family of moths fluttered out. I looked at the date – Ah, my 1991 diary – same year as daughter Fifi Trixibelle was born.***

Still, down to business, and the pertinent details for support band arrangements.

“What about the money?” I asked. He told me.

“Jeez that’s a lot,” I replied; “You’ll have to give me some time to come up with that much!

“No, you idiot, we pay you,” he laughed. “Do I have to supply a PA? Do I have to load in? Or out?”

“No, we’ve got all that. Just bring your guitar, an amp, and your laptop, and we’ll plug it into the system. What could possibly go wrong?” he added optimistically.

He rang me back five minutes later “Oh, you could bring some lights if you’ve got any.”

Woohoo – time to bring my Par 43 cans back into action. Keen readers of this page (who they? Ed) would recall that they were made from Nescafe 43 cans fitted with mini fluoro globes (43 beams in every can!), and the whole rig would run happily off a standard wall socket. [CX 29 – Par 43 Launch]

I had replaced them some years ago with LED Parcans that ran all by themselves giving a slow, colour change chase, which would wash the stage nicely, but the 43s could light up the front line of mics as well, giving the impression of a mega light show.

Over Christmas I did a shakedown gig at a Christmas party, and set up outside as it was such a nice sunny day. Oops. Too sunny. So sunny that I couldn’t see anything on the touchscreen of my Microsoft Surface Pro 4.

Hmm – can’t see the screen, can’t pull up the next backing track! Still, when the going gets tough, the tough head to the bar!

I asked the hostess if she could lend me an umbrella, and then my gf sat underneath it with the laptop. It still made little or no difference though.

I opened up the gig tracks folder in Explorer, then she stepped through the files one by one by pressing the Down arrow and then Enter. That worked, but the songs were as much a surprise to the partygoers as they were to me!

Totally random, but at least something came out of the speakers that they could jiggle and jump around to. And, as bitter experience in doing PA work has taught me, the audience is much happier when something comes out of the speakers rather than nothing!

My custom Down, Down guitar was the hit of the day, though, with everyone wanting to put it on and get a selfie with it. Forget the music – image is obviously everything!

At the end of the party, the Surface Pro was not happy at all with getting hot, and promptly sh*t itself, never to wake up again.

That’s OK I said to myself – I’ve got the spare HP laptop at home for emergencies. So a few days later, and getting dangerously close to the New Year’s Eve gig, I fired it up ready for a quick run-through.

Well, I’ve never seen a laptop so dead. Deader than Monty Python’s famous ex-parrot. After charging it for a day, it steadfastly refused to turn on.

Holy crap on a candlestick, I said to myself, I’ll have to go and buy another one.

But my loss was Harvey Norman’s gain, to the tune of just under a grand. But it got me a brand-new touch screen 17″ laptop with a screen you could see from the moon. Or Harvey’s car park, at least!

I copied the songs and the audio playlist software to it, did a quick check it all worked, chucked it in the car and we headed off to Phillip Island.

The gig went very well, with over 350 revellers counting down to midnight, and a good time was had by all. The new laptop worked perfectly, the PA was loud and never missed a beat, and the club was exceptionally happy with the bar takings!

… as bitter experience in doing PA work has taught me, the audience is much happier when something comes out of the speakers rather than nothing!

As we were pulling everything apart, Ritchie said to me “Hey Dunk, these Par 43s are really handy and easy to set up. Where did you get them?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him they were courtesy of Nescafe, so I said, “Oh, you can’t get them any more – the company went out of business!”

After the load-out, Jim and I sat around reminiscing about our early times in the live sound biz.

Casual acquaintances would often ask us “What do you do for a living?” If we replied that we worked full-time doing live sound for bands, their reaction was usually one of three generic types:

Older people would tend to say “Yes, but what about your real job?” the implication being that working 24 hour days and nights somehow wasn’t a real job.

“No matter how much you earned, if you didn’t wear a suit and tie, it wasn’t a real job!

“You could always feign deafness, cup your hand to your ear and say “WHAT? You’ll have to speak up – I’m a sound engineer!” but old folks often didn’t find that too funny!

Others would say “Hmm, the sound business, eh? Can you have a look at my stereo – it hasn’t been working right since the cat pissed in the tweeters!”

Or perhaps even worse “What sort of a stereo should I buy?” Any answer more detailed than ‘buy the one that sounds best to you’ would guarantee a night either being quizzed on esoteric hi-fi concepts, or possibly being forced to listen to Hot August Night on a 1960s HMV 3-in-1 at a level that would make a dead man’s ears bleed.

“Well,” said Jim, “I gave this a lot of thought. When people used to ask me about my job, I decided I’d tell people I worked at the city morgue.

“Trouble was, this turned out to be worse than telling the truth. Lots of people had a morbid fascination about this sort of thing, and would ask me all sorts of gruesome details, the answers to which I just made up on the spot from what I’d learned watching CSI or Midsomer Murders!

“Some wanted to know if they would be able to come along and watch me. And then I hit upon the best answer. When people asked me, I’d tell them that I was a ‘Stop’ and ‘Go’ man for the Country Roads Board!

“The idea of leaning on that sign all day sounded so ‘interesting’ that no-one ever wanted to know more!”

*** Calendars and diaries repeat roughly every 7 years, so if you’ve bought a few you can use them over and over again if you don’t write too much in them!

CX Magazine – April 2020   

LIGHTING  |  AUDIO  |  VIDEO  |  STAGING  |  INTEGRATION

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See also: Duncan Fry – Par 43 Launch – CX Magazine, July-Sept 2007
https://www.cxnetwork.com.au/duncan-fry-par-43-launch

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