on tour: Bjork and others

After Stagecoach I ended up staying in LA doing a few more one-off shows with Rat Sound. One of them was Wango Tango. A one day festival with a bunch of pop and hip hop groups. Avril Lavigne, Bruno Mars, Maroon 5, Will.I.Am etc... Hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Brittney Spears. Haha. I was systems tech as well as one of two FOH techs. I had half of the 14 bands on my console. Most of them had engineers, but I also got to mix a couple bands as well. That was fun. Shortly after that I started prepping equipment for shows with the artist, Bjork. She's about the opposite of Wango Tango. Not main stream at all. Actually quite unique music, but very good. The schedule was pretty easy. 10 days in the same place in San Francisco. 3 shows. Another 10 days in LA. Another 3 shows. Not really a tour. Both shows were done in 4000 seat spaces and set up was in the round. Audience on all sides of the stage. I was only responsible for setting up the equipment and making sure it continued to work. So after load-in my job got considerably easy. MC came up to San Fran for a couple days and went sight seeing. In LA, the Palladium was 4 miles from MC's house so I ended up staying there. Funny thing she was out on tour with New Kids on the Block for most of the time, so I ended up hanging with her brother. Ha. Anyway, I'm home for a second and getting ready to head out to Mayhem Festival Tour with Rob Zombie. Should be an interesting one to say the least. Hope you guys are well.

Wango Tango 2013

Randomly watching the video screen I saw it start to shake and this guy pulled out a panel and stuck his head through. Funny.

Flo Rida (a huge guy) rode on someones shoulders across the 400' soccer field through the crowd and back to the stage. I felt bad for the guy carrying him.

Got to check and make sure everything's good in the shop before it hits the road. Bjork prep.

The show in San Francisco was at the Craneway Pavilion, which is an old converted Ford plant. During WWII all car manufacturing plants had to stop building consumer cars and trucks and use the factory for war vehicles. In this place they built tanks. It's called Craneway because there are two huge retired cranes that were used to haul the parts and tanks around. The wall on the left was all glass and looks out over the SF bay. Pretty cool.

They used a functioning organ on stage played by midi. Also a Gamaleste on the right that was midi controlled. Bjork helped create this instrument by converting a celeste. Replaced the tone bars with gamalean brass. I think that's right.

The pendulum harp is also a unique instrument. I believe there are only a couple in the world and helped designed by Bjork. Computer controlled, the pendulums swing in time to pluck each arm at a regular rate. The computer knows if the timing is off and will help by swinging them harder or slowing them down. Each pendulum also has a servo that rotates the base. Here there are about 12-15 strings. The computer rotates this to play the appropriate string at the right time. It's a very simple sounding acoustic instrument, but rather complicated operationally. This seemed to be a theme with Bjork. Using technology to uncover new sounds.

It's hard to see but in the back behind the keyboard player is a Tesla coil. Not just any tesla coil. This one plays tones. Depending on the sine wave you send the coil, it will buzz at that frequency. Also Bjork travels with about 20 women from an Icelandic women's choir. They are a large part of the show.

Got to see the city. First time in San Francisco with a day off.

MC and I sight seeing.

We found this cool one lane road that led out to a point that has a lighthouse. You have to walk through a cave to get to the lighthouse. Unfortunately the cave is only open on the weekends. Boo.

Lighthouse on the other side.

We took a little road trip and visited some breweries. The Lagunitas tour was cool. They have a fun history.

Heading to LA. Always good to see your luggage getting on the plane.

The Los Angeles show was in the Hollywood Palladium. This place has a lot of history. Frank Sinatra used to play here often. They used to film the Lawrence Welk show here as well.