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We walked onto the stage and farted around until Spencer was ready. Dean and I tuned up. Itch did some jumping jacks while singing Lager and Ale. Nigel complained about how long it was taking. He wanted to be as high as possible for soundcheck. Every minute mattered.
Stage volume is different than PA volume. Itch had mostly him and me in his monitor, with a dash of Nigel and Dean. I mostly had my bass and microphone with Itch’s kick drum, hi-hat, and snare. Nige had his voice twice as loud as everything else. Dean had a nice mix of all of us, with his guitar pushed a little bit.
Everywhere you move on stage sounds different. Take two steps to the left and the only thing I could hear was drums and Nigel. Two more steps and it was all Dean and Nigel. The most important thing for the three of us is that we can all hear Itch. He’s the motor. If things ever got messy, we’d jump on the drum riser and look him in the eyes for a few seconds. He’d get everything back in line.
Out front, you aren’t aware of any of this. The monitors are blowing sound up at us, our amps are blowing at our backs, and we’re hearing the PA too, but from behind the speakers. It’s noisy. Spencer balances all of that noise out for the audience so that it sounds like a super loud CD.
Bigger recording acts have someone mixing monitors for them. You can sometimes see them off to the side of the stage. Their job is to make sure each person in the band hears what they want to hear no matter where they are on the stage. For a stadium act, their monitor system would be pushing more wattage and speakers than we used to have for our entire PA in the clubs. You really have to know your shit to be the monitor mixer. Keeping a band happy with the sound is way harder than keeping an audience happy.
We were nowhere near at the level of having a monitor mixer, so Spencer did ours like usual. The settings didn’t change much from venue to venue. They’d been basically the same for years. If we wanted something turned up or down, we’d point at it and give it a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Front of house sound is a different kind of challenge. Venues have different shapes, dimensions, and ceiling heights. They have hard surfaces and soft surfaces, all of which impact the sound. EQ and volume always need to be tweaked. Hence, soundcheck.
Most sound engineers get the band members to make some noise individually—snare drum snare drum snare drum, mic check…check 1 check 2—that kind of nonsense. Spencer liked to tackle the whole band at once. He’d count us in over the monitors in the voice of Tommy Chong or William Shatner or some other celebrity. He was a pretty good impressionist. Sometimes he’d sing us in like we were toddlers: “just one more bite of broccoli, are you ready Mr. Man? And-a-onesy-and-a-twosy-and-a-threesy-and-a-foursey.”
We’d try out some different transitions between songs in our set or play a few cover songs we used to play in the clubs. Sometimes we’d just jam. It was fun, especially when we were all shiny-eyed. Spencer let us play for about 40 minutes while he dialed everything in, and then it was Boink’s turn.
After both bands had soundchecked, we gathered around the tables for dinner. Randa had arranged a potluck. Stef made dick-shaped cookies with huge ballsacks and a chocolate chip right where the meatus would be. Every single one of us gave a blowjob to our cookie. It was going to be our last home-cooked meal for a couple of months. It was the perfect meal for family night.
The show went great. Both bands were on fire. We got a really good response because a lot of the crowd already knew who we were. We even got an encore and played Panama and Hell’s Kitchen. Spencer gave us the option of leaving that night, or at 7 a.m. We chose 7 because then we could get laid and sleep on the way to Kamloops. It was a much better plan than just getting some sleep on the way to Kamloops.
Spencer, Oliver, Ian, and Alex slept in the bus. The rest of us arrived within minutes of each other at about 6:45. Now came the tearful goodbyes. Some sad tears, some proud tears. Declarations of love. All the standard stuff.
Our ladies were going to fly out and join us in Toronto for a few days. They’d arrive Tuesday evening, we’d go out for dinner, then head to our hotel to do some proper fucking. On Wednesday and Thursday we were playing the Danforth Music Hall. No soundcheck needed for Thursday and we had the whole day off on Friday, so we’d have a couple of days to be tourists.
“Is Carl coming to Toronto with everyone else?” I asked.
“I dunno. Are you?” Itch looked at Robert.
“I dunno. Am I?” Robert asked.
“Oh fer fuck’s sake—Stef, will you please call the travel agent and add one to your party?” I said.
It was time to leave. Final smooches and more declarations of love. Get your farts out before getting in the van. We pressed our asses against the windows and mooned everyone when we pulled out of the parking lot.
Omg hahaha 😆 so much better than Trump stuff - good thing my parents were protective and I had to stay at the Conservatory despite many fights about playing Blues and Rock. Just ask Kelly Krogman… 😆😆😆