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OT: Meatloaf & Elton


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Off to Vegas for the better part of a week again on Sunday and am going to see Meatloaf at Planet Hollywood. Really looking forward to an intimate venue, have seen him several times but always in an arena setting...will share any details I can see on the rig and sound. We are also going to go see Elton John again; we went to see the Million Dollar Piano show at Ceasars back in October and it was by far the best sounding show I have ever been to, going to be up closer this time.

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Ooh, sounds like a great time. I last saw Elton in Vegas back when he was playing at Caesar's Palace in Celine Dion's theater. Awesome show, great sound. Who's playing bass for him now?

 

I think Matt Bissonette is still with him, that's who was with him last fall any way. I posted a feature on their system and engineers from PSW after we were there last...all analog front end and I think the team was together something like 37 years if I remember right

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A little factoid.

 

I lit Meatloaf at one of his first public concerts at the Morris Stage in Morristown, NJ. His group was paid $ 500 for the performance. About 3 months later he was back for a New Years eve concert at the save venue and was paid $ 15,000.

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It's not an analog versus digital thing that's responsible for great sound... it has a little something to do with talent and material of course;)

 

Yeah I think its a little of both. I saw the B52s at the same venue two years in a row at Wolftrap in Virginia holds about 7K with lawn seats. First time it was great the second time they had squeeze with them and I think cheaped out because they had to pay them too. Just using the house cabinets and not bringing the auxiliary cabs like they did they first time the sound was not great at all. Even though I love Squeeze skimping on the subs made a big difference. The house sound equipment there was not designed for full on rock shows.

 

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Hey AH since you work with Pros. If a board failed during a show what would happen at a Pro level show?

 

Generally a replacement board is found in a hurry, even a monitor board can generate mixes if worst came to worse. Fortunately, most failures occur at power up, which is why you see load-ins as early as we do at the pro level. Fortunately, we very rarely see a failure at a show. I can think of only a couple of times where this has happened and in both cases the act used my in-house console in place of their analog (in one instance) and their digital (in two instances) consoles. When a console fails tits up, most FOH guys become quite accepting of something that may not otherwise be their first choice ;)

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Have you ever seen a failure in the middle of a show?

 

Ouch this brings back memories! One time we were doing a industrial show (some BIG company like Suzuki or Zerox (my memory fails me)). During one of the intermissions the power supply of our Soundtrax console died. After some quick patch changes, we ran the remainder of the show using clearcom & the monitor console placed back stage. Very stressful but necessary. I really like having a back up P.S. availabe for bigger shows :-).

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Ouch this brings back memories! One time we were doing a industrial show (some BIG company like Suzuki or Zerox (my memory fails me)). During one of the intermissions the power supply of our Soundtrax console died. After some quick patch changes, we ran the remainder of the show using clearcom & the monitor console placed back stage. Very stressful but necessary. I really like having a back up P.S. availabe for bigger shows :-).
That's wack - I even carry a spare PS for my little DL1608 :eek: .

 

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I was again impressed by Elton, the performance and the mix were both just amazing. My comments earlier on analog weren't saying it was better than digital...just what they were using, I know I have been consistent in my comments here that it isn't the gear that matters, it is the people using the gear whether it is a musician or an engineer etc. I can't say enough about how good the show is, super high energy, amazing sound and he plays everything you want to hear him play. The setlist was different than in the fall but still did not leave me wanting anything different. I can't recommend this one strongly enough, if you are in Vegas go see it. We were in the second row this time but you don't need to buy the expensive seats; it was just as good last time when we were in the 1st balcony, it is an amazing sounding room and the crew has their poop together on getting it right.

 

Meatloaf was actually a little disappointing; the show itself is almost a bit of a variety show with him doing a little bit of comedy (very poorly), a little bit of the history of his life (which was actually very good, other than him playing out the role of his Grandfather as a Baptist minister as part of it) and some songs. He was having an off night for sure vocally, still very good but not like I have seen him before. The two women singing with him are just amazingly talented, they make going to see the show worth it alone. They played about 1/2 of Bat out of Hell with a lot of it changed, they did the songs from Rocky Horror Picture Show with the film running in the background...that was really good. The band is amazingly tight, he does a ton of changes to the arrangements on the fly and they are right there always. As far as the system, it looked like they were just using the house system at PH with some additional side fills; the show alternates with the Jacksons there, he only plays 3 nights a week so it makes sense. You can't actually see any of the system other than the monitors and sides which looked to all be powered Meyer; the sides looked like MILO and they wouldn't let me go see the FOH this time. The mix was just ok; it was great from an instrument perspective but the vocals were weak which is hard to believe with such powerful vocals. We were right at centre 3 rows back, I did wander around a little bit and it was only marginally better sounding further back so it appeared to be the operator and not the rig as the instruments were so spot on. I would still recommend seeing the show, but don't think it is all music and don't spend the money for primo seats like I did.

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;)Yes, Rob; you did mention it. I actually like the *layout*. It's the function that sucks, IMO.;) That can be fixed. I hope...

 

Glad you enjoyed the show, and also that Elton's still got his chops. He very much tied to audience reaction...I saw a show at the FU Center in Philly where the audience was very quiet and he was very good but seemed subdued. Saw him again in Vegas and the place was really alive, and he was on fire.

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