Hello Friends,
We have just completed our second tour of Japan. Our numbers are fewer on stage but the goal remains the same. Perform the music we love to the best of our abilities and with the utmost respect. In the process we hope to be able to introduce a new generation of fans to this amazing collection of musical compositions. In about 2 weeks I will be making a very special announcement regarding our new SINGER for the upcoming European and American tours. Who will it be? Who Could it be? Wouldn't you like to know... More on that later - back to Japan.
It was fun to play for the fans in Japan once again. They are traditionally more reserved during the show than other audiences but they show their gratitude for the performance at the end just as well as any audience in the world. I had the opportunity to meet many of the fans and was surprised by how many women were at these shows. The 2nd night's audience was a bit more rowdy than the first night. There was a girl in the front row in a Suzy Creemcheese shirt and a school skirt singing along to all of the songs and headbanging away during the guitar solos. She sure had a lot of energy.
One thing I remembered from the last tour was a guy who played the recorder (flute style instrument). He played Inca Roads, Blessed Relief, Lumpy Gravy, even bits of Peaches En Regalia and The Black Page. It was very entertaining and skillful too. He danced around like Pan whilst playing. I saw him again at the end of the 1st night. I was hoping he would come back on the 2nd night because I wanted to invite him on stage to play with the band.
I called out to the audience but unfortunately he wasn't there on the on the second night. Next time!
This trip was a whirlwind. Prior to leaving for the tour I was spending an inordinate amount of time trying to program the sounds for my new guitar rig. The new system is pretty reliant on brand new technology. I needed to scale down the Twin Towers rig for travel over seas. I still wanted to be able to achieve the same detailed tones as the last rig or even improve on them. The new system is certainly capable of that and more. It takes massive hours of sonic exploration in order to figure how to replicate the kinds of tones Frank used on records. The Fractal Audio Axe Effects devices that I'm using allow me to store presets of multitudes of very accurate recreations.
Technology can be your friend or your enemy, sometimes both at the same time. I had that experience upon arrival at the venue. Somehow there was some corruption in the stored data and all the work I did back in LA was essentially rendered meaningless only 2 hours before showtime. There was not enough time to get everything sorted so needless to say I was at a slight disadvantage when it came to navigating through the sonic landscape. Levels were off and I had no way of retrieving specific sounds because I had no opportunity to program names of presets.
I actually wasn't able to pass any signal in the system until about 15 minutes before doors on the 1st night. There wasn't any time left for a soundcheck. The show must go on....
I managed to make it work on night one. Night 2 was greatly improved even though we didn't have much of a soundcheck that night either. In any case here are some audio examples of the new rig. These are FOH reference mixes.
We're off to Australia tonight. The festivals will be a lot of fun. See you on the road.
