All information in these pages is copyright (c) 1989-2003 by Roger Nichols.
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The Worlds Shortest Tour
by Roger Nichols
It is very expensive to put together a tour when the band consists of 13
members, the crew totals more than a dozen, and it takes more than two 40
foot semi trucks to carry the gear. When Steely Dan toured in '93 and '94,
the managers figured that the tour had to last six weeks before the per
show rehearsal and travel costs came down to a reasonable amount. If you
buy a new car, drive it across town and then sell it, the total cost of
the trip becomes very high.
The Steely Dan Live album just hit the streets, and the record company wanted
to do some promotion. They booked Donald and Walter on the David Letterman
Show for Friday, October 23rd. Originally the plan was to use the Paul Schaffer
Band with just Donald and Walter. That plan lasted almost 60 seconds. It
wouldn't be in keeping with the Steely Dan if the plan remained that easy.
The only way to do it right would be to assemble the entire touring band
for the five minutes on National television. The record company executives
looked like they were choking to death on 100 dollar bills.
Yup, the Steely Dan way to do the Letterman show had to be the whole band.
Soon after the ball started rolling, Donald and Walter were invited to be
on the Album Network, a Nationwide radio show carried by a few hundred FM
stations around the country. They were just going to interview Donald and
Walter, and play some cuts from the live album. Definitely not the Steely
Dan way to do things. It was decided that as long as the band was getting
together to do the Letterman Show, why not do four or five songs live on
the radio broadcast? Make it so! To round out the tour, and possibly help
pay for some of the expenses, Steely Dan also performed two shows at Roseland
in New York City.
Rehearsals were Saturday, Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday the show was dismantled
and moved to Manhattan Center for the radio broadcast. The auditorium held
about 300 drooling radio contest winners and close friends (some of them
were drooling too). There was a control room overlooking the stage that
contained a 56 input SSL 4000G with Ultimation moving fader automation.
Basically, a studio environment for mixing the live tunes live to satellite
up-link. It took all day to set up the stage, and the band played five songs.
We even had the lighting company from the tour, which made the Steely Dan
Album Network show go down in history as the best lit radio show on record.
On Wednesday and Thursday we were back in rehearsal for the Roseland shows.
Friday we moved everything over to the Late Show stage. They had to build
extra rolling risers to fit the whole band on the Late Night stage. Sound
check went flawlessly, I was down in the audio control room ogling over
the billion input SSL and Sony digital multitrack that are used for every
show. The multitrack is there in case you want to re-mix the music between
taping the show and air time. I didn't elect to remix, it sounded fine the
first time. I have had 20 years to practice mixing the one song Steely Dan
performed on the show.
The Late Night Show turned out great. Michael Delugg, the audio mixer for
the show, let me help with the mix. It was really a test to get all of that
music to fit through one Auratone speaker in mono. The show is broadcast
in stereo, but the lowest common denominator is still the mono TV set. This
is actually the first time I have listened to any mixes in mono since about
1978. I thought everybody except Phil Spector forgot about mono. I stayed
up late enough Friday night to watch the Letterman show to see if the mixes
came out all right. The fact that Sigourney Weaver was on the show with
Steely Dan had nothing to do with it.
The end of the one week tour was quickly approaching. Saturday and Sunday
Steely Dan performed two shows at Roseland in Manhattan to a crowd of about
3000 each night. It was standing room only. The normal stage wasn't big
enough, so we constructed a stage at one end of the dance floor area at
the long end of the room. The lighting company from the summer tours came
in to light the show, and Clair Brothers did the sound. Just like a real
show. Everything turned out fine and we concluded one of the World's shortest
tours. There were actually more rehearsals than there were shows.
Left-over AES Stuff.
I think that the 1995 AES Show had the most cool stuff of any AES show ever.
The new Alesis ADAT XT was amazing. Time Line showed an eight track Magneto
Optical recorder that leaned toward film and video post production audio.
Fairlight showed a 24 track MO recorder that recorded all 24 tracks on a
single MO drive. Rourke Data had a video recorder that used MO for storage.
The play back of video could now follow audio with perfect synchronization.
When you scrub the audio, the video scrubs with it. No matter how fast or
slow you play or search, the video is right there.
The Digital Atomics Rubidium Plasma Atomic Master Clock was a big hit. Apogee
displayed their new eight channel apogee converter package. It looked like
something out of the cockpit of a Boeing 777. Sony had a new reverb that
combined all of the best features of the D-7, M-7, R-7, and some of the
other ?-7 units. From what I could tell at the show, it sounded pretty good.
E-Magic's Logic Audio looks like it is going to be pretty hard to beat.
This software package includes MIDI sequencing, and 12 tracks of digital
audio. It includes some interesting digital audio quantizing features that
work very well. It is worth looking in to.
Studer has a new CD recorder based on a new Phillips engine. It can record
audio CDs from and AES or S/PDIF input, or from a SCSI connection to your
computer. When fed via SCSI, the discs can be cut at 2X speeds. You can
connect two recorders together and make 2X copies from one CD to another.
When recording CDs from the digital audio input, DAT start IDs are automatically
converted to CD track indexes without an external box.
There were so many great new products that I can't even remember all of
them. I'll update you as I refresh my memory.
Other Cool Stuff for Xmas.
While I wasn't cruising the AES show, I was cruising the Sony Store on Madison
Ave. And the Sharper Image store. I couldn't walk out of the Sharper Image
without this new Casio digital still camera. It works like a video camera,
except that it only takes stills. The stills are stored in memory instead
of film, and then downloaded to your computer. The camera itself has a 1.8"
color LCD display that serves as the viewfinder during picture taking and
as a playback screen. The camera comes wit software for PC and Mac, a cable
for connection to your computer and a cable for playback on your TV set
or printing the pictures on a video printer. Run to your closest Sharper
Image or Wiz and check this little puppy out.
At the Sony Store I made the mistake of looking at video cameras. It is
all over for VHS and Hi-8. Consumer Digital Video is here. Sony has two
cameras that record in the digital video format. One of them has a single
CCD chip for all three colors, and the other one has three separate CCD
chips fed by di-chroic prisms for over 410,000 pixels of color resolution.
This means better than 500 lines of horizontal resolution. The camera also
records the audio as stereo digital audio at 12 bits, 32kHz sample rate.
Not CD quality, but better than the audio on most other video formats. The
cameras also have digital video in and out for editing to another digital
video deck. Oh, yes, frame accurate time code as well as all of the camera
settings are recorded on the tape along with the video. The tapes are smaller
than Hi-8 tapes and contain 6mm tape. A friend of mine who works with broadcast
video equipment says the picture quality is equal to or better than professional
Digital Betacam. Well, there it is. You can now do all of your band videos
in your project studio too. A virtual one man MTV.
I am running out to the 24 hour Santa Clause store to get a bigger stocking
for my fireplace just in case Santa wants to trade me a Sony DCR-VX1000
camera for a couple of backstage passes to the next Steely Dan tour.
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