I was contracted to bring audio on board the "Freedom of The Seas" promotional voyage around the New York harbor and down the eastern coastline to somewhere off the coast of Virginia. We were to cruise with a boatload of travel agents and marketing people who were all there to take advantage of the free food, booze and entertainment offered by the Royal Caribbean company as the world's largest cruise ship was introduced to the world via a live, onboard broadcast of "The Today Show" with Katie Courac and Matt Lauer. It was a gala event that included a bottle of champagne broken across the hull of the ship as well as performances by Barry Manilow, Jon Secada and Lauren Harris. Freedom of the Seas is a 160,000- ton,15-story-high, 1,300-foot-long floating hotel, so you can imagine how large a bottle of champagne needs to be to launch a ship of this size. If you're still having trouble visualizing the enormity of this behemoth, just picture turning the Empire State Building on its side and pushing it into the New York Harbor. Never having been aboard a cruise ship before I had no clue what to expect at load-in, but as always it all worked out perfectly and the threatening storm cloud that hovered over us all day finally broke and drenched us as we loaded in our gear. On board, I must say that the stage crew that loaded us in was surprisingly competent and pleasant. I say surprisingly because I have had some crews in major venues that weren't as good as these guys, and this was by no means an easy load.
Fortunately, we had that night off and our first show, which wasn't until the next morning, was only a back-line gig for Manilow. After stowing all our gear in the massive ship's hold we did what any self-respecting crew would do when presented with free food and liquor: We headed for the bar. This late night binge really set the tone for the rest of the cruise because even though I didn't have another drink while on-board, I constantly felt a little drunk as I did not have, nor did I ever really find, my "sea legs."
The "Today Show" was uneventful for us, and afterwards we docked and unloaded Pete and the Manilow back-line before heading out into the harbor once again. The next show we did was on the pool deck with Lauren Harris, the daughter of Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris. Her music had a similar rock 'n' roll feel. We were only contracted for the back-line portion of this event, but we did assist in getting the monitors and house system set. The system was not really set up for a rock band, more for playback and the Calypso style bands that usually play around the pool deck. There were about eight Clair Brother speakers flown around the deck at intervals of 15 feet, with two Community bass bins on either side separated by about the same distance. The band was provided with some small JBL monitors and the console was the digital Yamaha O1V. The on-board engineers were competent and helpful, but they were locked out from the crossovers and no matter what we tried we were not able to get around the brick wall limiting that was built into the system. That said, the show came off as well as could be expected sailing around New York harbor high atop the Freedom of the Seas at 11:30 on a cold, windy and wet night.
The next show was a couple of performances by Jon Secada, held in the main theatre. This is a beautiful little space, well designed and equipped with a hydraulic stage. The full theatrical stage has stacks of Meyer MSL4 high packs and subs stacked on either side. The house monitors are Clair PMs and the console is a DigiCo D1. We, however, brought along a Yamaha PM4K as an FOH console since Joe White, Jon Secada's engineer, is not a big fan of digital consoles. Unfortunately, other shows' rehearsals in the theatre left us very little set up time, and the fact that our console would have to be situated under a balcony convinced us to not use our console. Instead, Joe had to mix the band from the Freedom of the Seas' DiGiCo D1.
I happen to like the DiGiCo consoles, as I think they sound great and are quite userfriendly, but I, like many other engineers who have spent years mixing on analogue consoles, find it hard to make the transition to the digital thinking. Unless one gets enough playing time on a console it can be very difficult for an engineer when presented with a digital situation to easily navigate around the console and mix their show. Joe did a great job mixing Secada, and Steve, the on-board house technician, was extremely patient and helpful, but Joe was still frustrated by having to navigate his mix through the uncharted digital territory under a time crunch. The whole situation made me think, though, that in today's market "state of the art" is digital and, like it or not, digital consoles are here to stay. In the same way that Pro Tools replaced Studer 2" tape decks, and CDs replaced vinyl records, I foresee a future with very few, if any, analog consoles.
Despite some of us feeling the effect of our land-lubberness, after all was said and done, we had a great show, and the Freedom of the Seas is an amazing ship with great equipment and a great staff. Fortunately for us, we lucked out for the second time in a week and got to off-load our equipment during a torrential downpour that made the load-in storm look like a mere drizzle. It only took me a couple of days on land before I could stop lurching back and forth as I walked, and I don't think anyone will ever mistake me for a sea-faring guy, but I can guarantee that in the near future the sound reinforcement industry will be as digital as the bridge of that huge ship, and those of us who are reluctant to change may find that holding onto the past is like chasing after a big white murderous whale. Eh Ahab?
