It has been about two years now but as I sit here trying to compose my thoughts for this month's missive, I am reminded of a particularly busy Saturday night doing work for FOH back in L.A. before we all made the move to the desert.
First came a call from the production team with Dream Theater who were loading in at the Pantages and wanted me to come down. Next came the reminder that I needed to get down to the Forum between soundcheck and the Metallica show so I could drop off the trophy that Big Mick Hughes had earned as the winner of the Parnelli Award for FOH Mixer of the Year (Mick had been on tour when the awards were given out and not able to make it to the event). And then I got a call from Steve La Cerra, a friend from previous editorial pursuits and someone I had been trying to make space for in FOH (he's now our Bleeding Edge columnist). He was in town mixing Blue Oyster Cult (one of my personal fave rock bands) at a place called the Canyon Club. This was a circuit that would have taken me from my then-home in Altadena to Hollywood, on to Inglewood and way out west to Agoura Hills. That's about a 100 mile loop which, in L.A. on a Saturday night… Well, let's just say it was going to be tough. I ended up missing the Dream Theater thing while stuck in traffic, arriving at the Forum for Metallica just minutes before they went on so I ended up staying for the entire show so Mick and Paul Owen and I could chat a bit after the show, and then blasting out to Agoura Hills to catch the last three songs of the BOC set and talk with Steve for a few minutes. A nutty day. So why do I bring up this crazy Saturday night now? It's like this: As nuts as that night was, it's just a typical Saturday night in my new hometown.
Recently, we–and some of our more astute readers–have noticed a growing amount of coverage of Las Vegas shows, events and installs in the pages of both FOH and PLSN. While we have always covered the big openings here, we too have noticed that we are covering a lot of Vegas stuff and the question has arisen: How much is too much?
It is a tough line to draw. On one hand, we cover events and shows all over the world and have readers in 98 countries. It is important that the magazine be relevant to the entire live event audio and theatrical install industries and that it not become just the "Vegas production" magazine.
On the other hand, the sheer quantity and quality of the productions happening here is pretty stunning. A recent issue of Newsweek named Las Vegas as one of the 10 most dynamic cities in the world. Not in the U.S., in the world. It beat out places like Paris and Rome and NYC and L.A. From a production standpoint there is literally no other place in the world where shows of the quantity, variety and sheer audacity are opening on a very regular basis. For example, where else in the world do you have not one but two $40 million- plus shows that push the production envelope in ways that have never been attempted opening across the street from each other within the same week? The Cirque/Beatles show LOVE opens a few days from the time I write this at the Mirage and the Vegas version of Phantom of the Opera opened to reviews last Saturday night (two days ago) across the street at the Venetian.
And believe me, even with the amount of Vegas stuff we have been covering, we are leaving out a lot. I have been traveling almost every weekend for the past month or so and have missed at least three or four major tours that have come through town. There are outdoor venues that we have yet to even touch. We get an electronic newsletter once a week with a list of shows and it runs several pages long. Every week.
But again, the question remains, how much is too much? We have not only a desire but a responsibility to our readers to cover the world of production and not just one city. (Especially now that the only other live-audio- specific publication has been swallowed by a corporate publishing house that specializes in magazines like Tech Home Builder and Electronic House. FOH and PLSN are now the ONLY non-corporate production publications of any size out there–the last ones put out by people who do it because they are involved in and care about the production industry and do not see and treat the magazines as a cog in a corporate gear.)
So, as always, we will count on you, the readers, to let us know if we are doing OK, or if we are getting a little too enamored of our new home. Drop me a note to bevans@fohonline.com and let me know how you think we are doing. For now, I just heard about another million-dollar system going in at some place I had never even heard of. Gotta go check it out…
