Features

Parnelli Awards Pay Tribute to the Stars of Live Audio

The 8th Annual Parnelli Awards brought together the legends and up-and-coming talent of the live event industry to honor the companies and people nominated for their outstanding work this year. Held at the Rio Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, the show featured state-of-the-art audio, lighting and video, master of ceremonies Alice Cooper, and in keeping with the Vegas theme, showgirls decked out in flashy costumes to greet the attendees. The attendees paid tribute to audio innovators Roy and Gene Clair, founders of the Clair Bros. (now known as CLAIR) of Lititz, Pa., one of the largest and most successful sound companies in the world; and Dennis Sheehan, longtime tour manager for U2.

Brothers who built pro audio empire to be honored with Parnelli Audio Visionary Award

Roy and Gene Clair are quick to say they are “outstanding in their field.” Not that they are braggarts — far from it. They mean it literally, as in they are “out standing in their field” of humble Lititz, Pa. Far from the glare of New York or Los Angeles, the brothers built one of the largest and most innovative pro audio empires the live event industry has ever seen.

Three Days, Five Stages, 60,000 People, 100+ V-DOSC boxes and 19 PM5Ds

In its ninth year, the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival — located in Southern California’s desert town of Indio, 125 miles east of Los Angeles — the king of the American alternative rock festivals took place April 25-27 with attendance reaching 60,000 on each of the three-day mega concerts.

Sound crew delivered the powerful message loud and clear to raise money for charity.  

Since the time this story was written, Roddy Pahl, head of sound at MGM Grand, has passed away. Our condolences go out to his friends and family.

The MGM Grand Hotel and Casino’s newest venue, the Grand Pavilion, recently hosted a swanky affair in typical Vegas fashion. The venue, decked out in lavish decor, crystal chandeliers and expensive cars was transformed into Tinsel Town for the 12th Annual Keep Memory Alive Power of Love charity gala. The multi-million-dollar fundraiser brought together Hollywood celebrities, world-famous athletes and Vegas elite to raise money to help find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease and other memory disorders. VIP guests included Muhammad Ali, John Cusack, David Copperfield, Siegfried and Roy, Terry Hatcher and Hilary Duff, among many others. And for $75,000 a table, everything from the world-class dinner prepared by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck to crooner Michael Buble’s performance, had to be flawless. Perhaps most important, Keep Memory Alive’s powerful message had to be delivered loud and clear to raise money for the Lou Rubo Brain Institute. Enter Roddy Pahl, head of sound at MGM Grand.

As FOH has gotten more high tech, so has that slice of real estate known as monitor world

Once upon a time, monitors meant a mix or maybe two was handled from the same console as the house sound (and some folks — like this year’s Parnelli winner for FOH Mixer of the Year, Tom Young, still do it that way for acts like Tony Bennett).

But as personal monitors become the norm rather than some weird thing you have to adjust to for some gigs, the game has changed and that change is sure to continue. For instance, take the one-man approach of Tom Young and contrast it to the growing number of acts using more than one monitor engineer.

Training HOW Staff in the Basic Tenets of Good Sound — And Make a Profit Doing It

A few months back, I wrote a Sound Sanctuary article titled “Training The Faithful.” I mostly discussed working with and teaching all those nice house-of-worship volunteers how to take over mixing duties after I did an install or updated a church sound system. Unfortunately, I have failed miserably in my efforts to turn everyday, well-meaning and good-hearted churchgoing volunteers into respectable sound technicians. Not only have I failed personally, but the worship sound install industry is failing in general.

What’s on the Bleeding Edge Today Could Be in Your Rack Next Year

If you’ve ever had the chance to watch the original Star Trek series (by original, I mean the show ca. 1966 with Shatner, Nimoy et al.), it’s aston-ishing to observe how many technological prophecies were written into those scripts. Handheld communicators, miniature cartridges containing computer data, keyboards and touch screens for computer interfaces, talking computers that display photos and even a cloaking device are all Star Trek fantasies that have manifested in our world as common devices like cell phones, floppy disks (later, thumb drives) and everyday computers. Now, if I could only figure out teletransportation…. Keep in mind that these devices were dreamt up during a time when a CPU with around 64 ki-lobytes of memory employed vacuum tubes and took up more space than your living room.

Toasting the Best of the Live Event Industry

The Peabody Hotel in Orlando, Fla., was the site of the 2007 Parnelli Awards, but inside the ceremony ballroom it looked like Hawaii. Large portions of the crowd arrived decked out in their finest Hawaiian shirts, and FOH Editor Bill Evans abandoned his usual sandals for signature purple Bob Heil custom Converse high-tops. The hundreds in attendance constituted a Who’s Who of players in the live event industry, and whether they were wearing purple shoes or not, they all rose to their feet in honor of Audio Innovator award winner Bob Heil and Lifetime Achievement award winner Gerry Stickells. 

Once upon a time in the kingdom of Hertz, a small duchy in the southwest corner of the Land of Ohm, a rebellion was brewing among the foot sol-diers who made the kingdom’s many events sound excellent. These foot soldiers once were seen as the equal of the kingdom’s high priests, as their knowledge and expertise allowed them to make even the rattiest of sound systems sing like a choir of angels. But they had recently seen their status in the kingdom drop precipitously as some in positions of power in the kingdom began to suggest that they could be replaced by a new magic called digital technology.

Peers Honor Six Who Stand Out in Their Region

Despite their different zip codes, backgrounds and equipment preferences, every one of these six sound companies quickly jumped to the same ex-planation when asked about what makes them successful: It’s the people they hire.

“We invest in people,” Bobby Brantley says emphatically. “I say this again and again, you can have the best gear out there, but if you don’t have the right people behind the gear, you’re starting with one hand behind your back.”

From P.A.'s for The Who and The Dead to Talk Boxes for Joe Walsh and Peter Frampton, to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It is All Based on a Love of Music, Between Hearing and Listening.  

No one seems more surprised at Bob Heil’s success than Bob Heil.

Wide-eyed, a face pre-amped with a perpetual smile, the over-caffeinated Dr. Pepper-swigging Heil is that rare breed who is as liked as much as he is admired. Peter Frampton calls him one of the most sincere guys in the business, and in a business that is often short on sincerity, it is perhaps the highest compliment.