FOH at Large

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, defines the word Soul as: "The principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part."

Okay, baseball fans, the World Series is over and the New York Yankees have reclaimed their rightful place as world champions and the path of the parallel universe that the world has been traveling through since 2001 has been corrected.

Children are a blessing, and I wish that one day each and every one of you is able to experience the joy of parenthood. Unfortunately, good thing that it is, there is never a right time to have children. Though there are a million and one good reasons not to have kids, at some point each of the fine excuses one has created just fade away like old technology on a band rider, and you find yourself shipping out on a bus heading off to tour the brave new world of parenthood.

While cold jelly and custard may be every nineteenth century orphan’s dream of escape from gruel, this verse is precisely the reason hospitality riders were written into contracts. Being on the road itself is a grueling affair, and for the most part, there is not a large variety of highway food to choose from as the bus travels from town to town. Even airports, while offering a bit more variety in their dining experience, can only provide a limited fare.

Despite all of our expertise and experience, we live in a world where entropy appears to be the norm and there is no real assurance that our endeavors will lead to success.  Without bloviating or waxing poetic regarding our collective attempts to manipulate and control chaos, Murphy’s Law simply states, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

I have been investing quite a bit of time lately to studying various philosophy, religion and new age disciplines and I’d like to share with you some of the practical insights I have had in regard to utilizing some of these techniques in the world of audio.

What you are about to read may contain content that is distasteful to some people therefore, if you are one of those people, please cover your eyes when you get to the offensive parts.

It seems as though the world is collapsing around us as people are losing faith in a system that has let them down. Powerful people who are supposed to be leaders and role models have betrayed our trust, and even the elected officials that ran on a platform of hope and change are viewed with a wary eye.

To quote Gordon Gekko from the 1987 Oliver Stone movie, Wall Street: “The richest one percent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It’s bullshit. You got 90 percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you buddy? It’s the free market. And you’re a part of it. You’ve got that killer instinct. Stick around, pal, I’ve still got a lot to teach you.”

Now that my son is a high school varsity wrestler I have the great opportunity to spend most of my weekends inside various gymnasiums and it was on one of these wrestling outings that I found myself in Hamburg Pennsylvania screaming and yelling just like one of the wrestling dads I vowed to never become.