Production Profile

Eighth Day and Wigwam Provide the Punch for George Michael’s U.S. Swan Song.

It’s been nearly two decades since British pop superstar George Michael — known as much for his bad boy reputation as his chart-topping hits — toured U.S. arenas. From his start in the 1980s pop group Wham! to his illustrious solo career, hits like “Careless Whisper,” “Faith” and “Father Figure” catapulted him into a certified pop culture icon and sex symbol. After a five-year absence from the music scene, Michael returned to the stage in 2006 with an 80-show European tour. He stepped it up the following year with the “25 Live Stadium Tour 2007,” which featured less tour dates but larger venues including Wembley Stadium in London. To coincide with his retrospective greatest hits album, Twenty Five, released this year, Michael announced the North American segment of his “25 Live” tour — his first U.S. tour in 17 years — which he also claims to be his last. For all these reasons, Michael’s fans were pumped with high expectations for a flawless-sounding show.

Audio puzzle solved for Wheel of Fortune

For 25 years now, Wheel of Fortune has spun its way into American homes, making itself a dinnertime ritual for millions of viewers. Taking to the road in this, its silver anniversary season, the No. 1 syndicated series setup shop at Chicago's Navy Pier to tape three weeks of shows.

Whether witnessed live in the cavernous confines of Navy Pier's Festival Hall with thousands of other fans, or on a small TV in your mom's kitchen, Wheel of Fortune is a medley of sound that oftentimes transcends its sights. The ratcheting rumble of the wheel itself rivets our attention, of course, while the dulcet tone of a correct consonant lends added inspiration to the lovely Vanna White's estimated 720 handclaps per episode. Announcer Charlie O'Donnell's voice is unmistakable, and the promising chant of “Big money! Big money!” could even lure a self-denying ascetic like the Dali Lama into a moment of prize-winning consciousness.

A sacred ceremony in a sacred place pulled off flawlessly.

Pope Benedict XVI came to America in April, and was astutely handled by the best, most experienced hands in the live event industry, from stadium rock to Broadway shows.

The Pope’s visit was a six-day series of events highlighted by a mass held at Yankee Stadium in New York City. It was the fourth in New York City’s history, but none of the previous events had as many limitations as this one. All the talent assembled and tools available had to make up for a considerable built-in scarcity: the lack of time.

When you are mixing and recording each night’s show, there’s not a lot of time for anything else.

The clock has just clicked over to 9:17 p.m. and Ken Van Druten is at all-faders-go in the front-of-house position at Arco Arena in Sacramento, Calif. Linkin Park has just hit the stage for the band’s final North American show, and everybody is looking forward to a two-month break. Well, everybody except for Van Druten, who is better known by his nickname “Pooch.”

The chart-topping country sensation boasts the largest PA system on the road.

Rascal Flatts has been on fire for a couple of years and, according to Pollstar, the band’s 2007 tour ranked in the top 10 of the year. Rascal Flatts puts on a major show and to support it, Sound Image put together what they say is the largest PA system currently on the road in the U.S., featuring 90 JBL VerTec VT4889 full-size line array loudspeakers and 32 VT4880 arrayable subwoofers and two Studer Vista 5 SR digital consoles. Sound Image is also using dbx DriveRack 4800s for speaker management and Crown I-Tech 8000 amplifiers. For the first time on a major tour, all aspects of the system are controlled through a single interface  HiQnet System Architect.

If sound for video games is the new film sound, mixing games live takes FOH someplace it’s never been before

Part rock concert, part “Let’s Make A Deal” live, part religious experience, Video Games Live is a 135-minute-long amalgamation of the scores and songs from popular video games performed by an orchestra and a choir and set to both preprogrammed and random game playing on a massive video screen. Perhaps the best analogy would be Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show of the late 19th century, which sought to recreate the environment of the frontier west as a traveling circus.

Rainbow Production Services and Thunder Audio Team Up for Dane Cook’s Rough Around the Edges Tour

When I got the call asking me to go out and cover a tour by a
comedian named Dane Cook, I had two reactions. The first was, “Who the hell is Dane Cook.” And the second was, “It’s one guy and a mic. How hard can it be?” I was in for an education on both counts.

Carlson Provides Clear Sound for Seattle’s Massive, Multigenre Bumbershoot Festival

Could Bumbershoot be the most eclectic music festival on the planet? It’s definitely got a serious claim. Where else can you hear hip-hop, post-modern jazz and Mongolian throat singing, with blues, gospel, folk and gypsy punk on the side, all on the same ticket? And we’re not talking generic genre bands: Bumbershoot organizers find and book trendsetters and scene-stealers. This year’s bill included the Wu-Tang Clan, Fergie, John Legend, Sam Yahel with Joshua Redman Jr. and Brian Blade, and Yungchen Lhamo. Plus Robbie Laws, the Holmes Brothers, Bert Jansch and Gogol Bordello. (If you don’t have a scorecard or the festival program handy, or don’t know the names, refer to the list of musical styles above for clues.)

Sure Sound and Light powers Sturgis Rally’s “best party anywhere”

Take one of the longest running fan club gatherings in history, an estimated 500,000 folk riding gleaming hogs around thousands of square miles of the Black Hills in South Dakota, the city of Sturgis — usual population 6,000 — and a huge natural amphitheatre, hosting some of the biggest rock’n’roll bands on the planet, and you have a true North American phenomenon. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the legendary Buffalo Chip, for 27 years the rockin’ heart of Sturgis Rally, and the campground where aficionados of the Black Hills Motor Classic come to party. For two weeks every year, it becomes the state’s third largest city.

Precise Corporate Staging and Alice Cooper team up for a good cause.

Thanks to an ever-widening web of generosity, dozens of underprivileged and underserved segments of the population are being helped in ways that were unimaginable just a decade ago. 

They may have whisper-clean sound, but Celtic Woman’s not a secret anymore.

It might be understandable if you have not yet heard of Celtic Woman, but the “secret” that has enthralled millions of PBS viewers and myriad concertgoers will not be one for much longer. The group’s debut was the #1 album on Billboard’s World Music chart for 68 weeks, only to be bumped off by their Christmas album, then that release was knocked from the top slot by the group’s A Woman’s Journey earlier this year. Having notched three successful albums (including a recent Top 10 rock/pop entry) through massive public television exposure, the Irish folk/pop project offering both covers and originals has beguiled audiences with a quartet of pretty voices, a vigorous violinist, pulse-racing percussion and a smooth mixture of energetic and ethereal moments. Currently wrapping up a 100-plus show tour, Celtic Woman is becoming one of the biggest (yet quietest) pop sensations around. 

How does a groundbreaking artist with more money than God spend his leisure time? How about a short run of shows in unexpected venues just for the fun of it?

There are a few people in the production community who I like enough to take their calls no matter what else is going on. So, even though we were deep into Production Hell on an issue of FOH and PLSN, I picked up when my phone said that Dave Tennent was on the line. Dave is the TD at The Cannery in North Las Vegas, an unexpectedly cool venue given the location — An “A” level room in a “C” part of town. (We wrote up the venue in the June 2006 issue of FOH. You can find it online if you missed it.)