I work for this pretty large company that does national touring acts. They hired me right out of college five years ago. At school, I was doing similar stuff, just on a much smaller scale. So you could definitely say that music has shaped my whole life. And although I don't create it myself, I help get music to people, and I think that's pretty important.

Most of my jobs now are live acts, big bands. I also do a lot of raves. Of course, we're talking big raves. I did one at Downing stadium, which is huge, and I've taken P.A. systems into some clubs that a normal act would use at Madison Square Garden. It's heavy-duty, loud music, and a lot of speakers move a lot of air. The really large raves are producing like 134 decibels. A jet engine produces about 150. So these things are loud. We've stood there with meters. Needless to say, we all wear earplugs all the time.

The raves usually last from eight at night to six in the morning, which sucks, but it's not really that much work. You set up the PA system first and that's easy. It's like a snap-together model, you just put the pieces together. Then you have to EQ the room so that it sounds the way you think it should. This is usually done by playing a CD that you're familiar with. You know what it should sound like and you get it to sound that way. And that's actually a lot of fun, because you can listen to the stuff you like really loud.

So, anyway, you get the room sounding the way it should, and then it all changes drastically once you get people in there and so it's really sort of an exercise in futility, but it makes you look good, you know? And then you plug everything in, clamp it down, and let it go. I mean, a rave is all D.J.s and prerecorded music--if you have a live act there at all, it's a techno act with its own mixing consoles onstage. So what that means as a sound engineer is that you only have two channels--left and right--to put through the P.A. system, like your stereo at home--only much larger, of course. So there's a lot less to do than there would be with a conventional live band. It's actually a good opportunity to get some rest. There was a picture of me in Pro Sound News sleeping on an amplifier rack with the other engineer holding a decibel meter up in front of me that was registering 117 db. That's rave work for you. Cruise control.

With a live band it gets much more involved. Any sound that is going to be made on stage has to go through either a microphone or what are known as direct boxes--and it all has to have its own channel on your mixing board. So drums, guitar amplifiers, and vocals get microphones, and usually you will run the bass guitar and any acoustic instruments through the direct boxes.

Then, once all the instruments are hooked up, the next step is what's known as patching. Various effects are used to treat the sounds that will be amplified through the PA. These may include reverb and delay, as well as noise gates and compression. You patch, or connect, the devices that produce these effects to the appropriate channel on your mixing board. For instance, you may want to use a delay, a reverb, and some compression on the lead singer's vocal, so you have to patch those effects to the channel on the mixing console that receives the signal from his or her microphone.

Since you may want to use three or four different reverb effects and as many delays, plus other devices, you generally end up with thirty to forty cables hanging out of the mixing console. It's complicated, but if you don't do it right, the band is gonna sound worse than shit. You'd be amazed at how important these effects are.

Once everything is hooked up, you do a sound check. This involves testing each individual signal, then having the band play together so you can mix various signals together into what, hopefully, sounds something like their records.

Theoretically, there is supposed to be a break between sound check and the show. But what usually happens is that in sound check you find out that something is broken. Since it is the first time in the day that you are using all of the speaker boxes, all of the cables, all of the effect devices, etc., usually something is not working right. Stuff gets bounced around. It's all been carted in trucks on whatever beat-up road you happened to be driving on, and it breaks. It's electronics. It's not concrete that you're dealing with. So when you have an hour between sound check and doors opening, most nights you have some work to do.

Once the doors are open, that's it. You put a CD on and watch everybody walk in. There's never enough time when something breaks, but it's surprising how few actual disasters there are. I mean, things usually work out in the end. That's not say there haven't been bad nights. One very common problem is that you lose power in the smaller clubs. The refrigerator and the air conditioner kick on at the same time and it blows a fuse or maybe even your whole system. So the guy is standing there moving his lips and nothing is coming out, and everybody turns around and looks at you at the sound board. I've had mike stands thrown at me, beer cans thrown at me by Marilyn Manson and tons of shit like that.

When something goes wrong, I wouldn't say I don't take crap from anyone, but my attitude of just not caring--in a good way--really helps. If you let everything bother you, it will kill you. You've got to let stuff roll right off your back. I've gotten in trouble for my big mouth, for talking back to people, but that's no surprise. I mean, I knew the world was full of assholes before I started doing this. If I've learned anything, it's that when things go wrong, don't take it too seriously. Stuff will get done one way or another, and it will work out. Even if things are broken, the show will come off. If you get stressed out over every little thing, it will drive you nuts.

Anyway, that's the bad shit. The good shit is that I love this job. It's a ton of fun. I mean, I get paid to go to clubs, theaters and arenas and watch bands. What's better than that? And the technical stuff is very cool. Think about it--I actually get to say that I make a given artist sound like that artist sounds on stage. And it's nice when you get someone like Tony Bennett walking up to you after a show and saying, "Thanks a lot, it sounded great." I mean, that's Tony Bennett.

So besides the occasional disaster and the deafening factor, it's an incredible job. Although it's also pretty much a dead end job. I mean, right now, I'm a sound guy--in ten years I'll be a sound guy that's ten years older than I am today. There is nowhere to go. If you do A&R at a record company, you're out there busting your hump looking for bands in clubs. Then you get to start working with bigger acts, then you sign a huge act, and then they make you a vice president. But there is nowhere to go with this. I mean you may wind up mixing arena acts, but that's it: you're still a sound guy.

And you know, if somebody told me they were thinking about getting into this and asked me for advice, I'd say don't do it. The hours suck, and it's not worth it. Last weekend I left my house at five-thirty on Saturday morning to drive up to the Poconos, where I did a rave that lasted all night. Then I loaded the system up, went back to Queens and got my car, and drove into Manhattan and did an afternoon outdoor show. By the time that show was over and I had driven home it was four in the afternoon. That's almost forty hours of straight work. I spent my day off sleeping and staring at the wall trying to get my head back. It is just absurd the amount of time it takes to do this stuff. So, if someone really wanted to work in sound, I would steer them towards studio work. There is more to do and more places to go in the recording side of it.

But I should stop complaining. In fact, I shouldn't complain at all because I love it. And I'm not giving it up unless they fire me. (Laughs.) I'm gonna die doing this. I'm serious. I plan on staying young for the rest of my life, so I don't think there is any limit to how long I could last. As long as you're in decent physical shape and can hump gear, I don't think there is any time when you have to quit.

I did a date with Biohazard, and their soundman was, no joke, sixty-three years old. He's this dude from England, and he's a young sixty-three, but still, he's up there in age and you can tell he's been doing this a long time. I think he mixed for the Beatles--I mean, he's worked with everybody in the industry. And he's a really nice guy. That's what I want to end up like. That would make me happy and I think it would be most appropriate.

I mean, I started working in sound when I was nineteen. This job has given me most of my life experiences. It has rapidly turned into my whole social life, which is tough in a way, but if I could live my life over again, I don't know what I'd do differently. I love the whole music industry, and I would probably take just about any job in it. So I consider myself very lucky that I got such a good one.

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