The first time I broadcast Dance or Die from the Union, the quality of the my broadcast sucked ass. The sound man was relatively new and he wasn't taught how to send a copy of the board mix to my equipment. I ended up having to put a condenser mic up on a shelf to broadcast the ambient sound. It sounded farty and muddled. 128 people listened to that painfully crappy broadcast. So many people listened that the Pentium II 400Mhz computer I use as a shoutcast server ran out of memory. Funny.

Last night I had a direct feed from the DJ himself. I was on the side of the stage with a direct connection to the DJ's equipment. As a result of this arrangement, the broadcast sounded FANTASTIC. It was crystal clear. In fact, people at home could hear details that people at the live venue couldn't. Unfortunately, only 10 people total listened to this broadcast. Two were my friends. One was Michael's mom.

When the broadcast sounded like ass, everyone listened. When it sounded fantastic, no one listened. ARG! That's what I call Irony.

I was worried about being trapped on stage by a wall of writhing flesh. That didn't happen until the very end of the night, so I guess my worries were mostly unfounded. I talked to Cullen, and the next time, I can broadcast directly from the sound booth. That will be better for my equipment.

All-in-all, it was a good night.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Jim, aka, "the Door Man" found a very long ethernet cable in the back office of the Union. We strung the existing cable and the new one together. I think I may have the AMN buy a reel of cable. I want to permanently wire the Union and the Blue Gator with ethernet so that I can do more broadcasts from these locations. Wireless at Casa works fantastically, so there is little need for a permanent wire. However, there is no wireless upstairs at the Union. 1000ft of Cat5e cable costs around $150 online.

The stream kept going down during the first hour. I thought it was my server crapping out. However, I couldn't ping the gateway and the link light was off on my computer's ethernet port. If you can't ping, that means it could be a physical problem. Perhaps the wire was bad, or the connector we used was messing up due to the heat or vibrations of everyone dancing. Perhaps Our run of wire was longer than 100 Meters? However, I strongly feel that the real culprit was the cheap-ass belkin router that the Union uses for their local network. The solution was to have my laptop constantly ping my shoutcast server. Evidently, that constant ping helped to keep the router from flaking out. Once the ping was up, the stream never dropped again.

For some odd reason, I couln't get the overall volume of the stream past a certain point. All that really meant is that you had to turn up the volume knob on your computer. I think that could be a problem either with the drivers on my computer or it may have been some problem with my Lexicon USB preamp. I'll work on that at home this week. I have a nice radio with a subwoofer on it at home. I asked Jodi to listen in to the stream and she said it souneded fine.

As per usual at the Union, the stage-left power outlet had a permanent 60 cycle hum. Switching the polarity on the direct boxes didn't help. Luckly, the Lexicon USB pre-amp that I use has a polarity switch on the back. That cut out all the hum completely.

I love the new office at my day job. It's street level and I can watch all the people walking by. For some odd reason, there were an abnormal number of extremely short women walking on court street today. I'm talking women who are in the range of quasi-midget to Napoleonic. It's starting to creep me out. In fact, a bunch of them just walked by in a clan. Perhaps the weather was so nice that folks were wearing sandals instead of more elevating forms of footwear. I'll have to start paying attention to their feet as they walk by--that or I could just get a life?

Anyhow, I was thinking some more about last night's strange near violence.

You see, last night was a full moon. That explains all the strange happenings. Tonight is "new moon" as well. I hope I'm prepared to handle whatever strangeness happens tonight at the Union. I'm going to broadcast Dance or Die live, so if you're at home, and it's tonight, and you're bored, listen in. Show starts around 10-ish.

Honestly, there isn't much I can do in the way of AMN coverage this weekend. Casa has a cover show, and I can't video tape that for fear that the RIAA will bust me. I guess I could take pictures? Perhaps something original is happening at O'hooley's? I'll have to go their early, because I'm going to be trapped on the stage once dance or die starts really getting crazy. I'm actually NOT looking forward to being trapped on stage. Ah, who knows, maybe I'll have fun.

Last night we had a show at Andyman's Tree House. It was also Shotgun for Royalty's first ever show out of town. Felix got them on the bill. The Tree House is a tiny little bar owned by "Andyman", a DJ for CD101 who is also well known for his "Andy-man-a-thon" which he runs every year to raise money for a Columbus charity. It's a small club and I was slightly worried that the 'Royalty guys thought it was a redneck dive but once the place was packed it was obvious that the "Tree House" is a popular place for local bands. At times, the place was standing room only, but given the size, that's not hard to accomplish. :-P

Once again the door money was over $500 thanks a lot to Giganta and fellow LHC members, The Rackets. They both brought in a lot of friends. Once again my personal take for the night was right around $20--too bad the night me $16 in gas and $11 in discounted beers. It was basically a pay to play show. One of these days Felix will book a show that only has 3 bands instead of 4 or 5 so we can all have larger cuts. I suppose we could give ourselves the biggest cut of the dough--but I hate that crap! Until we get "signed" or "famous" or something, we're just another friggin' local band like the rest of 'em and therefore, the cash should be split evenly between the bands. Maybe you give the out-of-town bands a little extra for gas.

Performance wise, I think I had a darned-near flawless show. "Taco" Bill Morales let me borrow his bass amp. As a result, there was MEGA low end. My guitar totally sounded like a bass. I was talking about getting a new guitar before the show, but now I'm thinking all I need is a new bass amp. The one I'm using right now is an ancient Peavey. Bill's was a Galen Kruger 4x10 combo. It was sweet!

After the show, some people got a little grumpy. Evidently the locals were going to have a private afterhours at the club and they were in a hurry to get us out. That's fine and all, understandable even. One guy--I don't know, a friend of the manager? --well anyway, lets just say his method for shooing us out the door wasn't very polite. No one likes getting yelled at by a guy who is too drunk to pronounce the K sound in the word "Fuck." Once outside, Felix had just finished putting away the last bit of gear when this bald asshole commanded Felix to move his car "NOW" All this happened in a span of two minutes. Its strange how two minutes can **ALMOST** ruin a whole evening. We went to the LHC studio for an afterhours. We were basically the only people there. I was kind of hoping more folks would have been there, but all in all, we had a good time chatting it up. Everyone was in good spirits by the end of the night. I got home by 5 am.