We semi-recently did two shows with Rob Kapilow and his series, What Makes it Great? I’ll write here about the show titled, Beethoven’s First Symphony, the other show was about the Beatles, as I have no photos of that one!

Kapilow performed at The Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts 

https://ccpa.cerritos.gov

Rob has been returning to the Cerritos Center for thirty something years, three or four times a year. So it’s easy to say that he has been here more than any other performer in our history. And that’s great because he is a pleasure to work with, and is also a very talented musician, conductor, author and performer.

From Rob’s website https://robkapilow.com/

“Rob Kapilow “gets audiences in tune with Classical music at a deeper and more immediate level than many of them thought possible,” hails the Los Angeles Times. In a three-part format. Kapilow dissects a musical composition. The pieces are performed, and a lively Q&A concludes the evening. “You hang on to every word and note,” says The New York Times.”

Essentially he takes a piece of music, breaks it down, explaining each part of the composition in language that anyone can understand and tells the audience what makes it great. He also gives the audience background about the composer/ musicians who wrote the piece so that the audience gets a good idea about when, where and why the music came into the world. His show is always fascinating and I never fail to learn something about the history of music.

The Beethoven’s First Symphony show was of course interesting, informative and something to hear. Rob played along with the Fullerton College Symphony.

https://music.fullcoll.edu/index.php

The Fullerton College Musicians often accompany Rob, and they are extremely talented. The school has, over the years provided many musicians for this endeavor and all the many generations of students have been exceptional musicians.

Some quick video from rehearsal.

The other show we did with Rob Kapilow was about the Beatles. I didn’t really have time to write about this show as I was busy preparing for a corporate event which followed the morning after. So sorry!

Here you can find his books through this search link: Rob Kapilow’s Books.

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Next up was British Rock Royalty with Brody Dolyniuk. This is only one of Brody’s many shows and includes the music of The Who, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Queen and Led Zeppelin. Brody has been at our venue many times, and his production value is high as Brody cares a lot about every little aspect of the show and is involved in everything. He is a perfectionist. There’s always a good light and laser show. Brody and his band are great musicians, and they play the songs of all these bands better than anyone else you’re likely to see in concert other than the actual bands themselves. So if you see his name on an advertisement anywhere- go see the show. You are guaranteed not to be disappointed.

The last show of the weekend was a matinee with Frankie Avalon. Frankie is another performer who has visited many times. He is a great guy. His band includes two of his sons, Jr. who plays drums and Tony who this time played bass, but also sometimes plays guitar. The sound check went late due to the band members getting stuck in bad traffic here in Los Angeles. Frankie was not even able to check with the band, and then, only sound checked alone fifteen minutes before the doors opened! But Frankie was easy on us as usual and only took about three minutes to get done.

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He was sitting stage left in the wings struggling to put his feet up on a rolling cart, so I offered to get him an apple box, to which he declined. But this started a conversation. I asked if he still lived up in central California. He lives in the Big Sur area. I told him that I had taken a drive up highway 1 many years ago before the road closed, but the next time I took that drive I discovered the road was washed out when I came to it’s end and had to drive a small road back to the 101. He reminded me that it was Naciamento road, which joins the 101 at fort Hunter Liggett. Exactly as I then remembered. He said that although it’s not to bad if you’re on vacation – as the drive is still nice, but as a resident, the two plus hours drive is tough for residents to get into the city in both directions, north and south. “It’s not always as easy as one thinks living in paradise,” he said. I told him as I was keeping an eye on real estate on the big island in Hawaii, and I always thought about that when looking for houses because of floods and lava. One must choose wisely. And, also the story of when I lived in the hills here in LA that a tree crushed my house and my car. I lost most everything. Paradise at work.We talked about travel, as I want to go to Thailand in a couple of years when I retire. I was surprised that he had never been there on any tours. He said, ” I made it as far as Singapore, but never Thailand.” So I said, ” I guess you still have things to do and places to visit in your life!”We talked about New Zealand and Australia, where he said they had a lot of fans, Australia in particular, and he loved to visit. But then I needed to go back to work, as there was a small audio problem on stage, and he had to go back out to play for sound check. I had received a graphic from the company which they wanted to display on screen the day before the show, but it was square and didn’t fill the 16×9 screen so I did a bit of work to fill it out for them. I displayed it for Al on the screen, and he liked it, so we decided to use it for the show. I’m glad about that, and will give it to them to take on the road. I always love when I get a chance to talk with the performers, especially when I have worked with them over the years, like Al. Also “Weird Al” Yankovic showed up at the end of the evening and I got to meet him. which was cool! So another good evening at work.

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The load-in went smoothly. The band and crew arrived in a bus with a large trailer. They are traveling light for this tour as they have a series of fly days. I believe they were recently in Europe and in the morning they will fly to Hawaii. So they are traveling with limited gear, making everyone’s day easy. The crew, including Johnny, their monitor engineer, with whom I worked with most has been professional and super easy going, making for a good day.

I took a few photos from stage, so without further adieu, here they are.

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Their website: https://www.gtlorocks.com/

Tonight we will be presenting the band UB40, but as I am only working the load-in I will not be writing about the presentation unless something unusual happens before I leave.

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But tonight my story is not about the bands and crews so much as it is a personal story. If you read my book Stagehand: A Backstage Pass to my Life Stories, you would have read about my time spent with my friends at the mall, whom I like to refer to as ‘The Old Guy’s Club”. A group of older Vietnam war veterans. One of them who I consider one of my best buddies, Cecil, is a fifty year martial arts champion and Sensei.

When I told him that I was working with the Temptations he said to me, “Really? Otis was one of my students and a good friend! Make sure to say that Sensei says hello.” (For those who don’t know Otis Williams is the last surviving original,  and founding member of the Temptations)

So of course, since I love Cecil, when Otis arrived, I went to the dressing room and gave him Cecil’s greeting. He was very happy to hear from Cecil and asked, “Do you have his number?” Which I do. So I called Cecil and put him on speaker phone. Cecil had forgotten all about our conversation and was very surprised! I ended up giving Otis Cecil‘s contact information so they could catch up later, as it has been a few years since they have talked to each other. It warms my heart to have been able to hook up two old time friends after them being out of contact for so long. (It’s not easy to get a hold of famous performers, so it may have been hard for Cecil to contact Otis.)

I’ll include some photos below.

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Next up, and opening the show was Tommy Tutone. He played acoustic guitar with his band-mate Greg. You may or may not remember who Tommy is but I’m absolutely sure you will remember his 1981 song “Jenny”, which peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Still don’t remember. Well here’s her phone number: 867-5309.

Tommy wanted to walk out into the audience during the show and then head out to the lobby to sign autographs near the merch table, so I gave him a short tour of the facility and introduced him to the usher staff (Penguins as I like to call them). While we were out there chatting he told me “I’m almost never recognized out in public, unlike some other musicians.” to which I said, “That’s probably for the best, you can live a normal life, but you still have one of the most recognized songs of all times. You’re famous enough for me to get a photo with!” He was a really nice guy and you can see the photo above.

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A Flock of Seagulls started as an English new wave band formed in Liverpool in 1979 (now members live all over the world). The group hit the peak of their chart success in the early 1980s.

The group had a string of international hit singles including “I Ran (So Far Away)” (1982), “Space Age Love Song” (1982), “Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)” (1982), and “The More You Live, the More You Love” (1984).

The opening band is Men Without Hats, a new wave and synth pop band originally from Montreal, Quebec Canada. Their greatest popularity was in the 1980s with “The Safety Dance”, a worldwide top ten hit (No. 3 in the United States), and “Pop Goes the World”. They took the 1990’s off and returned around 2010.

The drummer, Adrian is mixing in ear monitors for the band from a small mixer at the drums. FOH (Front of House) is mixed by their audio engineer Nick from an iPad. They will have wedges on stage as back up mixes which will be mixed by Kerry (our house monitor engineer). All the inputs go to the Men Without Hats audio rack at drums and then split  out to our system.

Adrian, Men Without Hats drummer explained the name of the band “In Canada, because it’s freezing cold during the winter only tough men go without hats.” Men Without Hats are going out on a new tour soon and are just getting set up with this new input rack and monitor ears rig, due to somebody losing their old  one (amongst other gear) as they passed through an airport not too long ago!

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The sound of that Hammond organ is classic. They are unbelievably exciting! That old rock and roll sound. Then there’s Chubby delivering the lead vocals with an unmistakable voice. (But he’s also unmistakably not here for sound check.)

This marks the fourth time I’ve worked with them, first in 1998, New Years Eve 2000, 2018 and now.

I’m on stage as an A2 for sound check and they are playing The Fats Domino song Blueberry Hill. It sounds great up here. That’s in good part due to Kerry’s awesome monitor mix.

Last time Chubby Checker was here in 2018 with Frankie Avalon. I wrote about that in the manuscript for my (hopefully) soon to be published book Stagehand: A Backstage Pass to my Life Stories. (I gave a copy of the chapter to his manager Shelly for him today.)

Today has been a more smooth running day than that last one, when we had a few technical problems.

Opening the show tonight is Gary Lewis and the Playboys, we’re moving along to sound check them right now. Ideally the bands will soundcheck in reverse order, which they’re doing today but didn’t happen last time. Really Chubby doesn’t need an opening band to make him sound better, but he definitely has one. I’d give a more thorough review but Mom always said if I can’t say something good just say nothing at all. Well I guess I can say that the band members are all friendly and play well, I suppose I’m just not a fan of the singer Gary’s style of vocals.

It’s also another night filled with rolling risers for the drums and keyboards and also re-patching inputs between bands like a lighter version of last night with Jim Messina, no big deal though.

It’s easier working tonight because Jack and Kerry (our house crew) are mixing the show on our own desks, so no guest audio engineers or audio gear belonging to anyone else.

At showtime Chubby takes the stage singing Good Lovin, written by Rudy Clark and Arthur Resnick. It was a #1 hit single for the Young Rascals in 1966. Chubby doesn’t look or sound a day older than the last time he was here, this guy just knows how to rock! He’s dancing  all over the place, out in the audience, all over the stage, singing up a storm and the band is killing it! They are as tight as a band could be. The audience is going crazy. If you have never seen Chubby Checker in concert I suggest you try to catch him if you can. There is a reason why Chubby Checker is a legend.Definitely the kind of show that makes me glad to be working on this stage.

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Also two of the people working as A2 ‘s at the load-in will be leaving before the show so lots of notes are getting passed between us for the change over between bands. I’m sure that’s going to make things interesting during the change over. I’m actually the video projectionist tonight but I’m also working with Henry as an A2 as we both have different schedules that list us in each of the two jobs.

I’ll write more later depending on what happens.

At sound check I unexpectedly had a conversation with Jim Messina (I didn’t know it was him when we started our conversation). We spoke about stuff I wrote in my upcoming book,  about performers and how they treat people around them, some being good, kind individuals and others not so much. I pointed out how most people who are in the business and treat others well succeed, but there are some who have so much talent they succeed even though they treat everyone around them badly. He told me how he started working at age 13 assisting in a studio, and how his musical career bloomed out of that. He saw a lot of people partying and doing drugs but he had already started working hard, so he just kept up with that and it ended up paying off. He went from assisting to engineering, to producing and then to performing. All he knew was, “Once I started working in Hollywood there was no way I was going back to San Bernardino!” It didn’t matter what kind of work he was doing.

Obviously he is a down to earth kind of guy. He has friends in all walks of life working regular jobs, carpenters, plumber’s etc. – and it shows in his attitude toward life and the people who surround him. It’s refreshing to meet another performer who falls into the category of good people. I have also enjoyed working with and talking to his monitor engineer Willie too. He is a great guy. We spoke about how much fun it is to meet so many interesting and talented people in our business. So far all the crews and musicians working today have been great.

Sound check is still moving along fine despite the small bits of confusion, mostly because the road crews are all easy to work with (as well as the musicians). Hopefully the change over will go well.

Before the doors open and after dinner the carp crew and audio crew had a little meeting to come up with a plan for the movement of the drum, percussion and keyboard risers and how we will swap all the cables and re-patch everything. Did I mention that all the risers that the gear is on will move? Hmm? Maybe I forgot. So we now have a plan for the move.

Jim Messina and his band are playing right now, they are pretty good. I’m enjoying the show from behind the monitor board. It’s nice to have music I like playing on our stage. Most of my down time I spend listening for things going wrong on stage (so I can run out to fix them) and reading. Tonight I’m actually listening to the music for a while. The sax players are really good. Soon it will be change over time at intermission.

At intermission all the tech crew jumped on stage for the change over. Cables were disconnected and re-patched, risers, wedges and microphones were moved and swapped. I ran out to the video station and started the 7 minute intro for Pablo Cruise as Henry was still working with Johnny B. to tap through all the inputs. Jon was a little surprised when the video started, nobody told him both the band and our supervisor James had asked to start it! Yet he and Henry were able to get everything working except for one audience mic which we had changed over in the break. Other than that we had only to lift the ground switch on the bass during the second song- not an unusual problem. So I went out and flipped it between songs. Now everything is working fine and the audience is enjoying the show. All in all the change over was way more painless then expected- also not so unusual!

Now while Pablo is playing I am going to start putting together the mic kit for tomorrow’s show, Chubby Checker.

Tonight  has been a successful evening working with good people and good music.

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