During the last week we hosted an event for the changing of the Mayor. Basically a special city council meeting. So our job was to recreate the city council meeting chamber on our stage complete with audio, video and lighting in order to webcast the meeting out to the city TV station.

This is a gig which we have done on quite a few occasions (and at different venues).

Since the theater is in the middle of changing all the mid level management and operations personnel, for various reasons which I will not opine upon here, there was absolutely no plan for the day from above. And that meant that I was left to plan and work out the complete wiring of the event (as far as all video was concerned).

Luckily I have done this gig enough to have a good idea of how to get the thing done in my head. I consulted the city’s video guy (who works at the council chambers) in order to make sure my plan would work for his purposes (which it mostly did with just some minor adjustments).

So I proceed to lay out the cabling and network cables needed to make it all work.

Below are photos and information about the build of the event.

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Another thing which is included with this system is a new switcher which we can switch through an iPad from the stage managers panel (SMD) or anywhere in the theater. This alone is a huge improvement, as now nobody has to run up to the amp room on the second floor to switch the video from the advertising during preshow and intermission to the camera for the show presentation. There’s still more to do but things are vastly improved.

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It’s about his experience of acting in the movie The Princess Bride. We had met earlier in the morning in the green room as he was prepping books with some of the other CCPA crew members. I had asked him about his publishing experience, as I’m in the process of publishing my own book. He and Tony were super friendly. 

So in the hallway, I asked if they would like to see the autographed tiles upstairs on the third floor. I also told them about our ping pong ball collection. That’s  the technical crew’s private autograph collection from performers we like. I told Cary that we would love to get him to sign one later. They were interested in seeing the autographed tiles, so Ricky and I took them upstairs and we all had a fun time looking around at the many many tiles we’ve collected at the Cerritos Center for over 30 years. Ricky being kind of new hadn’t taken the time to look at them either. 

As we browsed the autographs Cary and I traded stories about some of the performers who we both had interesting experiences with. His stories were great, and he asked me if some of the stories I had told him were in my book. A few were.

Afterward Ricky and I went back to work on solving technical problems with the projection system, while Cary went to sign books for hundreds of his fans. He’s an incredibly nice guy.

When it was time for me to project the movie I was more nervous then I have ever been at work, due to the projection software crashing multiple times during the day. I was relieved when the movie played on both computers in perfect synchronization, and enjoyed watching the movie once again.

After my job was finished at the projection station I went to watch as the moderator Kirsten Vangsness interviewed Cary on stage. He also answered questions from the audience.

After the show was done Cary took photos with the city manager and one of the council members, then with the theater’s technical crew. I also got a photo of him and I together before showing Cary and Tony our ping pong ball collection, placing his ball amongst the other famous performers our tech crew have enjoyed spending our time with. Cary showed an interest in reading my book when I published it, so Tony and I exchanged contacts in order for me to send a book later when it’s published. I will also be purchasing a copy of Cary’s book as I am sure it is packed with entertaining stories.

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We’re working tonight on what is billed as the Latin Rock & R&B Show. Three Latino rock bands on stage together. In the order they played, the bands are:

Thee Midniters

Cannibal and the Headhunters 

Malo

Tonight’s show is hosted by “Shotgun Tom” Kelly of Sirius XM Satalite Radio.

Cannibal and the Headhunters was here once, a year ago, our contact is Robert Zapata, the drummer for Cannibal (and also Thee Midniters). He is a nice guy who has tried to make things flow as simple as possible. It’s the 60th anniversary of his band Cannibal and the Headhunters. They were one of the first Mexican-American groups to have a national hit record, “Land of a Thousand Dances”. Reigning from Los Angeles’ East side Francisco Mario (Frankie Cannibal) Garcia founded the group in 1965, and they helped to usher in LA’s “East Side Sound”.

Thee Midniters were among the first Chicano rock bands to have a major hit in the United States. They were one of the best known acts to come out of East Los Angeles in the 1960s. They were among the first rock acts to openly sing about Chicano themes in songs such as “Chicano Power” and “The Ballad of César Chávez” in the late 1960s.

Malo a San Francisco-based ensemble, was at first led by Arcelio Garcia, and Jorge Santana, the brother of Latin-rock guitarist Carlos Santana. After the release of their first album, many of Malo’s original band members left the group. But the band continues on and still retains their great sound. The horns and excellent percussion really take the show up a notch.

This show turned out to have a lot more audio inputs and videos than we first expected. We were sent a stage plot for Cannibal but not the other two bands. Also, although we knew that Cannibal would have horns, they were not shown on the plot and nobody told us what instruments would show up. So that was a surprise.  We also found out about the horns and percussion (three bongos, a pair of timbales, some cowbells and a cymbal) for Malo at the last minute, also a couple of saxophones, a trumpet and a trombone. Once again this is not that unusual in this business, though we always hope that the performers let us know ahead of time.

 (They never sent a plot or an input list for Malo)

At least all the players and their people are very friendly, which makes going a little out of the way for them easier. And they were good bands.

We were told there would be a video for one band and a still image logo for another, but it turns out each band has a logo and Cannibal has seven videos. They brought a laptop with all the content in PowerPoint but it’s better for us to throw all the videos into PlaybackPro Plus X, our video playback software, mainly because this way a progress bar never accidentally shows up on the screen. 

Some of the other crew members (not on audio today) decided to throw in a helping hand but accidentally plugged in some inputs out of order so Ducky and I had to go through each line and mark both ends for the changeover. So that didn’t really help, it just made more work for the two of us.

The last minor annoyance was that Malo, the closing band, didn’t bring their videos until a few minutes before they hit the stage for the show! No still logo, just three videos  to loop and no instructions. That’s how we roll in the live entertainment business.

At least all of the bands sound great though, and of course the horns help out in that regard.

Word from the box office is that the show has sold pretty well too, but it’s hard to tell from under the balcony where the video station is – although when I did get out on stage the crowd looked pretty decent.

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Wednesday is the actual event. First the employees will visit for the corporate meeting where the big wigs of the company will go over the numbers for last year’s sales in the different departments and present new products on stage. And there are testimonials from end customers and dealers. Ducky is working as the A2 today, placing lav mics on presenters and handing out handheld mics to people going on stage- which there are a lot of.

A band of employees plays a set of cover tunes and then everyone will go to the lobby and courtyards to have dinner.

After dinner is the headline entertainer. Tonight the guest band is one sponsored by Yamaha, a performer named Avery Sunshine.

Avery was here in 2019 for another event that Yamaha presented. Back then there were other performers with her, (Sheléa, and Grace Kelly) and a big band full of horns. Tonight should be a great show as Avery is a skilled musician and performer.

Her 2019 performance was incredible. Tonight she is here with her own band to sing and play keyboards.

The show went great, however there was one mishap near the end. The band was playing, and the bass player got a bit over enthusiastic and decided to walk downstage. I was standing next to the monitor desk with Kerry when he suddenly started yelling, “DI, DI, DI!”. I immediately looked over at the bass player and saw that the DI box, which connects the bass guitar to the bass amplifier and the audio desks, had fallen off the top of the amp and was hanging in the air! If it had became unplugged the bass guitar would fail, and it also will make a huge exploding sound through every speaker, and maybe blow them up. I ran out onto stage and held the DI in my hands until the bassist noticed what was going on and came back upstage. Everyone in the band thanked me after the show. Good thing Kerry saw that so quickly! One more disaster mitigated.

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