Living Colour gig report

[Jay Kahrs]

Some of you know that I also do a lot of live sound in addition to studio work, and 95% of my live gigs are at a club called Mexicali Blues in Teaneck, NJ. Mexicali opened in November 2003 and was built from the ground up as a place for live music, to that end the room has been tuned with acoustic treatment and had a killer rig installed. Maximum capacity is about 350-400.

This past Thursday night (8/5/04) Living Colour came in and played a killer two-hour set. The line-up is the same as it was in '93 and they put out a CD about a year ago. I gotta say, the band and crew are all super nice people and were great to work with. They got there around 2pm in the afternoon and they went on shortly after 10pm. I've been a fan since '90 or so and the show was a total gear fest so I snapped a bunch of pics. Love 'em or hate 'em...this is one band that can actually play and isn't afraid of technology.

[Jay Kahrs]

Here's FOH. The console is 32 input Midas Venice, the tall rack to the right is house gear. The rack to the right of that with the Space Echo on top was brought in by Andy Stackpole, their FOH engineer. The dbx 160's were rented for the gig. Under that is the house lighting controller and CD player.

[Jay Kahrs]

This is monitor world (aka"The Pit") were I spent the night. The desk is a Peavey 16x8 with a built-in split. We used 5 mixes that night, our four standard and in-ears for Corey. His rack with the Shure wireless mics and in-ear rig is on the right. In the bottom right you can see the cue wedge which sits on the floor and the stairs to the stage are next to that.

[Jay Kahrs]

Doug Wimbish's synth rig. Note the Peavey Cyberbass interface. All of this came out to a L/R DI.

[Jay Kahrs]

Bass rig, also stereo. There are a pair each of SWR 1x15 and 4x10 cabs.

[matt]

Jay:

What a great gig!!!! I'm assuming Vernon R. is still in LC. Did ya get a look at his rig.....I hear it is NUTS!!! Great pics!!

Matt

[Jay Kahrs]

Dougs pedalboard.

[Jay Kahrs]

Vernon's pedalboard from hell

[Drumsound]

What, no pictures of Will's drums!?!

Seriously thanks for posting these. I'm a pretty big fan. Those first two records are great. Wimbush kicks ass, but I miss Muzz...

[Walling1]

Cool, thanks for the pics!

I saw them this past fall, and it was a great show! I believe it was pretty early in their first tour for quite some time - they were pretty rusty, and messed up the intros to about 5 songs, mostly due to firing the wrong samples. But all in all, it was awesome to see them!

-Dave

[covert]

I saw them about a year ago. Like getting lessons on every instrument they played, all at once. I could probably see them once a week and not get tired.

[5down1up]

THX @ jay ...

Waz ur favourite colour baby ?????????

[heinz]

mmm yeah how bout the drum rig?

great pics! Glad to see Vernon still playing pink guitars.

Elvis is dead!

[Jay Kahrs]

Sorry guys, for whatever reason I'm having problems posting pics. I gave up last night and it's still not working now...

[Jay Kahrs]

Here's Vernons guitar rig with the laptop. Not pictured are the amps which were a pair of Dual Rectifier heads driving a 4x12 cab in stereo, miked with a pair of Blue Balls. There was a 1x12 combo for on-stage monitoring of the guitar synth with a 57 on it.

The speaker with the pink tape on it is the left side of FOH. It's hanging low enough that you can smack your head on it if you aren't careful...I've done it a couple of times and it hurts, hence the pink tape.

[Jay Kahrs]

Wills pad and loop box which ran into a mini-mixer and to a L/R DI.

[Geert van den Berg]

Yeah Jay, thanks for the pics! I am also a huge LC fan. I saw them also play a couple of months ago. They played very good.

Have any of you heard their new record? I like it it but I don't like the recordings/mixing/sound. But live it sounded very good, good engineer IMHO. But I thought he was also involved in the recording of the album.

[studjo]

I saw 'em too - they were unbelievable.

The new record sounds awfull though - I can't understand why it sounds so bad. Someone really messed it up Some songs are better mixed than others and some are just crap mixes (sorry whoever you are)
The music is still fun to listen too.

Jo

[Alécio Costa]

Their first two albums are pretty cool!

[Pondscum]

You said the guitar was miked with a pair of blue balls!

[Jay Kahrs]

The drum kit. There's Vernon on the left making some preshow tweaks to his rig.

Sorry these are taking so long to put up, for whatever reason I'm having problems posting the pics...grudge

[Jay Kahrs]

Showtime! I handed the camera over to Vernon's tech, Dennis since he was across from me and he snapped a couple of pics including this one.

[djui5]

Nice Jay...congrats on the gig.....thanks for the pics!

Glad I didn't do their last record.....ha

[David Herbert]

Great band, saw them twice back in the day (opening for the Stones on Steel Wheels and at Lollapalooza 1). They are just too experimental for most listeners. David

[Buddhaman]

I had the distinct pleasure of opening for them at Toad's Place in New Haven CT---August 2001

WOW...they are such an amazing band live....completely destroyed my old band (the Burning Buddhas) and I took it like a man...its a pleasure to get knocked off the stage when the band is as good as they were.

I also saw them last summer in the same venue...Vernon was playing a Crate stack...I am very happy he went to the rectos...cause those crate's sounded like....Crates!!!!!

Jay--great pics...Thanks!

Buddhaman

[axeman69]

Originally posted by Jay Kahrs
Here's Vernons guitar rig with the laptop. Not pictured are the amps which were a pair of Dual Rectifier heads driving a 4x12 cab in stereo, miked with a pair of Blue Balls. There was a 1x12 combo for on-stage monitoring of the guitar synth with a 57 on it.

The speaker with the pink tape on it is the left side of FOH. It's hanging low enough that you can smack your head on it if you aren't careful...I've done it a couple of times and it hurts, hence the pink tape.

That guitar rig is just, well, wrong! :-)

[Kent]

Originally posted by axeman69
That guitar rig is just, well, wrong! :-)

Nah, you must be speaking of the hat.

[Geert van den Berg]

when they played in Holland this year Vernon used 2 Crate heads (not Blue Voodoos, some newer amps I believe) along with a Mesa Combo. Sounded allright, but different from the Mesa sound, which I actually dig. He was the reason why I got a dual rectifier, and I have succeeded in getting a similar tone, so goal reached, nowadays I play my Bogner more often. I thought he advertized for Crate now as well, someone happen to know why he is using Mesa's again, maybe he likes them better, or were they rented?

[Geert van den Berg]

well they were Bule Voodoos I confuzed them with the older model, which looked different, but I looked on their website, Vernon is on the first page also.

[quadwould]

Hey Jay...do you know who was doing monitors???

was it Joel Schonbach? he's an old frined of mine. He is very good friends with Doug and Will (that whole Berklee thing) and did sound for them when they were with Vinx/Jungle Funk.