Subtle shifts
Back to the right kind of pain
Finally noticing the first word
In the term human frailty
Switch the second to shortcoming
Or potential
The first word is the mystery, the adjective
The one that lacks perfection and adds character
As the dark weight breaks
And other familiar notions visit
Human explains both the broken balance and the fallacy
How could anything be organic when such a noble ego,
The silent poet, who feels and never speaks
Could be the only reason a marriage, a family, a life to be failing
Fragile ego
Stubborn that it could be the body
Not granting the brain its food
Just as the long scar on my chest
Reminds me of how the pipes didn’t give the heart
The blood to pump and spread
Throughout this body that somehow keeps working
Despite the lazy mind that watches, worrying
So the time for the brilliant brain
To be a patient passenger
Is here, again not allowed to insist
On terminal uniqueness
To trust direction from outside, unbiased
And wait for the flowers of spring.
A few weeks ago my wife Angela won a pair of tickets to the Big Game. Even when recording a video for the company that gave them away, it couldn’t be referred to by name, just the Big Game or the Event. I’m surprised that NBC didn’t complain about that. The name is protected by the NFL in that there is a layer of promotion and advertising that occurs with and without it; they enforce this and have strict guidelines (as well as financial considerations) that must be followed.
Everyone knows that this Event is about money. Cities fight for hosting it, companies spend 3 million dollars for a 30 second spot on TV during the game and the price of everything goes up for the finale of the American football season. Tickets, parking, concessions, lodging, drinks and merch are more than the week before. As much as this sounds like corporations flexing their capitalistic muscle, it also plays into the very real passion of the sporting fan, their team, their community, their love for the game. It’s a perfect storm of greed and passion, played out on TV worldwide.
I know a thing or two about events, from town parks to stadiums. I’ve been working in the event business for 25 years in many different roles:stagehand, roadie, vendor, stage manager, production coordinator. I’ve also participated in 3 different Super Events in 3 different roles; in 2005 I worked for a band at a televised off site event, in 2009 I worked for another during the Halftime Show and this year in Arlington, I went as a crowd member.
I am somewhat jaded when it comes to events, as I have spent so long having All Access passes and not having to herd along with the Great Unwashed. You might find this ironic but as much time as I have spent in arenas and stadiums, I really dislike crowds. For me a backstage pass isn’t about getting somewhere else, it’s about getting away from the crowd. Spoiled as I am, I still go to events without anything other than a ticket and can have a good time.
There is so much that goes into making a good event. Execution does little good without planning. Advance work and the ability to make use of time before doors is key. As my friend Chopper showed me, a good advance leaves you with time to deal with the 200 or 300 things that happen every show day that are unanticipated by people at every level. A good production person is one who handles those audibles with a level head and a smile.
Others I’ve worked with are pioneers in the event industry who created the modern festival format, stadium security and video reenforcement. Without the basic infrastructure, the most simple acts can become a tragic error. Putting colored tape on the edge of the stage, lines on the floor to follow, barricade, proper staffing… they all go unnoticed but when missing can be a dangerous fault.
OK, what does all this have to do with the Super Bowl? (there, I said it) My experience yesterday began on friday when we went to pick up the tickets. This week in the DFW area has been extraordinary weather-wise, with an ice storm. freezing temperatures and a 4″ dusting on Friday. As these are things that are usually momentary here in North Texas, a week where all these special events are going on (many outside), you can see why the game is usually held in Florida or somewhere else that has a good chance of being safe from inclement weather. Dallas is usually pretty mild, but ice storms, cold snaps and some light snow are not unusual. They just don’t usually shut down the city for a week.
Friday Morning before the Super Bowl
Here they sand the roads a bit, especially the big bridges and overpasses on the freeways but rarely plow. In our town, until Saturday afternoon when the temperature finally got above freezing, the major streets were still rutted ice, from Monday. Schools were closed all week. Fed Ex wouldn’t deliver on our street for days because of the lack of roads being cleared.
When we went to pickup our tickets, there was a high sense of SNAFU going on. Though the contest had been going on for a month,the tickets were not delivered until way after business hours on Friday. We figured it was the company who put on the promotion or the brokers they used. Once we had them in hand I checked a chart and found that they were in the temporary seats constructed on the west end zone “party plaza”, a giant concrete slab that is filled with standing room only patrons during Cowboys games, nearly 30,000 can fit on both sides for a somewhat reasonable $29 a head. While there you can drink $10 beers and watch the big screen standing up. Of course you’ve already spent $70 to park your pickup, so, you’re well on your way to a $200 day anyway.
The NFL erected giant temporary bleachers on these plazas, above the end zones. The seats extended way above the giant video screens. This way they could fit 15,000 people into assigned seats; the venue was designed to be able to do this. It was not some last minute jury rigged fix.
Green and Gold
Angela and I left the house about 11am and drove to our new light rail station one mile from our house. The Super Bowl committee got the transit authorities of Dallas, Forth Worth and Arlington to band together for the event, issuing a $30 transit pass for 4 days which would work with all the systems in a nice sleeve and lanyard (which, at the Super Bowl, people wear multiple ones to show their elite status). We traveled south to catch the TRE (Trinity Railroad Express), the commuter train that runs from Dallas to Ft. Worth. At the mid-point, Centrepoint Station, busses waited to shuttle the remaining 7 miles to the stadium. We were dropped off at the nearby Rangers baseball park and joined the throng walking the half mile to Jerry’s House.
And a horse made of crackers...
For the Superbowl, the outer part of any stadium is rebuilt for the event, corrals for the endless media, segmented areas for corporate shmoozing and the slaughterhouse-like funnels for security and ticket scanning. What struck me first was the general lack of signage and the serpentine tapeworm layout for the general public. The mood was positive and the amount of bedecked fans from both sides was trippy.
When we got to the ticket scanning part, both of our barcodes created scrunched faces of the ushers and they announced to us we needed to go to “Resolutions”. Being over a month from New Years, I was concerned. No one was really sure where this was, just “down there, at the end”. Walking at a 90 degree angle of lunging football fans for a 1/4 mile we arrived to a pile of disgruntled patrons also labeled “Resolutions”. Information was not forthcoming from our keepers so we all compared notes and tickets and found that most of us were all in the same temporary seating area. Many of the people in our group came from the season ticket holder lottery on both the Pittsburgh and Green Bay sides. They won the chance to pay face value (another source tells me they mostly paid 3 to 4 times more than face value) and get their butts to Texas to see their teams compete.
As with most American crowds when money, sports and passion are involved, it didn’t take long to hear bitter raised voices. They just wanted to get in and see their team win the game. We were shuttled out of the cordon and to an NFL office where information was being given with an eye dropper. We were eventually told to go to the “Resolutions” area in Parking Lot A. After a time we found an unmarked 3-sided white party tent with 2 bare banquet tables and no people. Eventually a nice English gentleman from the NFL was thrown under our wheels to explain.
He said that there was a problem with the temporary seating we were supposed to be seated in, that they were trying to resolve it and that if they could not, they would pay up to three times the face value of the ticket to refund. This was not an acceptable answer for most of the crowd.We were then directed back to the security abattoir for another screening and then shipped into some plaza party area away from the TV cameras. There was talk of a $10 voucher but it never materialized. A second sheet of paper was handed to us explaining about the seating problem and putting the refund offer in writing. Patience was wearing thin. Most of us got into the security line between 11am and 1pm; it was now nearly 4pm, 90 minutes from kickoff.
Cursing in the chute
The crowd cursed. It cursed the NFL, it cursed the Cowboys but mainly it cursed Jerry Jones. Living in Dallas, the first makes sense, the second doesn’t and the third is a given. He’s not a hero to us either. A reporter found his way into our ranks and was passing our story out into the world. I tweeted and Facebooked. I suspected that there were a few groups of us around as this group didn’t equal 7000. We found ourselves pushed against a chain link fence, inches from the admitted public and about 100 feet from the outside of the stadium. While some drafted a class action suit and others quietly discussed the stupidity of it, others participated in a more traditional response, drunken yelling.
Build it and they will sit...
Around 4 an Arlington police officer walked through the crowd and told the security to open the gate. Apparently the fire marshall had signed off on the bleachers. Our gaggle cheered and staggered towards what we thought was an entrance (remember, signage is an issue). We found our way up to the rafters and the shiny aluminum seating. The outside staircases were still roped off with hazard tape and guarded by bored looking ushers but the interior stairs were clear. It looked save enough, compared to some I’ve seen; it can be a mess when it’s not…
Well, we got in. The section seemed pretty full but we didn’t see a lot of the people we were in line with. Since yesterday we’ve heard that 400 of the ticket holders were taken to the field level bars or bunkers which you can really just watch TV from. In the following photograph you’ll also see 2 (of 4) sections we spotted that looked temporary and were empty for the whole game. They appear to be big enough for about 100 people and would account for the ones below. A friend had his tickets in a section in the 300s (331 I think) which on the official chart is empty but was there during the game, without people.
note the 2 empty black areas on the third level...
So the game goes on, the crowd cheers, beers are spilt, Margaritas are sold for $19 and a team is crowned world champion in a league that is only played in one country. We get up and begin to depart, no signage to guide us (through scaffolding racks and road cases with thousands of others), a few false starts and backwards through the muddy tapeworm, back to the street. When we arrived back at Rangers Park, we find a line of people the length of the park waiting for the shuttle to the train station; there were no signs, we had to ask the least drunken person what it was. An hour in the light cold rain listening to smashed logic from visiting fans who have hated their Texan Super Bowl experience and we finally get on a bus which arrives in time for the last TRE trains heading to Dallas and Fort Worth at 11:30. I know it’s Sunday and North Texas, but it’s the Super Bowl! Is it because it’s a school night? We arrived at Victory to grab the last Green Line train home. We made it there, saw the game and got back but it was not a pleasant experience.
big fun in the attic
Ok, so we were inconvenienced for a while, were able to see our first Super Bowl from the seats we were assigned and got home safely. What could be done better in a place with the most ridiculous venue I’ve seen, far between the two city centers with a truly unpredictable weather history?
– Improve the Mass Transit options for an event this size. Get the info out. Super Bowl Week is a corporate junket for some, a bacchanal for some more and a grand sporting tradition for others. Why are there people taking cabs from Arlington to Denton? Why are they considering paying $300 to get from the game to Dallas through Waco in someone else’s van?
-Please, please,please rethink the layout of the infrastructure on the stadium grounds. The media area was positioned so that the stadium was the backdrop for all the reports but it made getting in and out of the venue a pain in the ass and potentially dangerous. Invest in some arrows, signs and people who know where the fuck things are.
-According to the NFL, they knew that seating was an issue during the week; why were they working on a fix until doors? The set up and inspection should have occurred days before, with or without the weather. I know how the Fire department loves to show up an hour before show time and ask you to change everything but doesn’t that mean the NFL should too?
-I know from experience that many people who work for the NFL don’t live in the game city and don’t know the area or the building. How about educating them before the public shows up?
-Please have Maroon 5 next year at Halftime; I want to watch their career end too.
after the loss
From talking to many life long fans and frequent Super Bowl patrons, the North Texas Super Bowl experience left a bad taste in their mouth. They were angry, felt ripped off and said they would never return to North Texas if it was held here again. I was embarrassed to be from here and see so many people so bitter about it. For the rich and the famous, these are all issues that will never touch them in the luxury boxes and their shrimp cocktails. The experience of sitting in the stands is like being in coach class with 100,000 people. Parking is like paying for 2 checked bags. Cowboys Stadium prices make you homesick for Heathrow. As much as this may be the facts of moving numbers in and out of a megadome, if the average joe don’t show up, the scallop sauté station isn’t long for the VIP area.
"the belt"
I hope the NFL looks at how this “Event” was handled and makes an effort to make their bread and butter feel a little more part of the team.
Richie Hayward, the drummer and one of the co-founders of little feat, passed away from complications of pneumonia on August 12, 2010. He was 64. He was influential, underrated and too young to go.
During my early teen years I was exposed to this remarkable band, first on the floor of the family summer house on Great Cranberry Island, Maine; some older cousins had left both “Time Loves a Hero” and Robert Palmer’s “Sneaking Sally Through the Alley” in the pile next to the KLH turntable, “TLAH” with its Neon Park cover, some foreign landscape magical and warm, the music so clear (some might say slick) and yet so funky.
In high school “Waiting For Columbus” spent YEARS on the record player, the songs and energy taken to such a high level through the performance. I spent a week in my parent’s barn with my drum kit, trying to get the feel, the syncopation and the mechanical coordination together just to play Richie’s intro to “Time Love A Hero”. It seems to drop in already in progress, backwards and off beat, the transition to the head natural in its inversion. Hard thing for a young musician to feel, let alone diagnose. The earlier albums were heard in the back of a bosses Honda Accord, loaded on vodka and pot, his high end listening of feat and Steely Dan highlights of an education of quality rather than the median FM fare that polluted my peers 8-tracks.
As much as I wanted to be able to play like Richie it didn’t seem to matter as no one around me could play like the rest of the band in my age group (Steve Ide could but I was just a young pup…) By the time I was at Berklee, I had even a harder time finding those who wanted to play feat-style music, the confusion of fusion and the half hearted wave of “New Wave” conspired to push me in different directions. As I was not the type to wack the hard pads of a Simmons kit, I sided with John Bonham and Stewart Copeland, who also hit hard, turned it around and was accessible to me and those I was playing with.
Strangely, there were always those with a musical vocabulary like mine who would listen to feat for pleasure but never attempt to walk in that direction in a band setting. I ended up accessing the Delta and older Blues through them, not the Stones or the others who dragged young Americans back into the history of their own countries musical history. Paul and Lowell’s slides seemed better connected than the English knock offs or the poppier acts from the USA. They made traveling back not a history lesson but a quest for an essence that might not even connect with a middle class white kid (when there was a middle class). Their explorations into jazz seemed natural; it was still feat music.
Well, Lowell left early and it seemed like there was nothing else to learn. Abandoned and left with great albums, it sadly felt like another snapshot of a time that I’d never have a connection to except through my ears.
I stopped playing music regularly in the mid-80’s when my addictions became more time and spirit consuming. I began helping others with their gear while living in Boston, my connection to live music now supportive rather than direct. I moved to Southern California in 1985 and fell into touring work by mid-1986. Somehow I survived until late 1989 when I began to clean up my act. I spent the next few years spanning the globe with Paul Simon, wrapping up in early 1992. There’s a funny thing about having a good long-term job; you get out of the loop. People forget about you; it’s hard to find work sometimes after one of those. When I got the call in June of 1992 for a job with little feat, I jumped not because of the fear of never working again (a common roadie phobia) but because, in whatever form they were currently in, it was the FEAT!
Working for your heroes can be a dicey thing sometimes, your expectations and the reality can cause serious problems. I was invited to the Power Plant rehearsal studios to meet the guys and figure out their gear. Unfortunately the previous guitar tech refused to show me the ropes; Much of it I had to figure out for myself. There was a bit of pressure on but little of it was from the band. I had the job of caring for 4 people on the tour: Paul, Fred, Kenny and Craig Fuller. Things were casual when I arrived, most of the band settled in and getting ready for another turn through the states.
I did my best to pay attention to the guys I was responsible for but there was Richie, right there, surrounded by cymbals. I think the puns began at once with us, from the intro on. The thing about people who try to be funny (I am one), we can spot others who really are. I don’t think there were many times when a turn of phrase, a pun or a double meaning or arcane reference didn’t enter our interaction. I think it gave us both pleasure when we realized that we were the only two who understood what was being said.
My first gig was not so great as I packed up a needed acoustic guitar before the encore was completed… after a short delay, the crowd got “Willin’” and we were off to the next town, my job still there. The first weeks of hearing the band only feet away were amazing; the level of communication and experience are pretty much untouched by any other band I’ve ever worked for. There are opportunities to see remarkable performers but to see a band that really operates together as a single organism, stronger for it’s many parts not weaker, that is becoming more rare. This is/was not a perfect band; some of their flaws actually became part of their style. I’ve had a theory for years which some have agreed with; I’ve witnessed it so I feel confident that it has some merit.
Richie had a habit of rushing his tempos a bit; early in the band’s history Lowell was rather harsh about tempo and some of the live recordings from the mid-70’s are slow, funky, laid waaaaay back. When Richie rushed, one of the people who would get annoyed was Sam Clayton, the percussionist in the band. He would intestinally drag/”lay back” to pull him back in, which, wasn’t always successful. Kenny Gradney, the bass player would sit right there in the middle, a strange flamming triplet of groove that often felt like a single great big note, fat and funky. To me it was one of the secrets to feat’s sound, a rhythmic chorusing effect that made them nearly impossible to imitate.
There was one show that year in Portland, OR at the Washington Park Rose Garden Amphitheatre when John Hammond Jr. opened for them, acoustic solo. We did the set change and put the band on stage. The opening number that night was “Hate To Lose” which opens with a guitar figure and then the band comes in. When that moment came, Richie did his flourish, struck his snare drum like a cannon shot and all the power in the venue went off. Turns out the electrician had tied all the food tents with their espresso machines and woks into the same circuit as the sound power; once the peak of Richie’s drums pushed the PA’s speakers to regular operating volume, it tripped all the breakers. Sad part is during the wait for the repair to the circuit we couldn’t even go get a coffee as they were dead in the water too!
The music of feat between ’88 and now has been slighted by some, due to ghosts, alleged intrusions into the “boy’s club”, the general malaise and toppling of the recorded music business and the fact that corporations only seem to know how to sell new things or things that never change. A lot of songs and performances through the Fuller and Murphy years are great, they stand alone without Shakespearian trips to the battlement walls. Paul and Billy still write songs that will open your head, your eyes and your heart. Richie propelled so many of them to the next level, just by being there.
We shared laughs, hot nights, cold mornings, strengths, weaknesses… The last 10 years we were not very close but like good friends and friendly family, time can pass and everything is the same, for better or worse. I was never Richie’s drum tech; I started as a guitar tech, took on being production manager for a time, drove the truck… when you are welcomed into a family you take the job that’s open and do your best to help the band in and out of each show. Not being his tech make our friendship safe as sometimes in any working relationship the job and the friendship can clash a bit. I would have loved to do the job, but I never did.
Plenty of other people can and will write better obits but I’m doing this because I was lucky enough to work with him and his band on and off for 10 years. Unlike some of the people who I’ve worked for, there was plenty of personal interaction and time spent off of the stage with feat; in the later years band and crew traveled on the same bus, which meant we were in close quarters.
Richie was a remarkable drummer, his high harmonies were a secret weapon for the band and as a man, he was so nice, too nice in some cases. You wanted to defend him but he took his own path. I have been so blessed to find these things out, I hope he felt the love and appreciation for him in the end; he was a fan of good drummers and they were all fans of him. I extend my love to the band, their families, the family of feat fans and all those who feel this loss. We are so lucky that he left so much amazing music in the world for us to share, then, now and forever.
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