Tag Archives: consumerism

How to set up for a gig

View from the Bandstand, ,

Only touch it once. 

Okay, I admit. This is not always practical. I just moved an elder teen/young adult into college and I touched everything in that van about eight hundred times, but the principle remains. Even if it’s an ideal, a shimmering city on the hill that we will never get to, unobtainable and abstract and perfect, a mirage — like true love, or a literate and informed electorate — it’s important to still have goals and guiding principles. So the first principle: only touch it once. 

And by it I mean all of the crap that you are taking to the gig. A quick digression re that crap. And to be clear I am talking to you, dear reader, the gigging, semi-pro, weekend-warrior musician, and not the young adults who just embarked on the cruise ship of college. You don’t need all that crap. The less you take, the more fun you’ll have. It’s a spiritual-proportional riddle. As a professional told me once: at the beginning of the gig, you set up your stuff; at the end of the gig, you tear down your shit. This encapsulates the emotional Freytagian triangle of gigging. Those hills and dales will be lessened in their severity if you take less stuff. Sure, there is some back up stuff you reasonably might need, a cord, some strings. But you don’t need three electric guitars. You don’t need all those cymbals. Marie Kondo those artifacts into outer space and see just how little you can take and still be effective. It might even make you sound more interesting and it will definitely make the trip back to the car afterward more enjoyable. 

Second principle: only one trip from the car. Rarely do I get to park close enough to the venue to unload directly from the car, and I despise walking back and forth from the venue to the car with only armloads of stuff. It feels inefficient. I have a friend who transports all of his items in tiny hobbit bags, which means he takes 17 trips back and forth from his Honda to the bandstand. One trip. Put it on a cart with wheels. I use the RockNRoller Multi-Cart R6RT “Mini,” previously reviewed here. (Yes, every morpheme of that name is copyrighted.)

Now it would be nice if you could load the cart with the ingredients in order, so that you could take stuff off the cart and place it directly where it needs to go, like a snake sliding out of old skin. But stuff doesn’t go on the cart that way. You have to load the big box-like stuff on the bottom and the looser, more tote bag-like stuff on top, and that does not make for a snake-skin-shedding gracefulness when unloading. So the best next method I’ve found is going extremely slowly and not talking to anyone. I realize I sound insane, but when unloading/setting up my stuff, I keep my trap shut and I move slowly and with deliberation. 

It also helps to visualize. You need your bass amp near the drummer but on his left because he has weird issues when you set up on his right, but you’re going to have to steeplechase over the guitar player’s crap due east, as he’s diligently hunkered over his NASA-like pedalboard which, you guessed it, is giving him trouble again. Think before you shoot. Look at the field of play. Pretend you’re hosting one of those home redesign shows and you’re plopping down generic midcentury modern furniture blobs in the graphic user interface of your mind. 

Don’t chit chat. Don’t look at your phone. Don’t go get a drink. Slowly, with a kind of cud-chewing intensity that would alarm bandmates insufficiently acclimated to your level of dedication, vision quest where you’re going to put your stuff, and then methodically unload your items and place them accordingly. This means that at some point you’re going to have to unload an item that does not need to be placed in its final resting place yet. Simply put it on the ground next to your cart. Do not I repeat do not find another waystation spot for this item. Move it as short a distance as possible, i.e., right beside the cart. Don’t worry about being in other people’s way. It’s not like that guitar player has a leg to stand on. And the keyboard player is too busy playing with the Erector Set that’s supposed to become his keyboard stands. And the drummer is late, naturally, and will have to trebuchet his stuff over everyone else’s stuff. 

Once the items are unloaded, if there are bags, put the bags inside one another. It’s like coming home from Kroger. All the hobo bags go into one master hobo bag. Now you’re free to start hooking everything together. Place first, then do the cords. I like to have all cords in one bag, with the exception of powered PA speakers. I tote those in zippered bags that have pouches for their essential power cords. I realize this is a little bougie, but this way every speaker always has a cord with it. I never promised you this blog post would be entertaining. Otherwise, all other cords — extra power cords, ¼″ instrument cables, XLR cables — go into one rolling suitcase, so that I can flip the top and pull out what’s needed, and more important, so that at the end of the night, I can coil up the cables and toss them directly into the one dedicated bag without thinking. This is how the West was won. 

Then, the gig is over. Congratulations, you made it. Now comes the fun part. You’re going to power down the system, split the tip money, and then unplug everything. I try to make-up for my general Terminator vibe by splitting up the tip money as soon as possible. For some reason I find the mass unplugging part fun. Then, the less-fun part, you’re going to coil all the cables up and throw them in the suitcase. True, the individual speaker power cords can’t go there and will need to be coiled and placed on the floor immediately next to said speaker. I allow myself a little afterglow reverie chit chat during this portion, but not much.  

Then and only then you can retrieve the hobo bag collection and start to bag your speakers, including their power cables. Note: It doesn’t matter which power cable goes into which bag because they are all IEC C13 power cords now. The point is to prevent your future self from showing up to a gig with a powered speaker but no power cable. 

Now here’s where the snake-sliding part comes in. Put those speakers on the bottom of the cart and layer your lighter stuff on top of it. You are building a cake. Then wheel it outside to your van. You have a van, don’t you? Get a van. Or something that has a tailgate. I myself yearn for a small car, a cheeky little two-door, something that might be called “zippy,” but the problem is the trunk. You have to lift items over and down. Warning: this is a Back Risk. It’s better to place or slide items along the uniform plane of the truck, car, or wagon’s cargo space. (Plus, I got kids.) Unload the cart directly into the van with the lighter stuff moving back toward the center of the van and the last-unloaded heavier stuff toward the rear of the van, which means that, yes, that heavy, box stuff will be the first items out next time and can go directly on the cart. This is the Golden Ticket. 

One thing I’ve learned is that although the van is quite handy in terms of the amount of stuff you can fit within it, you don’t have to fill that guy up every time. If you are taking a full vanload of stuff to each gig simply because you can fit it in your car, that’s bad. It’s a freeway-lanes-increasing-traffic type of problem. Also, after moving myself and helping people move and listening to various old dudes pontificate on the proper way to load a moving truck, I have internalized the knowledge that the heavier items need to be loaded first and placed toward the front of the cargo bay. I still agree with this, but the van is different because hopefully you are not taking an entire van load of stuff and b) none of it is refrigerator heavy. Here in 2026 we’ve got dishwashers that text your phone and drones that deliver your pizza, so I hope you’re leaving the Ampeg SVT 8×10 cab in the garage where it belongs. So that means, don’t push the items into the van all the way unless you have to. Just place them halfway back, so that you can still grab them without crawling into the van on your knees. This is the Special Sauce, of which G Love speaks. Honda van, only halfway full. I hate having to crawl around on my knees. It hurts my spirit, and also my knees. 

Day after a gig I wake up thinking. How could that have been better? How could I make that easier? Part of this is the musical performance. But often this morning meditation returns to the logistics of the gig, because there aren’t really any good parts to that. I realize I sound insane, but it’s all room-for-improvement. It’s difficult because it’s physically difficult, and it’s tedious. It’s also where the physics of amplified sound, and the complications thereof, confront one’s self-image as performing musician. Of course the Marshall stack behind the guitar player looks cool. But setting aside the stage-volume concerns, that’s just a lot of lumber to fit in the back of the Jetta. So you’re always subdividing what you want to have by what you actually need and trying to make them reconcile. Some people online say they will take whatever makes them feel good in the moment while playing. Sure, yes, one wants to feel good. And maybe that feeling good is achieved by having that extra cymbal, those additional guitars. But there is feeling good and there is doing good, and by taking fewer items, moved through space with clear intention, you create less traffic on the bandstand for your mates, and you create less traffic for your later self, your actual self rather than your fantasy self, the one who looks cool. You have to remember the actual self, the tired and sweaty self, the one with physical limits, because that’s the guy you’re going to have to live with.

Product Review: The Manhasset Music Stand

Product Reviews, ,

Manhasset. The name itself comes from primordial America. It’s like something chanted out of Whitman. I could attempt to provide a potted history of the Manhasset corporation, but you’ve got Wikipedia, and besides, that stuff is boring. 

Suffice to say, if you’ve been in a school concert band program within the past 50 years, you have encountered the Manhasset. It is the black metal music stand of your dreams and/or nightmares, timeless, perfected, the music stand in its ideal form, the standard by which all others are measured. It’s the Nike of music stands. It’s so ubiquitous and quietly functional that you’ve probably not even noticed the name, an aboriginal utterance quietly embossed on its surface. 

I have owned two Manhassets in my life. The first was somehow lifted from the school bandhall and followed me through life until shortly after the pandemic, when it lost its ability to maintain its rigor when telescoped out. It especially lost the ability to hold the thick three-ring binders I preferred at that point in my semi-pro, AA-ball type music side career. I rescued this ambiguously stolen object from my parents house when I moved back home and started to cart it around to gigs. Up until its failure due to age, it succeeded at its primary task, though it was a beast to transport. This mostly comes from its heavy metal construction. It’s not a single piece of molded metal but it presents that way. The tripartite base is particularly claw-like and dangerous to car interiors, unprotected ankles, and smaller petlife. It doesn’t collapse. It doesn’t have a case. It’s a belligerent metal sculpture. You have to adapt to it. 

But because of its somewhat destructive presence in my car, I started down the consumerist road of collapsible or foldable or otherwise more easily transportable music stands. This is one of Satan’s rabbit holes. If the Manhasset is the music stand perfected, all of the more easily transportable music stands are essentially garbage, if we define garbage as that which fails at its primary task and also quickly breaks. One might actually be grateful for the quick and easy breakage of these stands given how terrible they are, but still, frustrating. 

The worst offender here is the kind where the platform that ostensibly holds the sheet music itself folds up like a kind of fan. The construction is flimsy. What gives out before anything is the gripability of the various wing nuts. I have been told that I am a bit too aggressive with my bolt/nut/pickle jar tightening. This comes from being the child of a drummer, where the Grip of Death is the one true path. But even if I’m being rather gentle, they just don’t hold up to any serious tightening over time. And then there is the music platform itself, which somehow fails at holding single sheets of music as well as binders or anything with any kind of heft. Plus if you sneeze in their direction the whole thing comes crashing down. I’ve seen child-made Lego contraptions with more structural integrity than these things. 

After going through more than one, each time getting more and more robust in my purchases, I have settled on a two-part music stand, where the music sheet platform itself is one solid piece of detachable metal. This allows the base itself to be a larger metal tube tripod to support that weight. It’s more robust all around, and so far I have not broken it. But it barely satisfies my transportation needs. True, since the base is a foldable tripod I’m not sending dachshunds to the pet ER anymore, but now it’s the metal platter, like an alien TV tray, lying in wait to maim. I’ve got a scar still on my ankle from a midnight tumble. Also, as the platter falls it doesn’t just dent but seems to sharpen, so I’m inadvertently creating a kind of postmodern, primitive weapon. The shield that cuts. 

I got a second Manhasset to keep at the house. There’s nothing as satisfying as its quiet mastery of the simple act of holding sheet music where you can read it. It’s as good as the old one, though I do notice that the metal is not as heavy. It’s somehow less dense. I’ve heard people complain (okay, old dudes) that the metal used today in products is not the same quality as “old metal.” I usually disregard this. Obviously there is some metaphorical narcissism happening. Plus I don’t really care. If the metal has changed, there’s probably a reason. For instance, they don’t finish guitars with nitrocellulose lacquer anymore. The guitar companies use polyurethane. Of course all the old dudes like the old way, because it looks cooler, it ages in ways we like, and the wood sounds better. It — ahem — breathes better. Is this last part BS? Probably. Unverifiable nostalgia, the worst kind. I’m not trying to be that way with respect to Manhasset metal, but it does feel different, less grandfatherly strong, more like millennial strong. But it works. And nothing quite stays the same, despite our wishes. Perhaps this means it wouldn’t tear up the inside of my car as aggressively, but I’m not willing to try it out. I’ll keep my modern sculpture inside the house, thank you. 

Shopping like the angels

Product Reviews,

Product Review: RocknRoller Multi-Cart, model R6RT

You have too much stuff. I have too much stuff. We don’t need any more stuff, and yet, sometimes shopping happens, so here is a product review. I recently purchased the RocknRoller Multi-Cart, model R6RT, and it’s a handy device. In general I am against buying things. I find that the anticipation of buying things overwhelming, a cascade of pleasure, but the actual owning of the things, the unboxing, the set up, the maintenance of the thing, the finding where to put the thing, the dealing with the thing because now it’s in the way of other things, the disuse of the thing, the regret that the thing grows to embody because I didn’t level up to the person I thought I was going to become when I bought the thing, and the resulting corrosion of self-esteem brought on by the thing to be altogether slightly exhausting. It’s easier just to skip the buying part entirely. And yet, man cannot live on brio alone. 

I am a part-time musician, in addition to my regular professional duties, and the calendar has started to populate with gigs again, which is my own personal barometer of where the tri-county area is vis-a-vis the pandemic. (Is this safe? Is this proper? I don’t know. Most of these potential future gigs are outside. Most people I know are fully vaccinated. It seems like we’re on the lip of nearly normal. I don’t want to be careless or callous, but I also want to play, and I’m now one year older, and I miss everyone, even the people I don’t yet know.) So, in an anticipatory burst of consumerism, I decided it was time to buy the cart. I have several friends who use the same cart and sing its praises. Does it seem silly to sing the praises of a utility cart? Perhaps. But if you are in the routine of moving large chunks of irregularly shaped equipment from your automobile across, say, a parking lot through a field to an improvised bandstand under a tree, anything that makes the foregoing less difficult is welcome. Besides, my collapsible two-wheel dolly is getting rickety. I have to position it between the pavement and my chin so that I can unfold its arthritic wheels. It’s important to use objects until they are completely worn out or otherwise so horribly annoying that even the most deranged and neurotic can justify a replacement purchase. Everyone, please welcome my new cart. 

Did I read reviews beforehand? What am I, some kind of rube? In addition to the personal testimony, I also read scads of internet reviews. To my complex shame, I love internet reviews of objects. I read the Wirecutter more intently than any reasonably balanced American adult should and take its guidance as gospel. But there’s a grain of unease that I have been developing as I click through reviews of products I might buy and some I will never buy. Just what am I doing reading all these reviews? Why do I care? Is this simply a consequence of being able to evaluate an absurd amount of consumer options? When I was younger, I just went to the store and bought what they had. There was no premonition of missing out on all the potentially better products. Now I compare. Actually, it’s even more developed: unless I do a rigorous comparison, I feel as if I am cheating myself, cheating the universe. It’s my duty to compare, to optimize, to purchase the best weed-whacker I can possibly purchase, because, goddamnit, I deserve it, and what’s more, I want to whack weeds with the best possible tool for whacking said weeds. Anything less would be uncivilized. The diligent sifting of reviews feels somehow religious. This is how the angels would shop. 

So, the cart. It’s good. It does what it’s supposed to do. It carries approximately a trunk full of stuff, stacked neatly, in one trip: an entire drumset with hardware, or a reasonably sized PA, or for those non-musicians, about six boxes of Office Depot paper. It’s black with yellow accents and looks like a metal grasshopper. Is the name, RocknRoller Mini-Cart, slightly gooby? It is. Do I feel somewhat like a goober rolling up to the gig in the wake of this conspicuous speciality contraption? I do. Do I feel just slightly like a Blues Lawyer? Yes. But is it the absolute best tool one could use for such activities? It’s pretty dang close. It accomplishes the most important strategic task for the part-time gigging musician: decreasing the number of trips from the car to the venue. Though all my gigs are local, half of my time is spent moving gear from the car or back to the car and coiling various types of cables. The actual musical performance is but a momentary breeze in between, a kiss of wind. 

What makes this cart different is that it’s convertible and extendible. It’s like a Transformer, but more practical. Its resting state is folded up, like a little four-wheeled robot. Its vertical sides fold out, so that it turns into a rigid metal U with wheels. But then, once you unscrew the spring loaded fixers underneath and push in a little metal nipple, the squared tubing telescopes out so that you can have up to 42 inches of loadable space. Bring me your stackable, heavy objects! Word to the wise on that nipple/telescoping bit, you have to push it in before collapsing, which definitely presents the opportunity to scalp your finger. Caution. The sides fold by pulling on a silver braided metal wire that’s encased in plastic. I’m sure there’s a name for this kind of metal twist cord; you’ve seen it. You pull that and the vertical sides suddenly become foldable. Another warning: once you collapse the sides, they aren’t fully secured down. The one folded on top will swing out a limited distance and pop you on the shin if you’re not ginger with it. The cart can also be converted into a more traditional two-wheeled dolly shape, though I haven’t used it as such yet. It’s too convenient as a four-wheeled cart. In fact, when I first got it, I was so enamored with its convenience I wanted to put everything on it: backpacks, the dog, my children. Should I take it to the grocery store? 

There are other models, which mainly differ in the length to which it can be extended or the robustness of its wheels. I thought briefly of getting the model with inflatable wheels, but like the fellows in the office parking lot with the trucks so tall one needs a carabiner to climb inside, that seemed overkill. I can deal with genteel wheels. 

Do I need such a cart? Is it absolutely essential? Do I deserve such a cart? Isn’t there a more productive way I could have spent those hard-earned dollars? Shouldn’t I simply have saved them? Conserved my resources for a potential unforeseen world-changing event? This is the problem with ordering packages. They often come tightly packed with regret. They are really talismans to my own spendthrift ways, mirages of improvement, artifacts of self-optimization, and reminders of my own overfed narcissism. Is all of this really necessary? 

You should try hanging out with me around Christmastime.