Melody in Motion: Boards, Stacks, Racks.....

 Here is one of the ten Clair CBA 32 folding consoles. I mixed James Taylor on this board at the first Rock n Rio. We kicked everybody's ass so bad that first night, the headliner, George Benson insisted he open for James on night two. They made an LP from that first night's show but, alas I gave all my 500 LP's away years ago. Just tired of dragging 'em around. haha.

Before the show, I remembered something Buford Jones had told me about mixing someone, I think Jackson Brown at the first Farm Aid. He told me he sat at the mixer while waiting his turn, and imagined/remembered each player's sound and set the board accordingly. So that's what I did. l peered over the engineer's shoulder who was mixing at that time and looked at the input gain setting on his lead vocalist. Then I ask him: "Does he have a loud voice?" Then I sat at my, soon to be rocking CBA 32 and closed everything out. Hell yea I set all my input gains just a little hotter than his board. Next, I lightly "stuck" my color Avery Dots to important knobs on the board & racks. Now it was time to use creative visualization for each player/instrument in James' band. Pretty dang good night in the world I'd say.

If memory serves right, that Clair system was Queen's South American rig which was the largest set of S4's every together. I believe it was one-hundred and twenty S4's per side. Pictures of FOH with no crowd were taken on the last day early morning.

- Bob Hickey