May Issue - FOH Online

Since the early ‘90s Chris Chandler has
had a FOH seat for one of the most exciting
and creative rock ‘n’ roll shows
played onstage, led by Wayne Coyne and
his merry band of pranksters known as the
Flaming Lips. From the lead singer getting
bounced into a crowd at the Coachella Valley
Music and Arts Festival in a huge clear ball to
space ships onstage to a cascade of balloons
bounding down from the rafters to the entire
band dressing up in animal costumes, Chandler
has seen just about everything.
Indeed, it seems that Chandler (who
handles tour management and production
along with FOH duties) gets a head scratching
phone call from Coyne before almost every
tour. Right before the lads headed out for
a small East Coast college tour in April, he got
the word that the band was going to hand
out small laser pointers to the audience and
then at some point of the show Coyne would
come out with a huge mirror to create a light
show.
FOH: So, do you ever look at Wayne
and say, “Dude, we just can’t do this”?
Chris Chandler: I used to, but then I gave
up because he’s going to try it anyways. I
know the confetti got to be an issue, because
he would use so much that the clubs didn’t
like that it got all over the P.A. and the monitors.
So he changed that. The balloons got to
the point where we had so many on the stage
that they were knocking all the mic stands
over. We ended up taking sheet rock screws
and putting them at the end of the mic stands,
so when the balloons would come in they
wouldn’t knock the mics over. And instead
of doing overheads on the drum kit, I just
clamped the mics underneath the cymbals to
keep them from getting hit all the time. There
are ways around most of his crazy ideas.
26
FOH Interview
By DavidJohnFarinella
MAY 2007
Was it this way from the first time you
worked with them?
Yeah, I started with them on the tour when
we had 600 or 700 little Sony Walkman radios
that we’d hand out to the crowd and then
we’d do a separate mix for the headphones.
Then we would broadcast it throughout the
neighborhood.
How crazy was that?
That was crazy for a first tour. I had to
mix five bands on it, drive the truck and set
up that radio thing every day. It was nuts. We
had an antenna that we brought in. We had a
little transmitter. We would get to the venue,
scan what frequencies were open and pick
one. Then we would give all these radios out.
Wayne’s theory was that if you wanted to go
out to the balcony or out to the hallway, you
could still hear the show the same as everybody
else and you wouldn’t miss anything.
Then, at the sold out shows, the kids would
park out in their cars and get the show on
their car radio, or the bar next door would
tune it in and put it in across the speakers in
the bar. It went over well. I don’t know how
legal it was.
This band is known for pushing the
envelope.
Wayne had the parking lot experiment
where he had 30 or 40 cars that had a cassette
tape of different parts of a song and
he’d have them all play at the same time. So,
you’d sit in the parking garage and you’d hear
instruments coming out of this car here and
it was supposed to match up to the other
instruments to make a wall of sound inside
the parking garage. Then he had the boom
boxes that he brought onstage that were a
smaller version of the car event. We tried an
experiment on one tour where we brought a
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The Flaming Lips
second P.A. and put it behind front of house,
pointing towards the crowd. He wanted, at
different times, to throw guitar solos in there
or to throw different instruments, and he
wanted his voice to come from behind you.
We did that for a little bit. It caused a lot of
weird phasing problems.
How do you prepare to work with him?
He is so hands-on with everything that
it’s a big team effort. He gets people excited
to work with him. He can rally up even the
grumpiest union hands at a venue somehow.
He’ll be the first guy at the venue in the morning
— he’ll be on the truck helping to unload
it. I think that gets people’s respect a little bit.
He’s one of those guys who’s not going to sit
back at the hotel until sound check. He tries to
figure out how to put together the best show,
so that inspires everybody else to do the same
thing. He has some crazy idea for every show.
He has a space ship that he’s built now — it’s a
big flying saucer. He has a new video wall. He
has some new lasers that we’re bringing out
on the next run.
Is he pretty hands-on in terms of P.A.?
He just wants it to be loud. Not as loud
as they used to want it to be, they used to
want to be extremely loud. Now they just
want to be really loud. He liked the NEXO
line array, because of the look of it. It looked
like a space ship to him. He wanted to buy
one of those and paint it orange until he
saw how much money they cost. I think he
likes something that’s not going to take up
too much space on the stage, so he’s more
into the look of it and the fact that it can
get loud. He likes a lot of sub and a lot of
the high frequencies. I’m not sure if that’s
because his hearing is going, but he loves
the high-pitched frequencies.
Chris Chandler
TURNING UP THE HEAT
Chris Chandler matches up well with the wild rock show that is the Flaming Lips
What about other gear?
He’s not a fan of the digital consoles.
We’ve had a few out, and he’s not thrilled with
them. Maybe the analog stuff seems quicker,
easier, it sounds better. He doesn’t really say, I
just know he hasn’t liked some of the digital
stuff we’ve had out before.
So what do you like to take out?
We’ve been carrying a Midas XL-4. I like
that a lot. It’s probably one of my favorite
consoles. The P.A. we got over in Europe was a
d&b, and that was really good. On a couple of
tours, we had the V-DOSC, and that was good.
There’s a company up in Canada that makes
a P.A. called Adamson that we use quite a bit,
and it sounded really good.
Any outboard gear you take out?
I have a small 12-space rack. There’s a company
out of England called Ridge Farm Industries
— they make this compressor called the
Boiler. I ended up loving that compressor, and
I’ll put all my drums through that.
I take them
Chris Chandler (in back) with the Flaming Lips at Air Studios