Midnight Oil

[Powderworks] RE: In the News

mbtigger at charter.net mbtigger at charter.net
Fri Apr 16 00:12:59 MDT 2004


---From Beth----
Consequently, their touring retinue will include not only managers, roadies, and instrument techs, but two electrical and three acoustic engineers, a half-million dollar miniaturized gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) with a Ph.D. chemist in tow to run it, several medical doctors, and a staggering array of specialized equipment and computers.  The GC-MS is to be used to sample the air in the theater and separate and quantify the amount of butyric acid, a component of human sweat.  ?If the audience isn?t dripping, we?re not doing our job right,? says Rotsey.  ?Our fans want to leave a trail on the floor behind them on the way out the door, and we?re not about to disappoint them.  We can measure how well each song is doing by looking at the GC-MS data, and if there?s not enough BA in the air, we can change the playlist on the fly to hit ?em harder.

---ENDQuote-----------

Interesting Idea, but using GC/MS might not give useful REAL TIME feedback to members of the band. After all, there is lag time between sampling and using the GC/MS. and I don't know if our boys would bother trying to interpret the MS data, especially while they are playing!

Things need to be MUCH simpler and MUCH MORE immediate! After all, we don?t want to positively affect a future performance ? I want the quality of the current performance to improve RIGHT NOW!  There needs to be a simple spectral quality (Photometric/UV/IR/ etc) of the air that can be used to gauge the ?Sweat Factor? of the audience during a performance. Granted, it is not as SPECIFIC, but it is much simpler, and I am sure there is some easily measured air factor that would be a good indicator of the ?Sweat Factor?. This could be used as part of a CAM (Continuous Air Monitoring) device.

This CAM would be hooked to electrodes placed under Rob?s seat, and Hidden in the clothing of other band members. The Voltage applied to the electrode is, of course, inversely proportional to the reading of our CAM. As the ?Sweat Factor? gets lower, our boys receive what social scientists call ?negative feedback? in the form of an electric shock. The way to aviod shocks of course, Increase the Sweat factor, and the CAM readings. Of course, there is always the danger of the band taking off their clothes to avoid the negative feedback.

In the face of a very obstreperous crowd, this could result in seeing four men running around the stage in their skivvies while the fifth member is playing the drums standing up. 

I predict a sharp rise in ticket sales, and crowds carrying 50lbs of antiperspirant to the gigs.

Michael