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An onstage collab 42 years in the making...

charlieclouser

Senior Member
Just when I thought I was out, they keep pulling me back in....

On Saturday, May 11, 2024, I will be joining pioneering industrial band Ministry as a second keyboardist for one very special show at the Cruel World Festival at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. What's so special about this gig? A couple of things:

- For the first time in more than 30 years, Ministry will be playing songs from their first two albums, With Sympathy (released May 10, 1983) and Twitch (released March 12, 1986), and for many of us in the dark electronic / industrial scene, these albums were a blast of dirty air that changed the direction of music. Ministry frontman and main brain Al Jourgenson has resisted playing these songs live for decades, and fans had almost given up hope of ever hearing them performed again. But good things come to those who wait, and Uncle Al has finally relented to years of pestering from friends and fans, and worked up a killer set including favorites from those first two albums. Should be one to remember.

- But on a more personal note, this gig will be special because Ministry's live keyboardist and studio programmer for the last 18 years or so is one of my oldest friends in the world, John Bechdel (aka JB). JB and I went to college together, where we met in 1982, and we instantly became friends because we were just about the only two knuckleheads out of 1,200 students at our tiny, freaky, liberal arts college who liked synthesizers. JB was the guy who first brought Ministry's Cold Life 12" single over to my dorm room, saying, "You've GOT to hear THIS!", and he also introduced me to Nine Inch Nails' first album Pretty Hate Machine. Once the two of us got the keys to the entire Music Building and its Electronic Music Studio, and could run wild literally all night long, it was game on for both of us.

We played together in college from 1982-1986, both moved to NYC afterwards and became roommates there, and both got jobs at the Sam Ash store on 48th street. He was the sampler guru, I was the software guru. Needless to say, these jobs led to bigger things for both of us - he's been a member of Fear Factory, Prong, Murder Inc., Killing Joke, and now Ministry, and worked with many more bands in the heavy scene. I wound up joining Nine Inch Nails and also working with White Zombie, Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, Killing Joke, Prong, Jamiroquai, David Bowie... and doing a couple of movie scores here and there. :whistling:

JB and I have collaborated in the studio tons of times over the last four decades; when he joined Prong, he recommended me to Prong frontman Tommy Victor as someone who could bring the pain on some remixes (which I did, and I’d like to think that playing these remixes for Trent Reznor helped secure my gig as the keyboardist and programmer in NIN), and then recommended me to Prong’s producer, the legendary Terry Date, who then brought me along to do the drum / samples / synth programming on the next record he was producing, White Zombie’s breakthrough double-platinum album Astro Creep: 2000, and then Prong’s next album Rude Awakening.

Of course, Ministry and NIN were compatriots / friends / rivals in the heavy / industrial music scene since the beginning, and have collaborated in the studio and shared the stage plenty of times, most recently at the NIN + Ministry + Nitzer Ebb show in Cleveland a couple of years back, when NIN was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame... so JB and I have been on the same stage on the same night before - but since 1982, we haven't been in the same band at the same time.

Until now.

What makes this gig kind of special for us is that JB actually found photographic proof of the last time we performed in the same band together, at the dining hall of our dinky little college in 1982 (no, I'm not posting that photo!). So in a couple of days we will finally close the circle and both be playing in the same band together for the first time in FORTY-TWO FREAKING YEARS. Not bad for a couple of 60-year-old synth geeks.

Crazy how things work out sometimes, innit?

CC+JB_MinistryRehearsals1.jpeg
 
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Love this! And you both still got (almost) all your hair😄 Big congrats to you, and have a great show🤟🤟
 
This is awesome. Wish I could attend. Have fun Charlie, looking good there! Any chance you could give us some pics of your rigs?
The rigs are not very photogenic:

- JB uses a MacBook Air running Ableton Live to launch clips containing click tracks and some sequenced bass lines and stuff, with Kontakt running standalone for all of his live keys. He uses a Novation LaunchPad to fire clips at the start of each song, and these clips run for the duration of each song. He uses some sort of 76-note Korg (Nautilus? Krome? not sure) for all of his live playing because he likes the feel of the keyboard. With a CME 76-note as a spare (also plugged in) in case the Korg has a brain fart. Program changes from the keyboard change between multiple presets loaded into a Kontakt Multi. Works great.

The computer rigs are super simple - just a pair of Intel MacBook Airs that are about four years old, iConnectivity MIDI and audio interfaces that have failover and auto-switch between the pair of computers (with a foot switch so JB can do it manually if needed), and all of it is jammed into little 2-space SKB fly racks that can fit in an overhead bin. Custom back panels with XLR line-level outs and hardened MIDI and USB connectors. Two computers, two fly racks, two keyboards, done.

Until about five years ago JB was doing everything old-school - a rack of Akai S-5000's (two main and two backup) and he'd manually fire a looping WAV of clicks that only he and the drummer could hear in their in-ears, and then manually fire every single loop and sample from the keyboard. Very elaborate stuff for him to remember, and the racks were the size of refrigerators! But all that's gone now... (and they have six S-5000s for sale if anyone's interested).

- My rig is even simpler - a Roland V-Synth as a controller because it looks cool, has a nice feeling keyboard, and has knobs to control filters and stuff. (Sorry, I'm not using the D-Beam!). A MacBook m1max running MainStage, with all of my samples in Logic Sampler, and a Zoom U-44 audio/MIDI interface. Stereo outs to the DI, done. I'm not running a backup rig because it's only for one show. My whole rig fits into my backpack, which is a big change from the NIN era when it was, you guessed it, a bunch of refrigerator-sized racks.

I did have Justin and Rob come down to look at our rigs - they are the backline / playback / keyboard techs for NIN, and Justin builds compact custom playback rigs for dozens of A-list artists, so he knows what works. They approved of our rigs, and suggested that in the future JB might want to ditch the LaunchPad since it can be prone to accidental triggering from big sub bass vibrations (and Ministry does have a lot of that!), and use either the GooRoo Lio-Box Ableton controller:


... or the simpler OakTone box:


The GooRoo Lio-Box actually lets you arrange set lists on the device, so you don't have to constantly edit your Ableton project, which is pretty dang cool. Create one massive Ableton project with every song you might possibly want to play, and then arrange set lists on the device for each show. It also has dual USB outputs so it can connect to and control both main and backup rigs. Super cool.

The OakTone is a lot simpler, but they have a foot-switch model that sits on the floor, and the buttons are specially designed so they don't get triggered by sub bass, and also they have a user-adjustable re-trigger time - set that to like 500msec and this reduces the chance of a jiggly finger double-triggering a song. Great stuff. Maybe for the next tour....
 
The rigs are not very photogenic:

- JB uses a MacBook Air running Ableton Live to launch clips containing click tracks and some sequenced bass lines and stuff, with Kontakt running standalone for all of his live keys. He uses a Novation LaunchPad to fire clips at the start of each song, and these clips run for the duration of each song. He uses some sort of 76-note Korg (Nautilus? Krome? not sure) for all of his live playing because he likes the feel of the keyboard. With a CME 76-note as a spare (also plugged in) in case the Korg has a brain fart. Program changes from the keyboard change between multiple presets loaded into a Kontakt Multi. Works great.

The computer rigs are super simple - just a pair of Intel MacBook Airs that are about four years old, iConnectivity MIDI and audio interfaces that have failover and auto-switch between the pair of computers (with a foot switch so JB can do it manually if needed), and all of it is jammed into little 2-space SKB fly racks that can fit in an overhead bin. Custom back panels with XLR line-level outs and hardened MIDI and USB connectors. Two computers, two fly racks, two keyboards, done.

Until about five years ago JB was doing everything old-school - a rack of Akai S-5000's (two main and two backup) and he'd manually fire a looping WAV of clicks that only he and the drummer could hear in their in-ears, and then manually fire every single loop and sample from the keyboard. Very elaborate stuff for him to remember, and the racks were the size of refrigerators! But all that's gone now... (and they have six S-5000s for sale if anyone's interested).

- My rig is even simpler - a Roland V-Synth as a controller because it looks cool, has a nice feeling keyboard, and has knobs to control filters and stuff. (Sorry, I'm not using the D-Beam!). A MacBook m1max running MainStage, with all of my samples in Logic Sampler, and a Zoom U-44 audio/MIDI interface. Stereo outs to the DI, done. I'm not running a backup rig because it's only for one show. My whole rig fits into my backpack, which is a big change from the NIN era when it was, you guessed it, a bunch of refrigerator-sized racks.

I did have Justin and Rob come down to look at our rigs - they are the backline / playback / keyboard techs for NIN, and Justin builds compact custom playback rigs for dozens of A-list artists, so he knows what works. They approved of our rigs, and suggested that in the future JB might want to ditch the LaunchPad since it can be prone to accidental triggering from big sub bass vibrations (and Ministry does have a lot of that!), and use either the GooRoo Lio-Box Ableton controller:


... or the simpler OakTone box:


The GooRoo Lio-Box actually lets you arrange set lists on the device, so you don't have to constantly edit your Ableton project, which is pretty dang cool. Create one massive Ableton project with every song you might possibly want to play, and then arrange set lists on the device for each show. It also has dual USB outputs so it can connect to and control both main and backup rigs. Super cool.

The OakTone is a lot simpler, but they have a foot-switch model that sits on the floor, and the buttons are specially designed so they don't get triggered by sub bass, and also they have a user-adjustable re-trigger time - set that to like 500msec and this reduces the chance of a jiggly finger double-triggering a song. Great stuff. Maybe for the next tour....
Dude, can I just say…. your posts are just so GOOD and fucking inspiring. I’m honored to be a member of this forum, with you participating here the way you do. (Sorry for fanboying haha!)
 
I did have Justin and Rob come down to look at our rigs - they are the backline / playback / keyboard techs for NIN, and Justin builds compact custom playback rigs for dozens of A-list artists, so he knows what works. They approved of our rigs, and suggested that in the future JB might want to ditch the LaunchPad since it can be prone to accidental triggering from big sub bass vibrations (and Ministry does have a lot of that!), and use either the GooRoo Lio-Box Ableton controller:
I will need to get one of these and wasn’t aware of the Lio-Box. Good stuff!
The iConnectivity is pretty standard. Sorry for slight sidetrack but I was going to go that route but I run it all with Soundgrid on LV1 and just by using a sidechain on a ducker being fed from a tone on the main rig. This does the same as the Playaudio in that the backup machine which is being ducked will instantly come up with a failure of the first.

Anyways thanks for the posts always love seeing what folks are using for their live rigs.
 
I grew up in Arcadia, very close to the Rose Bowl, and have been lucky enough to be in attendance for some great events there - I'm sure this will be another epic concert! Congrats!
 
Was a great show, and a treat to see Blondie, Stranglers, Simple Minds, Soft Cell, Adam Ant, Gary Numan, and, yes, even Duran Duran killed it. Good times.

And we even had the illustrious Tina Guo herself on electric cello, with Mia Asano on electric violin. Finally! After a decade of using the Cinesamples Tina Guo legato cello sample library, I got to work with the real thing! She is a treat, and I was so glad to finally share the stage with her.

Thanks Tina + Mia!
 
Hey @charlieclouser I was out front for Ministry. Great gig... looked and sounded wonderful! The intensity out front was something. Great mix also.
Congratulations :)
It was a great day for sure.
Glad it sounded good! I knew it would - Wedge Branon has been the main brain behind FOH (and tour managing, oof!) for a while and he knows how to make it sound THIKK.
 
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