IGHTRT90's Magazine's "ONE WORD INTERVIEW"

Gaffer tape is a A heavy cotton cloth tape with a strong adhesive and tensile properties. It's also known as gaffer's tape, gaff tape, or spike tape. Gaffer tape is flexible, non-reflective, low-gloss, and has no-residue adhesive. It's designed to be removed without leaving a residue, unlike duct tape, which leaves a sticky residue when removed.

Ross Lowell, a cinematographer, director, and founder of Lowel-Light, invented gaffer tape in 1959. Lowell created gaffer tape by combining Johnson & Johnson's Permacel duct tape with a silver fabric backing. He invented it to mount lighting units in the former home of Charles Lindbergh, which had been converted into a juvenile rehabilitation center, without interfering with the center's daily operations.

A Front of House audio engineer is a position that evolved from the days of theater at the turn of the century. Up until the early 20th century theaters were designed with acoustics in mind, the actors and singers could talk and sing "To the last row" without any aid of modern speakers or microphones. That changed with the intro of the "Public Address" system or "P.A."

As concerts grew in size so did the P.A. systems. This necessitated the need to add more and more microphones to capture the performance. To properly control these massive,and sometimes unruly systems the "sound engineer" controlling them needed to hear what the audience was hearing. This meant they would be placed in front of the stage in the midst of the crowd. 

Contrary to popular belief Audio Engineers are still human beings. So much like all the rest of you squares we need to stay hydrated. A problem arose "I need to drink something while I mix the show but I can't keep walking through the crowd to get a drink backstage."  So they began to bring out various drinks to the foh mix position. 

Many folks contributed the mayhem of the Rolling Stones Altamont Speedway concert on the Hell's Angels BUT it was actually sparked by a total sound system failure of the p.a. after "Thomas 'KaBoom' Martin" spilled an entire can of TAB cola on his mixing console! 

Not only did the Grateful Dead and their production staff give birth to the modern P.A. they also gave us a fail-safe solution to catastrophic mixing console failure due to liquid introductions! Enter our hero & FoH engineer Clarence 'ILTBA' Popick. After brainstorming and trial and error using donuts, a Birkenstock sandal & an even larger sized cup to hold his drinks securely near his mixer he had spied a solitary new roll of 3" Gaffer's Tape. He thought "Wow man,like what if my can of beer fit in the hole in the middle of that roll of like tape man?" You guessed it! It fit perfectly and with the added width and height of the tape roll itself it seems to stay firmly in place, even when The Dead played a Chuck Berry song out of tune for 30 minutes straight!  As a longtime FoH guy I salute you Clarence!  Your legacy lives on! 

The "Popick Cup Holder" in action today!