Hi, welcome to my web page. I'm Paul Close, known as PC to my musician friends, and other things to other people :-)
The pic above was taken at Suntec City Singapore Hall 603, during setup for the 60's NOW! show. It was the 5th show in a row at the venue for the production crew and myself. More shots of the show on the pic's page. Apologies if it takes a little while to load. Give it a minute or so if you have the patience. There are some more pages (P.E.C. Show pic's) which you can access through the links above right. Many memories, many shows. I've been given shots of the shows, 64 of them so far. You can click on the Page 1, Page 2 links top right, and they will take you to them. There are more pic's of backstage and crew etc. from the Entertainment Centre which you can find on Page 3.Without going into too much detail, I'll now endeavour to lay out my background in the music industry over the last 30 odd years. If it appears as something of a C.V., then so be it, but it's also a collection of some wonderfull memories and fun times. Isn't that what life's supposed to be like?
My actual music training (what there was), goes back to high school being a member of a 40 strong choir which had the benefit of a music teacher who steeped us in material by artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Buddy Rich, Sara Vaughan etc. Ironically, I found myself doing a tour with Sara Vaughan in 1973 covering the capital cities of the eastern states of Australia (my home). A great tour with a great artist, backed by superb musicians namely Carl Schroeder, John Gianelli, and Jimmy Cobb. When Sara passed away several years ago, the music world, and the world in general, lost a great artist.
During and after my time at high school, I maintained my love of music with guitar lessons from a teacher who just happened to be a fan of Les Paul (she also had a Les Paul Gibson). So once again, I was treated to some great music in my education. Fast forward a few years, and I'm a regular at Surf City in Kings Cross Sydney, knocking around with the original Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs. Vince Melouney (guitarist, later with the Bee Gees) and I both went to the same high school. That period introduced me to the acts of that time, and the bug had bitten!
The ensuing years saw me with an embryonic Heart "n" Soul, which went on to be a very popular act for quite a while on the Sydney and Melbourne scene with a few charting records out in the shops. I also wound up playing drums in a Jimi Hendrix/Buddy Miles based trio with the then bass player Leith Corbett, who later joined the Dave Miller Set along with guitarist John Robinson. I also fronted my own 8 piece band with a brass section, doing material by greats like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, Percy Sledge, Traffic (later Blind Faith), and many others. If music is the food of life, I ate everything there was to be had, and I'm still looking forward to dessert!
From the early 70's to around 1983 covered a rather large range of shows, starting with doing staging for bands like the La De Da's, Mississippi (later to become Little River Band), about 4 or so years with The Mixtures in different periods doing their sound and staging in the earlier years, tours with Sara Vaughan, Bo Diddley, and numerous shows and tours with great acts like Jeff St. John (now Jeffrey St John), which included some great bands like the Kim Humphreys Band, Asylum, Bondi Bitch Band, an 8 month period in Melbourne with the wonderfully eclectic Uncle Bob's Band doing material by Count Basie, Django Rheinhardt, Fats Waller, Fats Domino ad others plus their own great originals. Back to Sydney teaming up with Sherbets F.O.H engineer hiring out P.A. systems, which segued into doing monitors with Tommy Emmanuel and Phil Emmanuel in Goldrush, and later with them as The Emmanuel Brothers Band. Tours with other acts like John Paul Young, Delilah (a great negress singer with the only voice that came close to nearly blowing Jeffrey off stage back then), a lengthy period with a good country rock band Stockade, and many others. Too many to remember or list here, but all part of many great memories and musical interludes. That period saw the emergence of Australian artists on the world stage, with many of them getting their grounding at places like The Here in North Sydney, and the most famous (or infamous if you like) venue of the time, The Bondi Lifesaver. That place saw such a procession of acts come through, ranging from Little River Band to the Bootleg Family (Brian Cadd), AC/DC, The Angels, Rose Tattoo, Dragon, Starrs, Kevin Borich Express (from the original La De Da's), Blackfeather, and many others. It was a period of immense camaraderie between crews and artists alike, and watching out for us all was the father of Sydney road crews, Ray Arnold.
Ray passed away mid September at age 70. He will be sadly missed by all he helped over the decades, inluding myself as Ray got me my first gigs in the industry in the early 70's. He had been working with Michael Chugg, still doing what he did best.
Ray, I take my hat off to you, as should all the crew members and artists you helped during those years. Wonderfull times were had, and unneccessary incidents averted :-) R.I.P. Ray, you've earned it mate.
The years following saw me move to Perth Western Australia, where I'm still based. I started here doing shows with(the late) Arthur James Productions (AJ to his friends) which covered many a show with acts like The Divynals, Midnight Oil, Skunk Baxter, Rose Tattoo, Mental as Anything and many others. It also saw my introduction to Perth Entertainment Centre while I was working with some good local acts that always had full houses. I was essentially based at the Entertainment Centre from then ('83) up until when the venue was closed in 2001/2002, which denied Perth people a good indoor venue which could hold aprox. 9,000 people. The Australian crews (and touring crews), and promoters are still bemoaning this situation. There were plans to revamp it, but when and by who is up in the air at the moment. During this period, I have worked on the audio side of just about every major touring show that came in there, from David Bowie through to The Eurythmics, BB King, U2, The Bee Gees, Joe Cocker, Steve Winwood, outdoor shows like Pink Floyd, the Help Concert for underprivileged kids with a list of big names in Australian music, and big theatre shows like Phantom of The Opera and Les Miserables. I've also mixed many a show in there as well when doing in house productions that range from corporate AGM's through to major dance shows and the Arts Dinners for Government and big business people. I was responsible for the in house sound system for most of the last 10 years or so, or the Jands Museum as it's fondly known due to the system comprising the Howard Page designed Concord speaker system and Jands 920 and J1000 amp's. We also did all the Perth Wildcats basketball games there as well, with many fast overnight turnarounds into or out of other concerts and exhibitions.
Over the years I've been a firm supporter and user of AKG microphones, I take them with me on the road, and O/S. They've been very good to me with backup when needed and just the superb quality of their products. I've also had a few articles published in the AKG International Report on shows I've done and CD releases. My sincere thanks to Christina Burkhardt, who was Editor in Chief there up until recently, and to Christian Trenkwalder, Sales Manager for his help on many occasions.
If you'd like to have a look at some of ( a lot of actually) Australia's music history, go to the RocknRoll Scars site, you'll find just about everyone there who made a record in Australia during the 60's to 70's period, which is what the site is about.
I always travel overseas with Singapore Airlines, they have a great, unobtrusive in flight service and facilities plus ground support I've found outstanding, and almost unavailable on other airlines.
In 1989 I went to Singapore for the first time to honour a promise made to a friend I met here in '83. Long time taken I know, but no one ever said that life was anything about predictability. That trip opened up a whole new ball game, and the amount of friends and contacts I've made since then over the course of some 24 trips there is nothing short of brilliant. I've had the opportunity to work on shows at the Indoor Stadium with Kitaro, and MLTR (Michael learns To Rock), an outdoor concert at Fort Canning Park as part of Singapore's Independance Day Celebrations, then became head of audio at what was a beautifull S$9 million club (closed in 1992), where I mixed Kool and The Gang, the opening for one of Singapores new radio stations with the address by the Prime Minister of Singapore amongst others. One of my closest friends there, Vernon Cornelius, is also known as the Cliff Richard of Singapore, and has a lot of other titles to his credit, designing the audio at Fort Siloso and doing Singapores history for the National Library amongst them. I also designed the system for one of the PALA Trade Show's live music performances, bringing two very good friends of mine there to do the show, Brenton Fosdike and Paul Reynolds. A few pic's of that part of the show and the promo's are here, PALA Opening.
For those viewing this page for the first time, if you're thinking about staging an exhibition or conference in Singapore, then contact my friend at IIR Exhibitions who stage the PALA show every year, Rosalind Ng-Seah.
If you're needing a high quality production company in Singapore, I recently designed the system and mixed 5 shows there at Suntec City with Herman's Hermits featuring Peter Noone, Johnny Tillotson, Brian Hyland, and the 60's NOW! show which featured 5 acts from Singapore, Indonesia, Holland, and Australia in a 4 hour show including my friend Vernon Cornelius. The sound system (E.V. Line Array), lighting and stage were all provided by Showtec Communications Pte Ltd. A great job thanks guys, technical director is Simon Low , Head of Audio and system engineer is Chandra Mohan , Production Manager is Berg Ramli. I adopt the attitude of credit where credit's due, so the 2 pic pages are from the 60's Now! show in Singapore. Regrettably I wasn't able to get pic's of the 4 shows prior due to unforeseen circumstances.
For rigging, engineering, plus CM Lodestar chain motors (and knowing where to get the best durians in town) contact my good friend AK Chia of Scorpio Engineering. You can contact him at kelvchia@hotmail.com , his mobile no. is: (65) 9830 8025 and his fax: (65) 6286 0229.
If you're heading to Thailand, the always erudite Peter Rooney is based in Bangkok with Bec-tero Productions. I've known Peter for some years, including his time with Jands in Australia and Singapore. Look him up.
In 2008, it was the usual local gigs, after having acquired my Certificate 4 in I.T. during 2007, I have also gained my Certificate 2 course in Languages (Mandarin).
In 2009 I've been doing local gigs, and recently finished the Australian Surf Lifesaving Championships ate Scarborough Beach here in Perth. They ran for a week, 6 am starts and 6pm finishes for myself and Dave, the Adasound audio company owner, but that's what it's all about isn't it? I thoroughly enjoyed it,
Well, I think that's about enough of me to date. If you are looking for an experienced sound engineer with a musical ear, click here or on the Contact Me link at the top of this page. My mobile no is: (61) 0417 945 063. If you do call from outside Australia, drop the first 0 from the number.
Cheers,
Paul Close