David and I stopped by The Dakota Tavern on an EXTREMELY RAINY night last week to catch occasional Miracle Fortress member Adam Waito and his personal project Adam & the Amethysts – we were contacted by his publicist a few weeks back to shoot the group as part of The Indie Machine’s live video series WIRED.

I have to say I’m a little disappointed in myself, since I haven’t been to The Dakota in ages and it’s JUST down the street from me – though it really isn’t my standard “crawl home” distance the way that the hotspots on Queen West, Spadina and College are. Since I hadn’t been there in so long, it only occurred to me as we were setting up the gear that we had never shot an episode of WIRED at The Dakota with audio gear – as such we didn’t know that their system is all-digital and thus i would require a S/PDIF cable and some kind of converter to get audio off the board efficiently into the XLR|1/4″-friendly trusty field recorder…. not something I (or most live videographers for that matter) would keep in their kits.

Luckily I had a semi-busted RCA cable that i managed to use and get a decent line audio with…. though now I’m going to have to add that pesky S/PDIF cable to my gear, as I’ll always be unsure from now one whether or not I’ll need it.

We chatted up Adam after the set before we headed out into the rain – each of us grabbing a copy of his latest LP on vinyl… me STILL sans-record player to play it. Thankfully at least…. most vinyl these days also comes with a digital download link for tunes to fill your portable player of choice….

I really need to get a record player…

Dear Santa: