There are a lot of things that can make a gig bad: the weather, delayed or canceled travel (and the accompanying stress) and equipment breakdowns all come to mind. But when someone asks, “How was the show?” the reply is never “the weather was great” or “my flight was awesome, especially the sponge bath I had in Business Class” or “none of the gear exploded” (hmmm… anyone remember Phase Linear amplifiers?). Most often, what makes a great gig is the people who work it.
I could list a hundred technical things that would make any engineer happy when walking into a venue for the first time: the latest digital desk with all of the features you’d ever need; a bright, clean screen for the aforementioned desk; a comfortable chair to sit in while mixing; a finely tuned line array with tweaked front- and balcony fills; an assortment of microphones that would embarrass any studio. Clean dressing rooms. A production office with a printer, a fast Internet connection and a fridge. The list could go on, but the heart and soul of any venue is the staff.
A few weeks ago, I worked a venue in Basel, Switzerland called z7. This was midway through a two-week tour of fly dates. Band and crew were starting to run out of clean clothes, and when you don’t have days off, it’s a problem. Our runner — we’ll call her Miss X — picked up the crew at the hotel and, when we asked if there was any place to do laundry, she told us there was a washing machine at the venue. I still had a few days to go before I reached the breaking point, but I figured, okay, I’ll take my dirty laundry to the venue, and if the washer and dryer are those typical disgusting machines you see in most clubs, I’ll hang on to it for another day or two.
When we drove up to the venue, my heart sank. It was located in what appeared to be a warehouse district, and from the outside it looked like your typical tired, old warehouse converted into a rock club. You know the type — you’ve been there a hundred times. Steel shed, concrete floor, no heat in the winter/no AC in the summer. Stinks of beer soaked into the floor, plus year’s worth of tar and nicotine from cigarette smoke deposited onto the walls. Tiny, dirty dressing rooms with stickers and graffiti all over the walls, and couches that should have been burned long ago. Bathrooms that haven’t been cleaned in years. P.A.s built around cabinets that were mothballed around the same time as the USS Iowa, consoles with faders that stick, and switches that won’t switch because someone spilled Coke on the desk 15 years ago. Beat up, outdated outboard gear that wasn’t any good even when it was new. I was having PTSD flashbacks. Ugh.
Looking inside confirmed the first impression. Dark club with black walls and a high tin ceiling. Add to the list of disappointment: I was sure it’d sound like poo.
A Pleasant Surprise
Rewind to a few days before we arrived: I received an email from Miss X, who was also in charge of hospitality. She asked if there was anything special that we wanted for dinner. Knowing how tough it is to please eight people at the same meal, I answered that chicken is always a safe bet, but we would need to make sure that the vegetarian in the group would be accommodated.
Miss X asked if we wanted to see the dressing rooms (I didn’t), and before I could answer, she grabbed our laundry bags and said ‘I take care of this.” We headed up to the dressing rooms, and they looked pretty good: nothing extravagant, but clean. In fact, the entire place was clean and reminded me of something my Nana once said: “Clean does not cost much” (or some Italian translation thereof). Amen. Miss X told us that lunch was up, and the day took a striking turn for the better. She had prepared a modest but beautiful spread with homemade veggie soup, fresh cheeses, bruschetta, several different types of salads, deli meats and just about anything you could want. Plenty of fresh, hot coffee and tea — whatever we needed, she was on it. Somehow Miss X knew that I was fighting a cold, and told me that the soup would make me feel better. She was right.
Dinner was similarly impressive: chicken cutlets second only to Mom’s, more fresh salads, a wonderful assortment of cheeses and bread, pasta for the vegetarian and real peas and carrots that were actually cut up in the kitchen, not poured out of a can. A mousse-type dessert that had the name of the band scripted in the icing. Amazing.
The house crew was similarly accommodating: friendly, eager to work and ready for anything. One of our instruments was damaged in transit (thank you, Delta airlines), and the house crew helped us find carpenter’s glue and clamps so we could repair it. The front of house guys babysat me until I was comfortable at the Avid S6L (see last month’s T&P), made sure there was a barrier around me so the crowd couldn’t push in, and found me a comfortable chair — though we all had a good laugh at my first attempt to sit my arse on some sort of modern bar stool that required the skill of a high-wire artist.
Comments and Kudos
At the end of the evening, I commented to the venue manager on what a great crew he had. He thanked me and explained that they all had been working together for a long time, and they were like family — and it showed. They had each other’s backs, and if someone did not know the answer to a question, they could find the person who did. They treated us like family.
Fast forward to last night in Shreveport, LA, and we had a similar experience. Starting with the promoter at the top of the chain, everyone at the show was professional and accommodating. During the weeks leading up to the show, there were many phone calls to sort out small details. Contrast that with the personnel at today’s venue, whom I’ve had to call or email several times to get the answer to a single question, and you can see why I appreciate people who take pride in their work.
That’s the bottom line for all of us. Audio is not really a tech industry. It’s a service industry. It’s about interacting with people to make an event happen as smoothly as possible, both from technical and logistical standpoints. When we can string together dates that run smoothly, when people are on their game and enjoy what they do, life is good. And we all deserve it.
Steve “Woody” La Cerra is the tour manager and Front of House engineer for Blue Öyster Cult.
