We were playing a street dance, and they told us there was a generator for us to use. When we got there we found that the generator's distro panel was 150 feet from the stage, and the generator was in an alley behind a fence and 12 feet below the street level. Oh, and the generator was being shared by us and all the street vendors. (Uh-oh.)
We got everything plugged in and checked the power meters on the FOH rack, and discovered that the generator was cranked up to 130 volts, so my guy had to walk around two buildings to get to the generator to turn its output down to a reasonable level. We continued with our setup and got ready to start sound check, when the GFI on the distro panel popped. After checking several configurations on the distro, we finally got a stable one, and got through the sound check. In the middle of the first set, though, I lost the mids, so I sprinted up to the stage to check the amps, which I thought had gone into protect mode, only to find out that the mid amps were actually dead. So I sprinted back to the distro to find that one of our breakers had popped. Mind you, as I was running around, the band was still playing (we were recording the show), and the crowd was doing its best to stay out of my way so I could do what I needed to do. Anyway, I reset the breaker and sprinted back to the FOH (being cheered by the crowd because I had fixed the sound problem), hoping that things would be ok. And they were — until the third set when it popped again, and again, and again. . . (Wait for it) . . .
And again. Finally, at this point, one of the organizers came up to me and told me that a beer truck had been sharing the same circuit as the amps, and that was popping the breaker. He had just moved the beer truck to another outlet, and we went the rest of the show without another power problem, which amounted to eight more songs.
Phil "Swordfish" Clark
