“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” — Murphy’s Law
Back in the day (1982), I was the electronics tech for a sound company out on a major tour. More than 210 dates were booked, including a Euro tour leg, and I was a happy camper. Living on the bus was tight as there were 13 of us crammed into the Eagle 10, and seating accommodations rivaled that of the “Hot Bunk” approach used by the Navy — you get up from your seat, and the three-second rule applies: Three seconds later, someone else has your seat.
When we get to Denver, sound’s loaded in at the usual 10 a.m. Rigging had gotten there at 6:00 a.m., and the lighting guys at 8:00 a.m.; everything’s on schedule for a 12:00 noon band load-in. Our buddy Murphy is watching from up on a catwalk, deciding how he can have the most fun at our expense. Murphy has a very warped sense of humor.
The load-in time for the band also coincides with lunch for the rest of us. Dutifully heading down to hospitality, I meet with the caterer who’s supposed to be providing a number of vegetarian meals for certain crew members that day, as the lunch is “something special.” For those of you who have not been on the road, “something special” generally hits about show time in the form of unscheduled and urgent trips to the restroom. Not wanting to give my old friend Murphy the upper hand, I opt — along with six others on the crew — to pass on the special and go with something plain and ordinary. Cheese sandwiches would be fine. Murphy takes note.
The caterer tells me that he won’t make anything other than the special, and that I could have that or go. As I leave the caterer, I run into the road manager who takes an immediate affront to the caterer’s approach and leads me back into hospitality. A few terse words later — mostly dealing with the financial aspect of the situation — and a substitute is agreed upon. (Go figure this one: The caterer didn’t want to make the six meals at all, but now he’s doing eggplant parmesan.)
Off I go to mic the drums while the meal’s being prepared. Murphy winks as the fun’s about to start.
Now, given that I am an electronics type, and being one of the only two on the tour (my boss being the other one), I get called to the stage as the power supply in the artist’s pre-amp has given up the ghost. A couple of 15-volt regulators later, the bass rig is back in business, and I am on my way to catering to eat the eggplant. Murphy rubs his hands in delight.
The caterer tells me that he put the eggplant on the table. I check the room to find the empty dish — someone has already eaten it. I am told that it is my tough luck and now, two hours after my scheduled lunch, I can “deal with it.”
About this time, the now-infamous road manager approaches and asks me how lunch was, right in front of the caterer. As I start to speak, the caterer interrupts, reaming the road manager about me not sitting around waiting for him to serve the meal, and he figures “someone else got it.” Not being new to the rodeo biz, the road manager tells him to fix another, or he won’t get paid at all.
I have a couple more “duty calls,” and then I get to sit down to what appears to be wonderfully prepared eggplant parmesan. I am starving and in a hurry since soundcheck is now less that an hour away, and I still haven’t miked the drums. I didn’t even notice that the seeds hadn’t been completely removed from the eggplant the way the road manager instructed. (FYI — They grow 1/4-inch nuts in eggplants.) I bite down hard on a seed that the caterer missed, and now I am without three teeth. Two are broken off below the gum line, and the third is torn in half. The caterer is fired on the spot, as the road manager had walked back into hospitality just as I let out the scream signaling the end of my pain-free day. Murphy snickers.
After dismissing the caterer, the road manager finds a dentist (actually an oral surgeon) who can extract the remains of the two teeth and temporarily cap the third, but the appointment isn’t until 8:15 that evening. The opening act goes on at 7:00 p.m., they’re done at 7:35 p.m., with the headliner starting at 8:00 p.m. It is 10 minutes to the dentist’s office, and the runner is standing by to take me there. The plan is set. Murphy begins to chuckle.
The VIP Club of the arena is now providing catering for the dinner meal, and a mixture of ground-up stuff is given to me to drink. Not very filling, and even harder to swallow given the circumstances, but relief is in sight as the opening act starts.
Now 7:35 p.m. approaches, and I am standing by to remove the mics, pull the mic cables and get the headliner onstage before I depart for the dentist. A couple minutes into the break-down, everything goes silent. I look out to FOH to see why the preprogrammed music has stopped, only to see mushroom clouds rising from both the FOH and lighting positions. Screams can be heard now as the monitor engineer has just lost the intercom. He’s talking to the FOH engineer, and I am redirected away from the mic cables toward the more immediate problem of finding out what just happened.
Murphy starts laughing.
An improperly grounded and filterless scoreboard has just removed several pieces of equipment from the show’s inventory. A digital reverberator, several lighting controllers, some insignificant items and all five keyboards are the casualties. So much for the dentist.
In the ensuing minutes, soldering stations are set up in two areas. My boss is doing what he can to get the equipment fixed at the FOH and lighting positions, as the band’s lead tech and I are running triage on the keyboards. Two of them are beyond help; two of them have some good parts. One is in fair condition, but will not tune. (This was back in the days when there was actually a separate tuning voltage generated by the power supply). Much to my dismay, the manufacturer had not included that circuit diagram on the schematics.
The lead tech and I are running around like mad trying to get one keyboard to not only work, but to take the programs required for the show and remain in tune. As this was back in the pre-MIDI days, this involved a cassette tape player dumping the note-on/note-off info into the keyboard through a 1/8-inch cassette deck input. The road manager gets a music store and an electronics store to reopen, is getting us the required repair parts and has rented an OBXA from the music store so we can do the show. Murphy is cracking up.
The OBXA arrives, but it won’t take the programs. A newer version of the operating system is what I figure to be the culprit. In front of the road manager and the storeowner, I grab the side-cutters and remove the power supply board, which was hard-wired in place. It goes into the band’s sur-viving keyboard in hopes of fixing the tuning problem, but now all we have is one that will take the programs, but still won’t remain in tune. I will have to crouch behind the keyboard setup onstage and hit the Auto-Tune button every time it drifts out of tune. A plan is set, and it is show time.
Now the audience (bless their collective hearts) has tried to be patient with this two-hour changeover from one three-piece band to another, but the 14,000 raging maniacs have grown quite restless. As a matter of fact, groups of them are counting down, pointing at me and yelling “Three, two, one, You ASSHOLE!”
I become aware that this is happening just as the adrenalin wears off, the pain returns and I realize that the bleeding — which had stopped — is now back with a vengeance. Someone gets me one of the paper cups (usually full of soda) crammed with crushed ice and water in an effort to stop me from crying like a bitch. It is now one hour and 45 minutes past my dental appointment and that, as they say, is that.
As all this happens, enter the promoter. He swaggers onstage across the white shag rug and takes the stage-right mic. Did I mention the headliners played on a white shag rug that covered the whole stage? Well, they did. He begins by complimenting the audience for their patience and gets booed big-time for his effort. The punters don’t want to hear any of that. He continues, “I know you are all upset, and I’m sure everyone has something they want to throw…” Murphy’s having hysterics.
About this time, several people start running for the stage-right mic position. Mostly burley lighting types, as I am too much in shock to even move, as the promoter continues, “On the count of one, two…”
Just as he was about to say three, the two closest of the guys running toward him make a tackle that would have made Redskin Hall-of-Fame linebacker Sam Huff proud.
It’s way too late. I see the arc of the rising missiles and slap the lid of the keyboard closed. Others are running with guitars as the missiles reach apogee and start their descent. From the looks of it, more than a quarter of the cups will land onstage — and most seem to be aimed directly at my newly repaired keyboard and me. I dive on it, covering it with my facedown body, when a few hundred cups of Coke hit me square in the back. The once-white shag rug is now a sea of brown. Over on stage right, there are fists flying as I raise my head to see the hapless promoter being beaten within an inch of his life by at least five individuals. The fire marshal stops them, arrests the promoter on the spot and charges him with inciting a riot.
Murphy laughs so hard he falls out of the truss and disappears into the Coke-covered stage. The show goes on. I sit out of sight behind the keys, playing button pusher and dealing with the pain in my jaw. Then we pack up and haul-butt for Salt Lake City.
But that’s another story.
Dave Fletcher
Tampa, Florida
P.S. — I hereby certify and affirm under penalty of punter-torture that the aforementioned is true and accurate in all respects.
Recently, I went to see the band when they played in town. As I was being met at the backstage entrance by the Denver lead tech, now stage-manager, he was relating this story to one of the new guitar techs, who then asked me if it was true. I showed him the two still-missing teeth and the gold crown that covers the remains of number three. I’m not sure he believed it even then. Now the rest of the world knows why I would rather not go to Denver or relive that night ever again….
