It was a January rap show in a club on the East side of Buffalo. Load in was at 1 a.m., the band was scheduled to arrive around 3 p.m., show at 9 p.m. The FOH engineer Brandon and I set up the rig and waited patiently next to mammoth propane heaters for the band to arrive. 3 p.m. came and went, and then 4, 5 and 6 p.m. respectively. Finally, at 10 p.m., two hours after doors, and one hour after the show was to have started, the band shows up, takes one look at the stage and asks where all their backline is. A few frantic phone calls later, we discover that there was a miscommunication at the shop and the backline was never advanced. "No problem" we say, "we'll just go get it." Meanwhile, the crowd is restless and hovering on the verge of angry. Out the door, the parking lot was chaos–people, cars, security, more cars, more people–and there is no way in hell that we are going to get Brandon's pick-up out. We go in, head out back to the 24-foot truck, turn the keys–nothing. It's dead.
Inside, the crowd has gone from angry to bordering on violence. No one can find the stage manager. There's a band, but no instruments; there's vehicles, but no way out. The place stinks of propane. And at that beautiful moment, as we stood at FOH and frantically discussed options–the main breaker for the venue trips and the entire place is plunged into darkness.
The show eventually went on. Security came in to control the crowd, Brandon took care of the power situation, and I borrowed a car to go get the backline. It was tense, but we made it through to the load out, at 6 a.m., when we discovered someone had vomited all over the snake.
Carissa Tripi
