Okay, some of you remember reading the story of my nightmare titled “Nightmare on Murphy Street – Denver Edition” (FOH, Oct. 2007) and enjoyed reading about life on the road when Mr. Murphy is around. Well, there are other times when Mr. Murphy (I always use the title, as you never know when he may be taking notes) uses the hands of others to make you take a moment of pause and reflection. Such is the case here.
Long before the Denver story, I was a budding young hummer (the opposite of squint, meaning that I did sound and not lights), and out on the road again. I was out with an opening act this time and no longer working for the headliner, as the headline band’s manager wanted someone with my expertise out with his new up-and-coming.
The band was a high-energy act with the standard lineup at the time – drums, bass, two guitars and a front man – and headed for stardom. Funny thing, though, they were going out on a Midwest turn-around with the headliner I had just left to join them.
This put me in an awkward position, but exposed me to a number of practical jokers. And I was brought up in a time when, if someone did something to you, you did something back. It wasn’t long before this combination set off a sequence of pranks and counter-pranks and, ultimately, some serious mayhem.
The lead singer was a rather energetic type and ran around a lot. He had this tripod mic stand – it weighed less – that he loved to sling around. Since it was the first iteration of this type of stand, it wasn’t quite what we know and love now-a-days. Instead of the nice friction type of doohickey (an engineering term, I assure you) that kept the legs from folding down to the storage position like they have now, this prototype had Allen set screws that held the legs in the extended position. This would have worked just fine if the guy who was holding the top of it wasn’t slinging the thing around 100% of the time. I had tried everything to secure the legs, and finally, someone suggested superglue. Yup, superglue held the legs in a useful position, and so we acquired and maintained an inventory of 24 tubes of the life saving adhesive.
Life-saving, you ask? You stand on the side of the stage, in the dark and have an energetic lead singer who’s frustrated with a mic stand that the legs won’t stay up and see if you think superglue can save your life when the lights go down between songs and he throws the mic stand at you in the darkness!
That set aside, mic stand is now the “in” thing and everyone is happy. Remember what I said about the inventory, you’ll understand why it is important later.
So now we have broken off the mid-level regional act “drive until you die” tours and are back in 20,000 seaters with the big dogs. Everyone is happy to see me again and we sit around the bar and have a few together as the afternoon of a day off gets later and, with the combination of drink and lack of sleep bearing down on us, we all head back to our rooms to try to catch up on some of the sleep we’ve missed.
Shoes off, luggage stowed, we kick back and turn on the tube and start watching a little boobtube crap (yeah, this was back in the day when there were really only three channels on TV) when there is a knock on the door. I give my roommate a look like who dares to ignore the No Trespassing (Do Not Disturb for this who need the translation) sign on the door and turn the knob, only to have a trash can that was left tilted against the door with about a gallon of water and ice fall over and attempt to drown my feet in 32-degree H20. Okay, no, I wasn’t quite fast enough to keep the toesies dry. Okay, it was cold and wet and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.
First of all, there was the issue with them being my toes, and if I wanted to get them wet, I would have done it in a nice warm bath or shower, but barring injury, I reserve the right to keep them out of ice water.
“The Game’s afoot!” cried my room-mate as he leapt off his bed and joined me in the task of picking to the trash can and the ice and disposing of them more effectively.
Using the 1970s-era Party Favor approach, we began a room-by-room reconnoiter for the one room that would be missing a trash can by canvassing each and every room on the tour room list if need be. After three rooms, we had indeed located the abode of the miscreants who had done such a dastardly deed to us.
How could they? Didn’t they know that we’d get even?
To Be Continued…
