I have never considered anything that has gone wrong, or changed, to be a nightmare. It has always been a learning experience, and then I keep it in the back of my head for the future. However, I just got back from a nightmare.
We did a private event with a big name act one night. I brought the PA, tweaked it to my liking and then let the band’s engineer take over with his board. All I did was take a feed from him and then let him do his thing. At the last minute, we got another show in the same room with the same gear the following day. The only thing that I could get out of anyone is that two big names are to show up. Great, the truck left and now I have this to think about. On top of that, I will not have a monitor engineer and I only have two wedges that I can give them. I knew I was walking into hell.
The day of the show comes and we get in five hours before show time. I start working with what I can. Three hours before show time and I get stage plots. I need eight mixes and nine wedges plus amps. Now I need an engineer and one that can run a digital board. We find an engineer — he was great — and we found some wedges somewhere with Crown amps.
We are still setting up during that first band’s sound check. The second band comes on stage and moves everything! Mics get cross-patched and are everywhere now. It took the both of us forever to figure out where every mic was. Each band played about 25 minutes and we had a few minutes for changeover. It was relentless — no one telling me anything and everything getting cross-patched.
I look back at it now and can laugh because I could have done a few things to make things easier, and I still can’t believe how fast I was moving that day. What I didn’t mention was that I was in Philly, and anyone that works out there knows that it is nothing but hell!
Brian Crowley
