Welcome to My Nightmare

While doing FOH at an outdoor gig in Victoria, B.C., with a fair-sized (six boxes/side + 6dual 18) EAW rig next to city hall, the local city representative and his trusty Realistic SPL meter came up BEFORE we turned on the mains and told us to keep it down–the local bylaws say that they have a 90dB limit. The stage sound at FOH was around 90 to 95dB. The local system tech didn't turn on the system for the first band, and we were the second of three bands in the lineup. Well, I hadn't seen the city guy in an hour, and figured I could bluff and delay us through a 30-minute set, and mix with adequate volume. This, however, was not the issue. Halfway through the first song, the subs go down. No comms to stage, so I run to the deck and get the system dude to click the breaker back on. Bear in mind that I was peaking at about -6 on the output of the crossover. Went back to FOH and was there for a minute before the subs went down again. As I ran back to the stage, the high/mids went down. The stage guy said I was pushing it too hard, but my mix was so conservative that there was NO WAY I was close to the red lights. The monitors seemed to be relatively stable, and the band I was working for had been accustomed to no monitors, so I cranked the vox in the wedges and pointed them towards the crowd. The owner of the rig finally showed up and crawled under the deck, played with the distro and all was good. The last twothirds of the set went off without a hitch, at about 105dB at FOH. But during the second-to-last song, the city guy reappears and gives his meter a good, hard look, and glares at me. I held my SPL, and nothing came of it. Had he asked me to turn it down, I may have inserted the meter in him. By the way, I found out later that a construction worker next door had plugged an electric jackhammer into our power distro.

During my meager eight-year career in live sound, I have only feared for my safety on two occasions. One was an angry rap concert with no security to speak of, which isn't surprising, but the other was a Pentecostal revival.

Being a Christian, I always enjoy working church-related events, especially those which are, to some degree, more energetic than the ones I've experienced in my entirely Southern Baptist upbringing. But this was an evening I'll never forget.

I learned the hard way to never lend out gear to your friends. My good friend came to me to borrow my new FOH board and new monitor mixer. He needed it for his friend who was doing a show out of town, so I said "OK, but I need it back in time for my show on the following day, at the exact time I am to set up."

The day of the gig, they rushed in, dropped off the boards and took off right away, which was curious. My head tech pulled the board out of its road case to find it dripping with water, and the case itself had absorbed a lot of water as well. My tech phoned me where I was working on another job, and I had to rent my old board that I had just replaced with the new board, the one that was now soaking wet. I was so embarrassed. Especially after bragging to the customer on how good the new FOH board was and how the built-in effects were just beautiful for what they needed. Boy, did I have egg on my face.

Back in 1978, Mother Blues in Dallas was a great club, and the band Southern Cross was great and very fun to mix. One night, "Tiny" the bouncer tossed a drunk out the front door, but the guy still wanted to rock! Since Tiny was stationed at the front door, the drunk guy couldn't possibly gain entrance there.

Let me digress a bit here: Tiny was huge and really ugly. I have been to a million clubs, and Tiny was the ugliest and meanest bouncer of them all. All the other bouncers together could not hurt Tiny: he could beat them all up at once and would probably enjoy doing it. Tiny was a nice guy, but he still scared me!

As the technical manager of a mid-sized community theatre, one of my duties is to review all proposed special effects for safety. About a year ago I was presented with a situation that reminded me to expect the unexpected.

A local organization that provides an educational alternative for "at-risk" high school students rented our theatre to present an anti-gang themed play created by their students for presentation to other local high school students. The director of the group called me to ask permission to use a pistol in a fight scene. After a brief conversation about rules regarding firearms, I asked him to drop by with the gun so I could check it out.

Like many other sound guys who still play in bands, when I play out, I get to be both performer and soundman. It can get pretty interesting. In the late '90s my five-piece classic rock group was hired to play the Rodeo Club, a popular nightclub on Lake Martin in east Alabama. When we arrived at the club, I saw some large speakers by the stage and deduced that the club had its own sound system (No, I had not advanced the gig…). Though we carry our own system, using the house gear meant not having to unload and set ours up, which was fine with us. But after talking with the venue manager we found out that it only looked like there was a house system: though there had once been a house P.A., parts were missing and nothing was connected.

I was working in Austin, Texas for a company called Media Event Concepts doing mostly corporate AV support. It was the one job in my life that I can comfortably say I hated; however, at the time I merely had the wrong attitude. I now know that God put me there to ultimately learn a few things about life (mostly humility), but he also put me there to learn a thing or two about AV. Almost 10 years later, I'm employing much of the stuff I picked up way back when. Thank you, Gordon.

Performers sometimes expect FOH people to perform virtual miracles in the way of responding to the most vague requests–and I've rarely encountered a sound guy who isn't able, and willing, to do so. But it doesn't hurt to try and make the harried technician's job a little easier, especially when the working situation is

particularly stressful and muddled. Sometimes it can really pay off…

When on tour with a major rock 'n' roll band promoting a new record, you are sometimes called upon to pull off extraordinary feats of technical wizardry while keeping your own composure, under physically stressful conditions that might make a weaker being weep like a little girl. This is one of those stories. The names have not been changed as to give the parties involved due credit and kudos.