I worked as stage crew, mainly in Yorkshire, '89 - '93
A few lows:
Telling the guy repacking the Happy Mondays' truck he'd have the drum riser as soon as his colleague had finished chopping out massive drugs on it. Same guy who told everyone they were "twisting his melon"... all day. No, it wasn't Shaun, but it might have been his cousuncle.
Waiting for a runner to get back from finding an oxygen cylinder for Gary Glitter - in Bradford.
Two of us repainted the dressing rooms & back wall of the stage prior to the Sisters of Mercy playing Leeds Poly in '91. Black & white throughout, obviously. Next artistes to grace that acoustically-challenging auditorium were Walthamstow's finest, East 17, who graffitied the dressing room to fuck. No-one tried to auction any of it.
Turning up knackered from last night's gig to work for Suzanne Vega. How hard can a few guitars & a stool be? 2 artics & an 8-piece band later we were wishing her cuntboils.
Level 42's crew insisting the mixing desk (the biggest we had ever seen) needed to be on the balcony of Leeds uni's refectory. When we saw that the bass-slapping twat had more instruments on the side of the stage than songs we knew why. It wouldn't go in the lift, even after we took off all the handles and the things what held the candles. So up the stairs it went. The tour manager helped, by following us up the stairs telling us how much it cost.
Unloading & reloading all of Fish's steel, post-apocalyptic back-drop, of which we used 20%, at a guess. One of the road-crew said they'd used the whole set once on the entire tour.
Jimmy Savile at Roundhay Park, about 8 am. We were due to work for Genesis, several of us wearing t-shirts from a recent gig at the uni (They're free & they're clean! Jane's Addiction, I think). The Kappa kiddy-fiddler thought our apparent uniform amusing and blethered on before peddling off.
The female fans who think they can entice you to let them back-stage. Ageing hair-metal & Hawkwind fans were the most shudderingly horrific. She had what looked like one big dreadlock in a snood.
The Chili Peppers crew complaining the stage was too wet for the band to enjoy themselves, due to the sweat dripping from the ceiling.
A few high-notes:
4 of us carrying - barely - Motorhead's bar-in-a-flight-case up a particularly tight staircase. It held 30 spirit bottles plus accompaniments.
The massive Icelandic roadie who annexed all the bootleg shirts from a couple of touts & redistributed them. My first gig.
Putting on Asylum nights around Leeds for the first couple of years.
Sunrise over Roundhay Park after Genesis, whilst taking down the speaker scaffold. Hadn't realised how high up we were until then. Last one I ever did.
TL; DR Man reminisces about wasted youth.
(sarcastic fringehead feet of clay, buns of steel, head of lettuce, Wed 31 Jul 2013, 1:12, 5 replies)

GRENDEL!

( stuj (^(^;;^)^) GO TEAM SPIDERS!(^(^;;^)^), Wed 31 Jul 2013, 1:39, closed)

Mum?

(sarcastic fringehead feet of clay, buns of steel, head of lettuce, Wed 31 Jul 2013, 13:10, closed)

oh nice work

( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Wed 31 Jul 2013, 13:42, closed)

I quite like this.
'One big dreadlock in a snood' has amused me more than it should.
( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Wed 31 Jul 2013, 8:18, closed)

I have a friend who
ran a company setting up hugely elaborate parties for filthy rich people.

Sometimes when he was short handed he'd get me to come along and help.

I always used to enjoy doing that. The biggest one I did was when some spoilt middle eastern brat had hired the Natural history museum in London for his birthday party.

The main foyer area was turned into a nightclub, with the biggest lighting rig I have ever seen hanging above it. We were given strict lectures about safety, made to wear climbing gear and hard hats, and completely defeated the object by smoking lots of pot before we started monkeying around the 80' high ceilings.

Yuh, pointless story. I know.
(username failed moderation, Wed 31 Jul 2013, 15:17, closed)