On the stageToo shy to ever appear on stage myself, I still hung around theatres like a bad smell when I was younger - lighting and set design were what I was good at.
Backstage we'd attempt to sabotage every production - us lighting geeks would wind up the sound man by putting the remote "pause" button for his reel-to-reel tape machine on his chair, so when he sat down it'd start running, ruining his cues. Actors would do scenes out of order to make our lives hell. It was great and I don't know why I don't still do it.
Tell us your stories of life on the stage.
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chthonic, Fri 2 Dec 2005, 11:02)
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Band Life - So many!!!!Many of our problems stem from the fact that most sound techs at any venue we play are shite!
1) Show was meant to start at 6:30, we were the first band on (it was our first ever gig), and we had our sound check at 7:30, in front of a full crowd! And the sodding sound tech called Dom told us it was fine and we should just start the gig (after 1 minute of sound checking). Thankfully some guy in the crowd came over to us and said "turn that guitar up, the bass down etc" so we controlled the sound levels ourselves. At the end of our set Dom comes over and says to our drummer "The snare wasn't loud enough, you should hit it harder!" and he set the fucking drum mics up, by utting them all on the floor next to the kit. What a cock!
2) Another place, another crap sound tech! This guy decided to place the microphone to pick up the rhythm guitar a few metres away from the amp, so that no rhythm guitar can be heard. We have to stop our first song to point this out to him, so he comes over, looks at the amp, preteds to do something, says its fine, then fucks off and tells us to get on with the show! He also spent ages in the sound check getting the third vocal mic correct, even though we only have two singers!
3) This was in quite a well known venue. I try to be helpful and point out to the sound tech that I have different settings on my amp, and that if he gets the general sound level right then i can control it myself (so when we play a qite bit i press my footswitch ad my guitar goes quite etc). His reply: "Don't fucking tell me how to do my job, I'm a professional! I once did the sound for Muse! You know who I mean! If you sound shit its your fault cos I'm a fucking brilliant sound tech!" and he walks off. I ws jus trying to help. So we get on stage and start playing and we go to the quite bit which i have done myself with teh fotswitch. I can see the sound tech in his little box turning my volume up - even though i tried to tell him i can control it! The song goes into a heavy rock part (involving me pressing teh footswitch and changing onto my Over Drive channel with massive gain and volume) and the whole place screeches with feedback and deafens everyone in the first 10 rows! What a professional!
(, Sat 3 Dec 2005, 2:38, Reply)
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