"Stupid stories!"

[agedhorse]

I made a lot of money on the Lesbian circuit (sound for one-offs and regional tours) in the 80's and early 90's. We handled every one of the top "woman's music" acts in the country. Still work with them at an occasional date when they are in town. For the most part, they are no different than any othe acts we do... with one exception. About 17 years ago, my wife to be at the time was helping me on a smaller gig, and at intermission, she got hit on about a dozen times. Seems that a fresh face was very welcome to the audience. Since I worked with that artist so many times in the past, AND the audience recognized me as being "friendly territory", the artist asked (very nicely I might add) that my wife to be was already spoken for and to welcome her as such!!! I received more congratulations that night and then a couple of comments like "one less for them", and to her, "if he ever disappoints you, you know where you will be appreciated! Wife wouldn't go to one of my gigs for years after that... still a bit jumpy.

 

It's a great circuit if you can deal with the politics... and the dark house groping. I had the best seat in the house to view that action... 6 feet off the main floor at the back.

[MrKnobs]

OK, time for yet another "stupid story." This one is inspired by recent postings on another thread, and deals with the age old theme of the one guy in the band who does all the work, fronts all the money, always takes one for the team, and therefore is thoroughly despised and taken advantage of by the his bandmates. I'm sure you know the story even before I begin.

So it's a few years ago, a scorching Texas summer, and me 'n the boys are headed for the little Texas town of Nacogdoches (never mind how to pronounce it) to play a Saturday afternoon show. I have to tell you at 3 o'clock in the summer it's still pretty damn hot in Texas.

Turns out the A/C is burned out at the big dance hall, and the repairman can't make it until Monday. No A/C means no people. No people means no gig, and we've just driven 300+ miles to get there.

Club manager wants to cancel us. We understand, and ask for the 50% cancellation fee in our contract (didn't give 24 hrs notice) so we can be on our way. An argument ensues, the manager doesn't think we should get anything if we don't actually play. By some bizarre logic, the resolution is that we will get the entire amount, if we play the entire gig. So we unpack the truck and set up.

Now, it's about 110 degrees in this big tin barn, and we're all sweating like pigs after unloading the truck. There are absolutely no paying customers there, only 8-9 wait staff and bartenders, who for some reason are not dismissed. Maybe they wanted half pay to go home, like we did, I dunno. No one is happy.

We have 100 lbs of dry ice for the fog machine. No point in making fog for nobody, so we pack it into the amp rack to try and keep things cool. We play the "show," opening with the Cheap Trick number, "Hello Roxy employees, didya come for the show? Are ya ready to go...."

For some reason, our completely brain-dead soundman decides an empty 110 degree club is a good opportunity to see exactly how loud our PA can get. Maybe he inhaled too much of the dry ice. He blows two of our sub speakers in his experiment.

Or, I should say, MY sub speakers since I'm the PA owner. I'm pretty upset with him, but much more upset when not one of my bandmates will agree to help pay for the reconing. They think the soundman should pay, and he has no money. Therefore I get to pay. The way it works out, after this decently paying gig, is that everyone makes money except me.

I see red!

It's not like me, but I started picking up tables and chairs and smashing them to flinders left and right. Two beefy bouncers who are kicking back chatting with the waitresses run up and snatch me up off my feet like I weigh nothing. They're not really mad, just amused. They tell me to cut it out because it's too hot for them to be pounding anybody's ass into the dirt today. I see my life flash before me and calm down.

Now the manager is here. He's not amused! He wants to know who's going to pay for the destruction. I tell him take it out of our pay, which satisfies him. Oddly enough, it exactly equals our entire pay, by some strange coincidence. I had no idea a few {censored}ty bar chairs would come to $600.

My band members can hardly believe what has happened. They've never seen me act like this before (although they will again) and want to know what I could have been thinking to blow all that money. I tell them I just didn't want to be the only guy in the band who lost money on the trip.

That taught them (and me) a lesson. For a while.

Terry D.

$$$TDD$$$

[Six String Stuntman Steve]

 

Originally posted by MrKnobs: That taught them (and me) a lesson. For a while.

 

 

Attitude is attitude....amen.

 

-Nigel

[Six String Stuntman Steve]

Here's another one for you from 3 years ago when I was in grade 8.

 

Every year, we have an event called the "Dubai Tennis Open". This is a lot of fun for the kids because they have the tennis open day and other exciting competitions. One such competition is the Interschool theme song.

 

This was the second year running for this competition and our school had won. It was pretty exciting for me. A group of about 15 of us had come in on a weekend and recorded a scratch demo with only a piano and sent it in.

 

Later, they promised airplay of the song on the radio so we got to go into a studio and record the song. Again, being my first time, I was pretty much blown away.

 

Now the day came, and we were supposed to go ONTO the court in between a set and sing our song on television! Now, it had already been planned by our music teacher (who I've alluded to in an earlier post) that we were to MIME to the "CD Single".

 

Abhishek and I along with 3 others were old enough to comprehend this. But Tommy (the music teacher) had to somehow explain this to the little kids. Our team had about 10 girls between the ages of 9 and 12. So he gathered all of us and said "Remember how you were practicing in school and you would hear an echo that threw you off beat? Well, thank goodness that due to a technical default with the arena sound system, you will be able to hear yourself one second BEFORE you actually sing."

 

Abhi and i started to crack up but the kids actually bought it!

 

Now here's something interesting. First of all, we went on, and the arena sound technicians started to place our mic stands. Cables from the mics went down the court and STOPPED abruptly right in the middle. They were dummy mics!

 

Another point, one of the lines went "Wave your hands, keep your eyes on the ball (x3)". While doing this, it was decided at the last minute that we should wave our right arms in the air and turn to the left with every four counts, so that we make a 360 degree turn at the end of the phrase. And so we did, with our mics on mic stands, NOT FACING OUR MOUTHS WHEN WE TURNED!!! And our voices came out perfectly, you wonder how!!

 

And all this on television!!!!!! I even had my folx record it! It was quite ridiculous.

 

We never won that competition again.

 

-Nigel

[kaishaku]

 

Originally posted by Six String Stuntman Steve: "Remember how you were practicing in school and you would hear an echo that threw you off beat? Well, thank goodness that due to a technical default with the arena sound system, you will be able to hear yourself one second BEFORE you actually sing." Abhi and i started to crack up but the kids actually bought it!

 

 

This is brilliant. A pure Spinal Tap moment.

 

~Kai.

[Six String Stuntman Steve]

 

Originally posted by kaishaku: This is brilliant. A pure Spinal Tap moment.

 

 

HO HO HO!! You have NO idea how whack this tommy is! LOL!

 

I'll share a few more stories a bit later.

 

-Nigel

[Lonz Live]

Starting out my band usually rented a small system with a powered mixer for our small club/party gigs. Well, we met a sound guy with a pretty sophisticated system who ran our sound locally a couple of times. He liked us and was a big help. We asked him to travel 2.5 hours away for a gig, but it was a little too much for him. He offered to lend us his system. We knew nothing about seperate two way systems with cross-overs etc, so me and the bassist go to sound guy's house before the gig and he went over everything we needed to know. We thought we took good notes.

 

On gig day we take four cars to sound guy's house and load up these ridiculously large bass bins and all the other stuff into four separate cars and drive from NH to RI. We get there and unload all this stuff and after two hours of messing around we couldn'tget a sound out of the system. We called sound guy but he wasn't around. We were screwed!

 

Thank god the drummer who thought ahead brought this POS Peavey guitar amp he was going to use as a monitor. We took that and plugged in my mic and the lead singer's mic into the guitar amp for FOH vocals and played our instruments loud through our amps. We kept the PA speakers in place.

 

The gig actually went off OK. My girlfriend was in the crowd and she was dying laughing when she said a couple was trying to

converse in front of the the silenced-by-stupity PA speakers and one said "I can't hear you these speakers are right in my ears".

 

Other than the band, no one else apparently knew that our impressive FOH system was only for show.

[Six String Stuntman Steve]

Ever heard of an "Unplugged" concert? Let me tell you a story.

 

Our rhythm guitar player in school (Andrew) only joined our school music group last year. Abhishek and I have been in for about 4 years now. One of Andrew's unfortunate (mis)conceptions in life is that he's a pro...and that he doesn't need to practice in advance, let alone hear a song, before a band practice session. Very often this gets me, and the other band members, pretty pissed off. Unfortunately, we're the only musicians in school, so we don't have much of a choice...we have to keep him. And in any case, no one has the heart to tell him.

 

In due time we learnt the technique of balancing Andrew in the mix perfectly. He plugs his guitar into his Crate amp and takes a line out to the mixer (something he didn't know he could do until I showed him what the line out was for). I plug my guitar into my Digitech RP2000 guitar processor and plug that into the mixer. What most of you outta know about cheap amps is that line out distortions suck and sound awfully tinny. Abhi and I thought of something simple yet effective, turn his mixer channel gain off. Works everytime.

 

So this one practice session the day before our disasterous Teacher's Day show (reffered to in an earlier post), we were allowed to use the auditorium mixer. So we "adjusted" our sound levels, Abhi and I usually do all the balancing. We went through a good practice session and everything was alright. My dad was supposed to come in a sometime later and fix our sound.

 

For one of our songs, I used a patch that simulated a Mesa Boogie Mark IIc with a phase effect in the solo. So there I was playing the solo (incidently which contains notes higher up on the fretboard) and Andrew was bashing out some chords (incidently lower on the fretboard) that sound like a dual rectifier imposter that's been flooded with orange juice. I was concentrating real hard on this solo and glanced over at him. He was completely oblivious to the fact that his volume was OFF and he had a huge grin on his face, violently bashing out an F minor from what I could see. The song was in B minor.

 

At the end of it, he put down his guitar and stared at his amp. I started thinking "oh crap, he's figured out that we turned him off". Just then he turned around to me and said "Whoa dude, I've never got a cooler sound out of my amp before".

 

I shook my head. "That's nice Andrew", I told him.

 

We "accidently" forget to plug his line out into the mixer for the actual show the next day. He could hear himself through his guitar amp and was happy. Unplugged concert.

 

-Nigel

 

 

[This message has been edited by Six String Stuntman Steve (edited March 28, 2002).]

[rangerkarlos]

Must..not..let..thread..die...!

 

Bump-a-roni

 

K

[bassknave]

Damn, Karl, you're almost as sick as Ogg!

 

Phil

[MrKnobs]

Oh, all right.

As you guys know, I ran sound for a lot of country stars but country music is not my first choice. So imagine my excitement when I got to run sound for Badfinger one night in my own home town.

I'd have done it for free.

Now, this was long after their glory days filling huge coliseums, where I'd last seen them when I was an impressionable kid. Their guitarist / songwriter had committed suicide, it had been a long way down to the night at the little club where I got to run sound for them. Still, what a thrill to work for my boyhood heroes!

The gig itself went off without a hitch. Club was laid out in a U shape, which was kind of bad because it was packed and the band could obviously only be in one of the two rooms, not both. So I had to run a time corrected satellite system into the second room so that those folks could hear time aligned (no echo) sound while they watched on the big screen TV.

After the show something happened I'll never forget. There was a girl that appeared to be with the band, and she was hot with a capital "h." My girlfriend was with me, so I had to be content with the occasional glance. I went back into the dressing room to tell the band how great they were (like some stupid fan, that's how impressed I was) and my girlfriend came with me. The band guys listened to what I had to say, and then thanked me profusely for the sound as they'd been having to take whatever the venue provided lately. They started looking around for something to sign and give me.

My girlfriend decided she wanted a Badfinger T shirt, and they tossed her one. She embarassed me by saying she didn't want a red one, she wanted a purple one like the groupie chick was wearing. The band apologized and said they were all out of purple ones. The groupie chick said, "No problem" and gave my girlfriend the shirt right off her bare back. Yes that's right, less than a foot away from her 38 triple Ds in all their glory. Yow!!! That image is still burned in my brain.

A little later I got to chat with the band guys a bit and they told me that they couldn't afford to carry a bunch of ladies with them so they were sharing the lovely young lady I met! I'll never forget what their singer told me, in his thick British accent. "Better to share one good one than carry a lot 'o skanky ones."

That's good advice for sound gear, as well.

Terry

$$$TDE$$$

[street survivor]

MRKNOBS: thanx, i've been waiting on for that story, i am a huge badfinger fan. how cool getting to do that gig! there guitar player AND bass player both are dead now from suicide after being robbed blind by there so called management.

 

if anyone wants a real listening experience, go get badfinger's STRAIGHT UP cd. one of the mosy underrated and greatest albums ever. lot o' hits, great songwriting and plenty of vintage guitar tones all the way through! recorded real well for it's day also.

 

knobs story reminded me of something dumb i did a year or so back.

 

there is a music store i frequent in portland, or quite a bit and a couple of the guys who work there are friends, our bands gig together from time to time, etc....

 

so i walk in one day to buy some stuff and i am looking around and right over the front door is this big picture of this all girl band, all deked out in slut duds, tonz of makeup, tits hanging out, et.....there all looking like they could suck the seamen out of a submarine .

 

so, i look at this dude i know behind the counter and point to the picture and anounce, "damn, those chicks look like they have seen more cock than a urinal!"

 

dude, says, yeah, the lead singer is my girlfriend.

 

DOH!!

 

i left. havn't been back in the store.

[peer amid]

I've played so many gigs, i can relate to everyone of these stories, with 10x varibles, but i just remembered something.

.

.

.

........i was playing a very high-class corporate christmas party

.

.

.......we went straight ahead with the usual thing, then tore it up

.

.

.........a very beautiful young woman comes over to me and says...

.

.

.....i'm planning a wedding this spring, would you be available?

.

..i looked her up and down, and said, if i went down on you, there wouldn't be a wedding......

.

.

......she laughed, then her fiancee turned around, he heard me, it was funny, we ended up being chums

.

 

.......just a warning to you valium users....

.

.

...

.

.

[Six String Stuntman Steve]

 

Originally posted by MrKnobs: The groupie chick said, "No problem" and gave my girlfriend the shirt right off her bare back. Yes that's right, less than a foot away from her 38 triple Ds in all their glory. Yow!!! That image is still burned in my brain. they were sharing the lovely young lady I met! "Better to share one good one than carry a lot 'o skanky ones."

 

 

CCCHHKKKKRRRRRRKKKHHH (choking noise)

 

DAMN!!! You've seen it all!!!! (pun intended)

 

Too bad i don't get groupies in my country, well, the closest we get to groupies are the girls in my batch that watch our shows (allegedly) to see abhi.

 

Hmmmm, if I wasn't such a moralistic guy maybe I should ask one of them to accompany me backstage after a show!! Just kidding! But still, the whole concept of groupies is pretty darn interesting, and then sharing a groupie?? Debatable topic, that.

 

-Nigel

[tarantinos]

more, please give me more.

 

------------------

It don

[MrKnobs]

You guys, you just want the sexy stories. I have lots of those, but I'm restraining myself.

Here's another true story, this one more on topic. Try not to be too disappointed.

I was working some shows for Gene Watson (country star). His drummer was kinda old fashioned, didn't want a lot of kick drum sound in the house. You kids need to understand that old school country players used to think drums should be really quiet, otherwise you weren't whitebread and apple pie, and people might actually start dancing animatedly and having a good time. Which is fine, if you're into that traditional sort of country.

Anyway, despite being a embarassingly white guy, I'm of the other school of thought, that is that drums and vocals are the important parts of the tune and the guitars and fiddles and stuff are just frosting; I like to hear some drums in my mix.

So you can guess that I was in constant conflict with this drummer, who warned me that if at any time he could hear the kick drum coming back from the house, he would disconnect the kick mike, which he did at every show. This was very frustrating for me as they played some fairly large halls and the onstage kick volume was not enough. No matter how light I mixed the kick, he always disconnected the mike. I don't think he could really hear it, I think he just didn't like it.

Finally, I got an idea. I still tossed a 57 in the kick, but I also stuck a trigger on the kick shell. At this time, triggers were not widely in use and I don't think he noticed it, or knew what it was. Sure enough, every gig he unplugged my 57, but he never touched the trigger.

Kinda like the old imaginary knob twist illusion, but that's another story.

Terry D.

$$$TDF$$$

[theelmsrock]

C'mon, Terry! Keep 'em coming!

 

JP

[rangerkarlos]

I smile every time I click page 2 and see:

 

Yeah, the lesbian circuit is a trip...

 

 

Karlos

[Six String Stuntman Steve]

Originally posted by rangerkarlos: I smile every time I click page 2 and see: Yeah, the lesbian circuit is a trip...

 

oooh and how I wouldn't mind tripping over one (or two) of them.

[Six String Stuntman Steve]

Originally posted by MrKnobs: Ahh, classic male fantasy, "converting" the lesbians. Good luck. My advice is keep it a fantasy, much better than the reality. They are wired differently, my testosterone-laden friend. No conversion is possible. At best you can be an experiment for a (temporarily) confused one.

 

Naah, I've got a little someone already. Dedicated man I am. Don't need no confused hookers to "knock myself out".

 

 

But hey, knock yourself out. Pick one of the crew cut, cigs rolled up in the sleeve, tatooed ones with arms bigger than your legs for a real challenge.

 

You mean you get specimens like that? eeeeewwwww. I think i'd stay away. It's one thing to get the {censored} kicked out of me by an army type guy....but an army type girl?? mmm...not today!!

 

 

-Nigel

[ATOMICDOG1]

Heres one, We were providing pa for Julio Iglasias on a casino tour a couple years ago. We had an EAW KF850/SB850/SB1000 rig with crest power and a Midas XL3 for FOH and a Midas H3000, Crown 36/12 amps and EAW monitor cabs (sm400).

Anyway, Julios "people" show up and decide that they need to supplment the monitors. Now this is importaint, there is almost no stage volume except for drums (minimal plexi surround) and bass (on 2x10 cab) every one else has IEMs. So they bring in 2 meyer powered speakers on sticks, use four of our wedges AND bring in 8 thats EIGHT Turbosound flashlight cabs for extra monitoring. four of these (2 subs and 2 high cabs) are used for side fills and the artists lackies in their infinite wisdom decide that the the other four should be flown 40 feet into the house and aimed back at the stage. We were able to talk them out of putting more than two on the house truss but they werent happy about it.

 

So after we get this all flown and the cables run etc. the reason for all of the cabs is revealed. It turns out that Juilio has an extreme reverb fetish. They had a couple of TC M3000 verbs and a couple of Eventides and another delay that that they used in the different monitor sends, he had FOUR stereo monitor mixes for just himself, one from the truss at house center, one from the side fill, one fron the Meyers BEHIND him and one from our wedges. This is when the real fun began, His monitor engineer, with a constant litany of choice expletives started to try to tweak the monitors. Julio is also very picky it seems and the monitor guy spent several hours trying to get all of the feedback and the time issues corrected. When he was done he told me to stand in the center of the stage and then he checked the mic, I got an instant case of vertigo. I don't know how he can put up with it. Julio was very pleased though, he even complimented the monitor guy during sound check. Later, during the show it you could hear the reverbs from the monitors bouncing around and essing like crazy. Ruined an otherwise great mix.

 

------------------

Mike

www.strangedaze4.net

[Sir H C]

Was chatting with someone recently who worked with Julio's FOH guy. Said he would go WEEKS without touching anything on the FOH board.

 

Now for my story from last night.

 

Rap show.

 

8 wireless mics on stage (Beta 87 capsules). DJ mic and DJ rig.

 

All eight mic's continuously cupped, DJ had the treble so cranked that I had -12 dB at 5k and it was still too bright.

 

They all had different voices and would exchange mics frequently.

 

And of course, they didn't soundcheck.

 

--------------------

 

Never did the Lesbians in the woods but I used to do the Punk Rock equivalent. All girl bands all day, and 1/2 sucked but no one said anything. I was one of about 5 men there. Nothing like girls with more leg hair than I have.

[agedhorse]

Did you get all the transmitters back???

[accomplice25]

Here's a pretty dumb one, although probably way too common.

 

I had recently started plying drums in a blues - rock type band that played like a million covers. The bassist also played in a metal band with me. We were all good friends.....To make a long story short it was the bassist's first open bar, not too long after his 21st. by the fourth set, he was so drunk his eyes were rolling back in his head as he stumbled around, playing very busy, very off-key bass lines. He literally ended up passing out STANDING UP while the guitarist was yelling out the chord changes to him. The guitarist immediately stopped the show. He remained standing up, but in a daze. We got him headed out the door, then the 45 year old bartender tried to take him home with her.

 

 

Another one - different band, different club, same bassist. We had just finished playing. Two 300-plus pound black women approach the bass player (odd because it was a metal show). They say, "Hey bass player - does that drummer have a girlfriend? We want to take hime home with us!" Knowing full well that I HAVE a girlfriend, my bassist says, "Nah, He'd probably love to go home with you - why don't you go ask him." So I had to explain to these large ladies that he was lying, while they were pissed, thinking I was just trying to get out of it. {censored}er.

[Six String Stuntman Steve]

Here's another story about our killer music teacher Tommy. This one time, although I can't remember the function, we were in our beautiful auditorium, practicing for something. So we had our instruments quite soft (only guitar, bass and acoustic grand piano) and if I remember correctly, it was one of those slowish inspiring songs that you sing at special assemblies. So usually there's a chorus on guitar, no loud distortion or anything.

 

So there we are, practicing on the main PA, and Tommy's figiting with the mixer (take note, he doesn't know BOLLOKS about mixers) and suddenly Abhi spots one of the main speakers lighting up. There was light coming from behind the speaker, and the two of us were fearing the worst.

 

First it was a faint light, then it flashed brighter and brighter until it reached such a stage that we could've sworn it was on fire. Oh, did I forget to mention that there was smoke coming out of the back too? That and it smelt like burning toast.

 

Now I was sure that the bad smell wasn't me because I hadn't had my lunch yet so we quickly shouted out to Tommy and pointed this out. He said to us "Don't worry, it's a clip indicator built into the speaker, it's just telling you that the input is too high." Then he figited with the mixer a bit more (more smoke coming out the back) and then Robin (our hero soundman) came in and took over the mixer, doing his usual "rake robin" technique, SLAMMING everything to zero. So the speaker stopped "indicating" and everything was ok after that.

 

I'm not sure but I remember being told that they changed that particular speaker. Oh well, I guess it just got a bit carried away "indicating".

 

For my own knowledge, do you really get speakers that light up from the inside like that to indicate clipping?

 

-Nigel