aeolian
05-18-2009, 12:29 AM
I know other folks have had the old torpedo by the headliner thing happen to them. This was the worst I've encountered.
We were booked to play a small town festival this weekend. We've done this gig the last several years. Headliner is usually some local based group of minor notoriety. Maybe had something on the radio sometime back in the day.
This time they set their sights a little higher and booked a band you haven't heard of in years but that had a few top 40 hits back in the 70's.
Promoter asks all the earlier bands to call the soundco to make sure things will be okay. Soundco is a larger regional with a good reputation. I've exchanged posts with the owner on the ProSoundWeb forum and we have a couple of good phone conversations advancing the gig. I've mailed him a stage plot and we discuss all the backline that will be there. He tells me there will be a JC120 on each side of the stage, a Twin and a Deville stage right. :( Supposed to be an RB800/Hartke:barfstage left of the drummer, and for some reason he doesn't know, another bass rig stage right of the drummer (turns out the headliner has a very talented utility guy who doubles on bass). Our bass player figures he can get a decent enough stage noise out of the GK/Hartke stuff and his Mike Lull bass (and very talented hands) ran direct out front will still sound like him. I'm of two minds about bothering to bring my rig as a Zendrive into a Twin works pretty well. But after watching a backline amp crap out on Wedemeyer the week before I decided to bring my stuff.
So, we get to the festival and everything is set up for the headliners. Don't touch, don't move and don't even think about plugging into the bass amp where our stage plot shows our bass player goes, that's only for the headliner. He's supposed to use the beat up spare GK head sitting behind a keyboard rig. There are keyboards set up on both sides and can't move those, they have to stay just where they are for the headliners. And the Twin that was supposed to be stage right? Can't plug into that either. It's for the headliners. I'm supposed to be happy to have a Deville that's nearly under the monitor board. Good thing I did bring my rig. Even if there's no place to put it? Bass player ends up going direct though the wedges and I end up way off to the right shielded from the rest of my band behind one of the keyboard setups.
Then we get yanked 15 minutes early. There's a scheduled hour for changeovers and still they need another 15 minutes to make sure they can get on with all the stuff locked right where nobody could touch it? We actually had the stage clear in 10 minutes, 5 minutes before our scheduled stop time. Incredible.
But I guess that's just another story in the music biz.
We were booked to play a small town festival this weekend. We've done this gig the last several years. Headliner is usually some local based group of minor notoriety. Maybe had something on the radio sometime back in the day.
This time they set their sights a little higher and booked a band you haven't heard of in years but that had a few top 40 hits back in the 70's.
Promoter asks all the earlier bands to call the soundco to make sure things will be okay. Soundco is a larger regional with a good reputation. I've exchanged posts with the owner on the ProSoundWeb forum and we have a couple of good phone conversations advancing the gig. I've mailed him a stage plot and we discuss all the backline that will be there. He tells me there will be a JC120 on each side of the stage, a Twin and a Deville stage right. :( Supposed to be an RB800/Hartke:barfstage left of the drummer, and for some reason he doesn't know, another bass rig stage right of the drummer (turns out the headliner has a very talented utility guy who doubles on bass). Our bass player figures he can get a decent enough stage noise out of the GK/Hartke stuff and his Mike Lull bass (and very talented hands) ran direct out front will still sound like him. I'm of two minds about bothering to bring my rig as a Zendrive into a Twin works pretty well. But after watching a backline amp crap out on Wedemeyer the week before I decided to bring my stuff.
So, we get to the festival and everything is set up for the headliners. Don't touch, don't move and don't even think about plugging into the bass amp where our stage plot shows our bass player goes, that's only for the headliner. He's supposed to use the beat up spare GK head sitting behind a keyboard rig. There are keyboards set up on both sides and can't move those, they have to stay just where they are for the headliners. And the Twin that was supposed to be stage right? Can't plug into that either. It's for the headliners. I'm supposed to be happy to have a Deville that's nearly under the monitor board. Good thing I did bring my rig. Even if there's no place to put it? Bass player ends up going direct though the wedges and I end up way off to the right shielded from the rest of my band behind one of the keyboard setups.
Then we get yanked 15 minutes early. There's a scheduled hour for changeovers and still they need another 15 minutes to make sure they can get on with all the stuff locked right where nobody could touch it? We actually had the stage clear in 10 minutes, 5 minutes before our scheduled stop time. Incredible.
But I guess that's just another story in the music biz.