Even if you need the money, sometimes you want to find out the 8am call was cancelled.
beingzoe 3 months ago // Stagehands On the job: work stories

In this case the whole show was canceled the day before. And I am glad not just because it was an 8am call, but it was likely to end up being a most hellacious day type of show.

I’m hoping I can coerce the “house engineer” into posting a more full account but the quick (highly dramatized) version goes as follows.

• Touring audio engineer waits till the last minute to return advance phone calls
• Touring engineer then refuses to use the house equipment, demanding a Vdosc line array, that would be nice but simply cost prohibitive for the venue
• House engineer explains that that would be nice it was simply cost prohibitive for the venue and not necessary as the house system is quite good
• Touring engineer says, “You piece of $#!^ get a line array.”
• House engineer says, “I’m sorry sir that is not going to happen.”
• Touring engineer demands conference call with them and the production manager at at a time that the house engineer is unavailable
• Production manager calls repeatedly, “You promised to have this conference call you piece of $#!^”
• House engineer also begins requesting delays in a house which is little over a 100’ deep and haven’t been necessary in 10 years of operation
• The next day house engineer receives phone call from rental house on arranging delivery and payment of line array system
• House engineer says, “WTF Mate?”
• Touring engineer contacts local congressman to intervene
• Venue caves under political pressure from Washington, and agrees to accept the illicitly ordered line array
• The day before the show the house engineer returns after 6am call to hang line array with rental company
• Several hours later the night before the show in question, show is cancelled due to illness of famous singer in question
• House engineer still has to come in at 8am to take down line array in question
• Letter writing campaign begins to local officials demanding a recount

Okay, as far as I know nobody swore during the whole event. But I just thought the whole thing was hilarious and sad at the same time. Hopefully I can get the house engineer to share more details himself, because this was funny and infuriating at the same time.

Do you have any horror stories? Post em’ here. Aw, heck, even happy show stories are welcome.

Line array setup for the 2006 Grammys image borrowed from rentalandstaging.com in their article Unity Gain : ATK AudioTek Equalizes Success