Basically, the point of this thread is to tell all about your nightmares with gear set up for a show. Cables being mixed up, terrible sound guys, etc.
I'll share the one I have to get things started, although it's not great.
Basically, this was for my high school Battle of the Bands. We have a Guitar Club there, and all the members were allowed to come in with any free time throughout the day to help set up, then we stayed for several hours until the show started.
So, I get to school about 15 minutes early, decide I'll go in and see what I can do to help. I see tons of random amps from 10 watts to 4 stacks, a complete PA system, and upwards of 8 drum kits, all crammed into the back stage of the auditorium. In one of the side rooms, all the instruments were set up (stringed and keyboards) along with the band members' personal effects and such. In the next room were giant leather trunks jammed with random equipment and cords.We used the bathrooms to store the drinks and the "roadies" (us) put all of our backpacks in there. No one was allowed to even use that bathroom (the only one in the building) and it was locked at all times except between shows so we could fetch drinks for the band members.
At this point, that's all there is. It's 9:15. Nothing is plugged up, stuff is all over the place, I don't even think we'd gotten the stuff set up in the rooms at this point. But we've just started. No problem, right?
Lunch rolls around. This is about noon. I decide to stop in and see what I can do to help. I decide not to eat because we've got a "party" in 5th period and there'll be free food. Me and my friends go into the auditorium to see what the situation is. Very little has gotten anywhere. The PA system is now plugged up and maybe set up to a few mics. Three hours have gone by. The teacher running this has the mixing board set up at in the middle of the seats. What are they doing with the equipment? One of the students has hooked up his iPod to the mixing board and is playing music through the PA system. The only available mics are being used to sing Karaoke. Nothing is being set up. The teacher decides to give us over a hundred (each) of these little flyers he's printed up to hand around the school because apparently that's the most useful thing we can do right now. In my mind, everybody who's going to come already has plans, and everybody else is going to ignore it anyways.
5th period, I go to my Spanish class and enjoy the free food. I hang out with some of my friends who will later be helping to set up and we make jokes about Satan and trash on humanity. Normal stuff. This class ends at 1:15.
Next is my 6/7 block class. I happen to have the guitar club sponsor for this class, so I get to enjoy setting up while my class does worksheets in the auditorium. Instead, I come back to find a complete mess. Of course, everything's now plugged up. By some miracle, all the amps are now plugged in to a power supply and the PA system and mics are all plugged in. However, apparently, nobody tested any of the system. We spent 20 minutes trying to even get it to make a sound before Mr. Davis realizes that one of the channels on the mixing board is dead. So what do we do? We move everything over one channel. But then when we test the mics, one of them (number 8, maybe) didn't work. So what did Mr. Davis decide to do? "Please tap on mic number 1 for me. Good. Now number 2" Up until he gets to the mic we all know doesn't work, and finally decides it's broken. "Come here, Dakota. Take this tape and label all of the mics one higher than previous". So we spend 10 minutes doing that, only to find out another mic is out. We switch cables around for 20 minutes trying to figure out which of *these* switches is out. He literally had us unplugging cables, switching them, and when that didn't work, switching them back to the exact same place. We did that four or five times before we got it working. But then we find out another mic later on down the line isn't working. So what do we do? Tap all the mics from 1 to the one that doesn't work, make a minor adjustment, test it again, make another minor adjustment, etc. until it works. Then we re-label everything again. No lie, that process took an hour and a half to re-plug in what had already been done.
It's now 3:45. School's out. I'm still here helping out, along with all the members of the guitar club who actually care. I did menial tasks such as dumping trash, picking up loose pieces of paper, and dusting rugs for about a half an hour. Then we cover all the cords on the floor with the rugs we just dusted. We pull random equipment from all over the school including tables and ice machines. Fairly standard, I suppose. It's about 4:30 at this point. We're all excited for the show and we're a bit more relaxed now, with most of the big work done. I don't really remember how we passed the time at that point. I do remember having to sit at a table with some really gruff woman selling tickets. Actually, she was selling tickets, and I was peeling the sticky part off of bracelets to give to people. Fun.
Around 5:30, we start letting people in. The bands aren't up yet, but we're letting them in so people can get seats and ease the traffic so it's not a nightmare while the first band is playing. We've got a crowd of 200-300 people. Looks like it's going to be a good show. At this point, most of the nightmare's over.
As the first band goes on, we're still dealing with people at the door. But from what I can hear from inside, (affirmed by catching the end of the show) the first band was HORRIBLE. Imagine all the popular metal songs (I only really caught "Almost Easy") played with distortion so heavy you can barely make out a note, very few actual notes being played, and screaming. Not even artsy or emotional screaming. Just suck-in-air-and-destroy-your-throat screaming. And, of course, being high schoolers who think they know about music, about 60 people start a mosh pit. But to call it a mosh would be a lie. It was literally a crowd of people jumping in a circle, pushing and tackling each other. I believe several people broke bones, and one girl got her entire layer of skin scraped off her foot because she was wearing flip flops and the other guy had boots. I know mosh pits can be dangerous, but there's no reason for this.
Second band goes like this as well. Third band is decent. We're hanging out for about 10 minutes each set at this point because all is running smoothly. Third band does decent. Into the middle of the show, we finally get some good bands going. One band did some nice blues covers, along with a very good replication of "Holiday" by Green Day and an acoustic cover of Diary of Jane. The highlight of the show was my favorite band playing Lady Gaga Metal Covers, the Metallica sounding band that did all originals, and the punk band that won (though, I think they just know people and have a good stage energy).
I go outside for a break, because I'm getting a bit claustrophobic. The snack stand is being abandoned because people are lazy, and I'm asked to take over. Being me, I accept and spend 20 minutes trying to explain to people that the energy drinks never showed up and that we're out of pizza and cookies and just about every drink we were supposed to be selling because we didn't buy enough.
Halfway through the show the teacher finds us and starts yelling at us. Apparently, the band entrance was left unprotected and parents had started sneaking in to the back of the stage. Well, we can't have this because there are instruments worth over a thousand dollars back here and anyone can walk out the back door with them. But nobody seems to care. I finally pull together some of my more efficient friends and we watch it (by witch I mean sit in an empty hallway and stare at the door) because no one else is willing to, and, hey, who needs to watch the show?
So, finally this problem gets resolved. At this point it's close to 9. We're halfway done with the show. Well, the next band set to go on is an acoustic duo. But, apparently, one of the guitarists can't find his cable. So we have to delay the next set while we look for it, and I go back and forth between the member and the teacher, who's yelling at me "That's not my problem. Tell him if he can't find his own cord, he doesn't play!". I have no clue where he found it, but it got there.
The rest of the show went surprisingly well, but I was exhausted. Sitting on my stool backstage, I started falling asleep and almost fell off the stool. Also, there were no monitors for the vocals (or else they were incredibly low) so we enjoyed the show instrumentally.
All this time, I'm playing personal roadie. I make sure all the bands know I'm within 10 feet if they need anything, I make sure they've all got ice cold water waiting the second they're done, and I help them keep all their stuff organized. Their only job is to perform in this case. I was apparently very well appreciated
End of the show, of course the punk band wins. We have a cheer off, and the applause goes on steady for 2 or 3 minutes. Just as the applause is dying out, the bassist climbs on top of two speakers which are already stacked (at least 10 feet in the air) and spreads his arms in a crucifix position. Needless to say they didn't stop cheering for a while. All the while, the top speaker was rocking back and forth.
The show ends. It's 11 o'clock now. I'm celebrating with my friend who's band got second place for their Lady Gaga medley. She goes home and it's time to pack up. So we start taking apart all the drum sets and wheeling them out to the individual bands so they can leave. We now have to take apart every piece of equipment and have it back in the science room by the end of the night. So we take apart all of the speakers, mics, cables, squids, etc. The breakdown alone takes close to an hour with more than 10 people breaking it down. The next 2 hours is spent moving it all into a cramped science room. But apparently, someone forgot there was an alarm and we spent 15 minutes dealing with flashing lights and loud noises. This was after 1 in the morning. All said and done, we leave the school at 1:30, grab burger king, get home, and I crash on my bed.
I don't know if I'm being melodramatic, but it was pretty bad. Isn't set up and break down supposed to take less than an hour each? It wasn't even a problem switching between amps. They each had a mic in front of them, so we plug one up and put it in front of the mic. I totaled it to almost 7 hours spent with set up and break down.
What do you think? Any similar stories to share?
