Private Party - upstate ny, a wedding anniversary, and they book John Waite every year. I went to the event last year and while the band was great, the sound wasn't. So I volunteered with a collegea of mine to bring in our Midas m32, and eaw rig for fun.. I mean.. its a 4 peice rock band... should be fun!
4 monitor mixes and an appropriate foh. plenty of power, we have a nice system. EAW Boxes all around, Subs, its a well thought out rig.
The band doesn't respond with anything they need untill friday am. No big deal. We get our gear prepped, load in at two with the band scheduled to load in at 3. They show up at 4. Ok - no big deal. Doors at 6 opening band at 7. No big deal.. as we're setup as far as we can figure out.
Band comes in, rearranges the stage, no big deal.
Turns out, its an acoustic show, and the guitarist has toured with his electric pedalboard with many boutique pedals - its a nice board... for a magnetic pickup guitar... however he was using a piezo active output into a buffer... then the board, then our radial firefly active di... and his signal just leveled all of his boutique compressors and distortion boxes, and created a signifigant amount of noise...his signal to noise ratio was really hissy and unusable. I suggested he plug straight in, and it sounded way way better... however.. he insisted on using his board. So we blew 25 minutes with different DI's... and at their request moved a stage monitor into the guitarists position. No big deal. He was a nice guy.
Then... there was John Waite's guitar. An acoustic he's drilled 2 holes in the top of for a volume and tone that he complained "can't get them to work". He had his guitar going into a tuner, and what looked like a chorus, and then into a fishman DI that he "couldn't get to work either". The guitarist comes rushing over to help him get the fishman to just turn on. 5 more minutes of them figuring out what their own knobs do...and we have output. So mr Waite soundchecks his acoustic guitar, and needs it turned up extremely ... and I mean extremely loud... louder than our front end for certain. Now... he cant hear the other guitarist with the distorted compressed pedalboard acoustic.... and it turns out now they need us to move the guitarists monitor downstage so the guitarist (direct..no amp or stage volume, next to drums) needs to be completely maxed out in the wedge to make him audible. So we blew 2 hours of valuable soundcheck time over unnecessary user error guitar stage monitor stuff, and Ive not really listened to the band to work on a mix yet. Ok - no big deal.. I know I can mix, fast, and on the fly, and its a small channel count with all good players.
oh wait...
now there's an opening band..?
John waite insists they go on afterwards so they can keep their monitor mix... even though Ive already got lines and extra channels and sends for an entire other group... but no one consults me on that either.
Then - someone is searching for the breaker that controls the house lights... and flips off our entire rig.
No kidding...
Then - someone else ... literally.. pulls the fire alarm....
rig gets turned off again... only properly this time.
you can't make this up.
Luckily the midas saves its info very well, and the only thing that needs to be reset is your LR, which in this case unity was too much power.. no big deal.. I can handle ALL of these things on the fly... I recall settling around minus 5 db on the master.. and eyeballed it back... no big deal... I can make a judgement on that when things get rolling, the same way I did during "soundcheck"..(sarcasm)
Then everyone re-enters the building and we get music going, they ask me to make an announcement and we get rolling in a few minutes etc.
During this time, the opening band gets pissed off and splits... ok... I can handle that... 1 guy in the opening band however, decides to open acoustically. OK - no big deal... I can handle a mic and a di...
He wraps up.. Then comes the announcement that the band is coming on. John waite comes out and is completely startled that his guitar monitor volume is right where we left it at soundcheck... easily 105 db... I mean SCREAMING... and his guitarist with his expensive misappropriated boutique pedals is distorted as well...so instead of starting, he insults me wondering why its so loud... I pull him back, and I'm watching the musicians body language for the first two songs .. seeing who's struggling to hear etc. Waite is glaring over to me every chance he gets... so one of my guys goes over to see whats up and he says something insulting... I don't know what...regardless, it wasn't information that could be turned into a monitor adjustment.
Our rig has the very useful ipad interface, and I'm super comfortable moving through the venue to setup an foh mix, (our console was sidestage) so off I went to see what the audience was getting... you know... the 150 people attending. 2 songs and Ive got something nice... as they are good players, and he is a wonderful singer for sure. I get back to the console, and this guy spends the rest of the gig totally insulting me, glaring at me... strumming his guitar staring at me like a little child (so I started bringing his monitor up again) ... announcing that the sound is poor and stopping the show early. Told me I'm "a true professional... a professional idiot".. and saying I "shouldn't be allowed to mumble mumble..." pointed at me in disgust multiple times... meanwhile... people are coming up to me telling me he's never sounded better in the house. More than likely because every soundtech ever has made him sound crappy because of his attitude. I have no hesitation when I say John Waite, last night, was a complete unprofessional a$$hole, and I'm not surprised at all to hear that he cant get a tech to tour with him. I however, was not. I had the band sounding as good as I could, minus the wash of 300-to 700 hz of guitar from the monitors, and didn't flinch from 1 insult, and gave the audience a good mix.
you can't make this up.....