Statick
November 20th, 2006, 11:34 PM
so a close friend of mine (in fact, we play in 2 bands together) who's also a noise boy, has started working at my main venue, doing a night midweek.
he came to speak to me today, apparently the manager of the place was hinting that he might offer him the friday nights, because they want to get rid of the guy doing those.
that guy is me.
not long after the refit happened (the PA installation here is quite new, only a couple of months old now), a bunch of stuff went missing. nothing expensive - some guitar jacks, some 4-way power strips, that kind of thing. now, i'm not hired by the venue - i'm hired by the promoters who run the friday nights. i've had little to no dealings with the venue management, other than one time when one of the managers quizzed me about the missing gear, when i gave the answer that i wasn't working around the time the stuff went missing.
which i wasn't. although i was "down" for every friday gig, i was touring with one of my bands during the first month, so i was there for the opening night (which the pa installation guy ran, so i was there but did actually nothing), then i took 3 weekends off for these other gigs. it was quite literally a whole month before i actually ran a show in there, and the stuff went missing during the first 1 or 2 weeks (one of the guys who was covering my shift phoned me up when i was soundchecking at another gig, to ask where i kept the 4-way power strips cuz he couldn't find any).
despite this, they've decided to point the finger at me on this one. it annoys me, because i've trained myself to follow a packing up routine that deals with the most nickable items first. all mics across the front of the stage are taken immediately, followed by any DI boxes across the front, and then the tall boom stands that they sit on (yes, people love to nick those). THEN i get to work on the rest of the stage - but the front (nearest the punters) will be cleared immediately, to ensure that we don't lose anything.
i make a point of checking and double checking that i have everything i started out with, because if anythings missing it's me that has to suffer the loss of it. a few cheap items go missing during a time when i'm not even working there, and i'm being accused of it.
also, a week ago i arrived early to re-EQ the system (someone had buggered around with the management system and had made it quite unusable for vocals, and the monitoring EQ was shot to bits as well) and, while testing everything with a CD, found that the drum fill blown. odd, you might think, until you realize that most of the nights there feature DJs as well as bands, and there are at least 2 club nights with no bands whatsoever. the DJ booth is positioned such that the drum fill points right at it - and so the DJs use it as a monitor.
suddenly it's not so surprising that it's blown. anyone who's worked with DJs will know what they're like for pushing levels on their end, just to send it all into the red. 2kw of square wave distortion does no good whatsoever to our tweeters !
one thing that is interesting here, is that what normally goes through the drum fill in this room is kick and bass only - it's quite a lively stage, with a low ceiling, and the front wedges usually fill the stage with vocal and guitar sound, every gig i've had the drummer has only ever wanted kick and bass. i imagine many of the other nights (also rock nights) would be a similar scenario. with kick and bass only it's actually not immediately obvious that the tweeters gone (especially when it's a half deaf drummer sat in front of it) - so it strikes me as possible that the speaker could have been blown for some time, and nobody had even noticed, or even have been shipped as faulty - i know that at least one of the front wedges arrived faulty. typically, the night that i spotted this, was before a psychedelic medieval folk rock band, with a drummer providing BVs - the one thing that really will show up a damaged speaker.
perhaps i should have kept my mouth shut about it. but no, i reported that the speaker was blown. and now it seems since i'm the one who reported it, i must be the one who caused the damage.
one part of me thinks that it would be good to not work for people who are so eager to accuse people of doing stuff. the other part of me also thinks that i don't actually work for those people, and the guys that i do work for are really really good guys. and i fucking love the shows, many of my favourite bands are playing this club. and getting booted out of there would utterly ruin my rep in this area, this is my main gig now, and losing it would make finding replacement work difficult. "oh wait, you're the guy that got kicked out of club X for stealing?"
sorry, just wanted to rant about this, i've called the guy who i work for (the promoter) who can't believe it, and he's gonna try and even things out. all i can do is cross my fingers and hope for the best at this point.
he came to speak to me today, apparently the manager of the place was hinting that he might offer him the friday nights, because they want to get rid of the guy doing those.
that guy is me.
not long after the refit happened (the PA installation here is quite new, only a couple of months old now), a bunch of stuff went missing. nothing expensive - some guitar jacks, some 4-way power strips, that kind of thing. now, i'm not hired by the venue - i'm hired by the promoters who run the friday nights. i've had little to no dealings with the venue management, other than one time when one of the managers quizzed me about the missing gear, when i gave the answer that i wasn't working around the time the stuff went missing.
which i wasn't. although i was "down" for every friday gig, i was touring with one of my bands during the first month, so i was there for the opening night (which the pa installation guy ran, so i was there but did actually nothing), then i took 3 weekends off for these other gigs. it was quite literally a whole month before i actually ran a show in there, and the stuff went missing during the first 1 or 2 weeks (one of the guys who was covering my shift phoned me up when i was soundchecking at another gig, to ask where i kept the 4-way power strips cuz he couldn't find any).
despite this, they've decided to point the finger at me on this one. it annoys me, because i've trained myself to follow a packing up routine that deals with the most nickable items first. all mics across the front of the stage are taken immediately, followed by any DI boxes across the front, and then the tall boom stands that they sit on (yes, people love to nick those). THEN i get to work on the rest of the stage - but the front (nearest the punters) will be cleared immediately, to ensure that we don't lose anything.
i make a point of checking and double checking that i have everything i started out with, because if anythings missing it's me that has to suffer the loss of it. a few cheap items go missing during a time when i'm not even working there, and i'm being accused of it.
also, a week ago i arrived early to re-EQ the system (someone had buggered around with the management system and had made it quite unusable for vocals, and the monitoring EQ was shot to bits as well) and, while testing everything with a CD, found that the drum fill blown. odd, you might think, until you realize that most of the nights there feature DJs as well as bands, and there are at least 2 club nights with no bands whatsoever. the DJ booth is positioned such that the drum fill points right at it - and so the DJs use it as a monitor.
suddenly it's not so surprising that it's blown. anyone who's worked with DJs will know what they're like for pushing levels on their end, just to send it all into the red. 2kw of square wave distortion does no good whatsoever to our tweeters !
one thing that is interesting here, is that what normally goes through the drum fill in this room is kick and bass only - it's quite a lively stage, with a low ceiling, and the front wedges usually fill the stage with vocal and guitar sound, every gig i've had the drummer has only ever wanted kick and bass. i imagine many of the other nights (also rock nights) would be a similar scenario. with kick and bass only it's actually not immediately obvious that the tweeters gone (especially when it's a half deaf drummer sat in front of it) - so it strikes me as possible that the speaker could have been blown for some time, and nobody had even noticed, or even have been shipped as faulty - i know that at least one of the front wedges arrived faulty. typically, the night that i spotted this, was before a psychedelic medieval folk rock band, with a drummer providing BVs - the one thing that really will show up a damaged speaker.
perhaps i should have kept my mouth shut about it. but no, i reported that the speaker was blown. and now it seems since i'm the one who reported it, i must be the one who caused the damage.
one part of me thinks that it would be good to not work for people who are so eager to accuse people of doing stuff. the other part of me also thinks that i don't actually work for those people, and the guys that i do work for are really really good guys. and i fucking love the shows, many of my favourite bands are playing this club. and getting booted out of there would utterly ruin my rep in this area, this is my main gig now, and losing it would make finding replacement work difficult. "oh wait, you're the guy that got kicked out of club X for stealing?"
sorry, just wanted to rant about this, i've called the guy who i work for (the promoter) who can't believe it, and he's gonna try and even things out. all i can do is cross my fingers and hope for the best at this point.