Live Sound Disasters...

[nobby]

...and how to avoid them.

What have been your most challenging situations?

A classic that comes to mind was at Woodstock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock). If you've never seen the movie, you owe it to yourself Coolio

Possibly the most dramatic point in the movie (that I recall) was when a thunderstorm was approaching. There was a fear that the sound towers might topple from the gale force winds or that the musos and crew might be electrocuted by a lightning strike. Roadies dashed about like madmen unplugging everything in a driving rain.

[pounce]

i'm going to let others share first, but i've been outside on relatively high steel pulling down speaker towers and spot towers on rainy days with some thunder, and i've seen some pretty heavy things fall down. all this on big shows, not little chumpy stuff.

i've seen a stageweight fall from the loading rail once too. really really scary moment. it's a wonder people aren't getting killed all the time.

large scale production for touring music or broadway is amazing. generally speaking, some of the best people and best gear are involved in these larger scale productions, so we have every advantage, but still accidents will happen. it's just on larger scale shows the potential for injury or death are increased exponentially.

talk to an experienced stagehand or roadie and you'll get both great funny stories as well as some really scary disaster stories. i'm going to solicit the help from my friends at roadie.net to chime in on this one. i bet they can have your jaw on the floor with some of thier true life tales.

[blackieC]

Find out about the promoter before taking the gig.

We were young and stupid but that's not much of an excuse.

Outdoor "festival" south of Bixby Oklahoma. The Showco boys showed up a little late due to a massive thunderstorm the previous night. That in itself wouldn't have been so bad if the "house" electrician that had been hired for the gig had some experience with anything other than changing lighbulbs and maybe swapping out a breaker for Aunt Millie. He just stood there backstage looking at the amp racks with a dazed look a bewilderment. The real engineers managed to work around him.
Now some would suspect it was of questionable judgement to book a punk act as the opener in a festival in (not even in but close to) BIXBY FUCKING OKLAHOMA.

Some would.

But I think that everyone in the class can agree that it was a clusterfuck of epic preportion to insist that they go on three hours late to a crowd of restless rednecks who have had nothing to do for three hours except drink warm beer and mill around in the mud.

Less just say the reception was,"chilly".

In between songs we were greeted with a chorus of,"You Suck!,Play some Skynyrd!" and "Ima gonnnaa kickth alllaayalllss asthus!"

Evidently the ass kicking fellow was a man of his word and he and a few of his buddies managed to slip past the crack security that Promoter Dingus had hired (Security being the Bixby High School football team) and corner myself and our bass player in the backstage parking area after our set. To quote Ron White,"I didn't know how many of 'em it woulda took to kick my ass, but I knew how many they were going to use."

Luckily one of the football goons spotted the opprotunity to pummel somebody just in time and Bixby's starting line decended on the four would-be assailants and beat them to a bloody pulp.

The whole event was a cluster fornication from git til gone and I had I had the sense to check out the "promoter" I could have spent the day sitting on my couch doing bong hits and watching Scooby-Doo.

Hard lesson learned.

[nobby]

Luckily one of the football goons spotted the opprotunity to pummel somebody just in time and Bixby's starting line decended on the four would-be assailants and beat them to a bloody pulp.


I love a fairy tale ending :lol:

[clicktrack]

On a related theme, this one occurred, for the most part, on the OUTSIDE of the venue.

One of the lessons learned I always preach to my new clients is the importance of "park & power" for a mobile. This story is the one I think of when I'm preaching.

We had one gig where, because the client didn't want to pay for an extra day for set up, they decided to push everything (park/power/soundcheck/rehearsal/show) into the same day. This is normally not too much of a problem if everything is well organized, but the venue had some specific issues about access times that made the day a very specific challenge.

This was an out-of-town gig for us, so prior to the gig, I tried to stress to the client the importance of them having a good parking location ready for us, seeing that the day schedule was so tight. If we can't park and power, we can't very well do much else, can we?

We get to the venue and find that the parking isn't what we're told...we can't park where a mobile would normally go because of construction. So we get told to use the "alternate" location...on the lawn behind the auditorium. They've used it before for other mobiles and it should be fine.

What they didn't mention is that they've used that position in the middle of summer when the ground was hardpacked. This was late fall and I didn't realize that the area had received 3 or 4 consecutive days of rain. (Remember...it was an out of town gig...we didn't have rain where we were!!!).

So we proceed to move the truck into position...only to find it sank almost to the front axle...at a very scary angle.

After awhile, we got it out with some pretty smart steering from our driver and a chunk of the band helping to rock the truck to gain some momentum. And yes...I had an extra payload in my shorts hoping the truck wouldn't go over....

Oh...and I should mention that our contact, the person arranging the entire gig and was our source for information wasn't on site during all of this...he had overslept...so imagine his "pleasure" to arrive hours later to find the mobile wasn't parked, powered etc. (and imagine our "pleasure" to find out the reason why he was late ;) ).

We did get the gig done and, in the weeks after the event, the client was indeed happy with what we recorded, but by the end of that night, the stresses of the day left everyone with many, many frayed nerves.


Since then, if I get the sense that the client doesn't do logistics on a regular basis, I now *always* speak directly with someone in the venue's manangement to co-ordinate park/power/permit issues and to check the weather for not only the day of, but also the days LEADING UP to the event!!! Since then, by doing this, all of our gigs have gone swimmingly well!!! :)

[bbkong]

Roadies dashed about like madmen unplugging everything in a driving rain.

Like there wasn't an electrician there to kick the mains?

That wasn't thinking ahead, but hey, it was Woodstock. Another century. Electricity was still new stuff.

[nobby]

Like there wasn't an electrician there to kick the mains?

That wasn't thinking ahead, but hey, it was Woodstock. Another century. Electricity was still new stuff.

I think the fear was that lightning would strike the speaker towers, which were 3 or 4 stories high and the bolt would travel down the wire and fry the PA.

Ask Malice about lightning.

[Johnny]

Last night of a youth camp for a large Church. It's typical at these things to have baptisms for all the kids who became Christians throughout the week.

Usually, there's a worship service, then everyone will go out to the pool or lake, depending.

This group brought an above-ground pool from Wal-Mart and placed it right next to the electric guitarist's rig. The side of the pool closest to him was quite droopy.

We were ready to stop playing in an instant so he could bail if the Flood began.

The pastor had already told the typical "dead teenager" story, and all our guitarist said he could think of was "I'm gonna die and become this guy's story for next year:'He died worshiping the Lord.'"

[Knastratt]

Actually nothing worse than putting the talk back mic (an MD 421 - only mic available) right on the power button of the mixer. There must numerous mics that can be placed on the power button without harm and possibly thousands of ways to place an MD 421. I just found that one wrong way. Roll eyes

[Brendo]

What does it do, may I ask?

[Pimp-X]

The weight of the MD421 is such that it's mere mass is sufficient to toggle any switch it comes in contact with.

[dnafe]

Picture this...

Live gig using Nuendo as the mixer....power failures.

[dnafe]

Did I mention more than one band on the bill

[bunnerabb]

Doing a mini shed at Cain Park in Cleveland Hts, OH.

Bluegrass band. One guy, the dobro player has a Neumann tube mic (seriously) and knows technique for his instrument. I sorted him out immediately.

Everybody else is wandering in and out of proximity, vocals in and out, the odd screech of feedbacks, here and there, due to trying to ride herd on this roller coaster of mic proximity.

an hour of this shit on a Pulsar Labs console, which was built by Hood Industries, back in the day when we had the Agora contract - and the Hoods were a cool shop but these desks were shit. I saw a studio ad online that brags about having one. It's like bragging about buying an old Tangent.

Anyhoo.. fucking mess.. the whole show.

After the gig, some yuppie, vegan, private school punter gets up and says "THE SOUND SUCKED!"

I yelled "YOU'RE WELCOME TO THE JOB, FUCKHEAD!"

One of the worst, ever.

I can mix you if you know what the fuck a mic does, if not, sorry. Buy a fucking magazine, rock star.

[bunnerabb]

Did I mention more than one band on the bill

Oi.

I would never have the balls to use a DAW for live.

[Brendo]

The weight of the MD421 is such that it's mere mass is sufficient to toggle any switch it comes in contact with.

Ahh. It all seems so obvious now...

[dnafe]

Oi.

I would never have the balls to use a DAW for live.

Let's just say that the flies in the ointment became elephants

[dnafe]

Did I win?

:very happy:

[bunnerabb]

Yes.

[burnsy]

Ok my experience is small but my piece.
On a four band usual rock night(irony here is the two acoustic acts at the start) which is hard enough to do with all crap leads a 10 channel mixer a dodgy multi and no soldering kit or neutrix. But what turn up to great these lovely light hearted musicians but another 4 death metal bands to which I looked at the promoter and said what the fuck is this. He replied oh yeah we've double booked its going to have to be a quick sound check. My reply , my wages have just doubled and if you dont like it you can mix it yourself £240 for that evening I was most impressed being a novice sound dude. God knows how I got through it but all I remember was constantly re doing my setup for each band due to their stage positions and instruments.

Another good one was local theatre , and watching the health and safety guy not pay attention and nearly fall 40 foot to his death. Luckily he got caught in the ladder only cutting his leg open.

[G. Hoffman]

Well, lets see...


A small town arena, a few years back. Power was coming from geni's (sweet!). My friend doing lights has got a simple 180K rig, and all is going well, He's focused, and happy. Noise boys have 36 850's, all biamped, etc. At some point, my friend looks over at the amp racks, and ask the lead sound guy, "hey, are your amps supposed to be smoking?" He, not having as good of a day as my friend, just ignores him, and goes to put some sound through the rig. As soon as he does,






BOOM!





















(silence)












It turns out, the last time the generators where used was construction, and no one noticed they were set to 480v.


They somehow managed to get some new amps, and salvaged enough parts from the 850's to rebuild 8 boxes to do the show with.



Gabriel

[dnafe]

Now that just plain hurts

Don

[ericswan]

30 years of doing live sound, possibly my worst gig ever...

Showed up at the venue the night before to check it out. Outdoor gig sponsored by large metro area radio station. Stage and roof being built and we are supposed to load in. Arrive to find roof on the ground, stage half built. No one really knows whats up. Should have fled in terror at this point but...

Somewhat later coked out rigger dude shows up with motors to lift roof. Motors are 3 phase, only single phase power on site. Boss drops us at hotel and drives 60 miles round trip to get 3 phase genset for motors.

Next morning up at 5 for 6 am load. Check Weather Channel, things look clear on radar. Look out window and notice sky is very very ugly. Should have stayed in bed, but head to venue. Roof finally in air so we load in and set up. As soon as all the gear is on stage and mostly set up, major thunderstorm erupts soaking everyone and everything completely. After the rain stops, headliner Hanson shows up to sound check. After much toweling and mopping, manage to get a decent version of mmmBop checked and send them on their way to another gig.

Salt N Pepa show up next and I spend an hour and a half trying to make wedges on a small stage sound like huge sidefills with little success. After while band leaves less than happy, doors are opened and we have to throw the 10 piece local opening act on stage and start with no line check, much less sound check. I build monitor mixes by telepathy and things actually are starting to go okay, even if we are running late.

Best part of the day comes next. The act is Wild Orchid, a three girl track act. They do a couple of songs and at one point one of the singers bends over to reveal to the backline guy upstage that she isn't wearing panties. He damn falls off the back of the stage.

A few songs into their set the police arrive to announce to the audience that there is a tornado a few miles away heading towards us. They send a lot of people in buses to go to the basement of the local school, the rest of the audience hides in the bar and we go like crazy trying to button everything up before the storm hits. Pretty soon it is 60 mph winds and sheets of rain. For the second time that day, everyone and everything is soaked. In the confusion on stage someone falls/trips on the snake box completely breaking the Ramlatch connector into pieces.

After the deluge the radio station guys come to ask us if we can still do the show. I walk them over and show them the cam locks submerged under 2 feet of water and mud and invite them to turn the power on. They decline.

We decide to haul a small mixer and a couple of wireless mics into the bar and do a show with Salt n Pepa through the dj system. They are not happy but the show does happen. Hanson never returned as they had to fly to another gig in the afternoon. I go out and try and start to pack up the PA.

About an hour into load out another storm hits, from a different direction. This has less rain but lots of wind and lightning. I retreat to the truck, pull out my stash of guinness and continue to rue ever getting out of bed.

The day ends with a long load out in the dark with no labor, hauling PA through mud,followed by a 200 mile drive, ending with unloading all the trucks and spreading all the gear out all over the shop to dry out because I had shows with Slaughter less than 24 hours later.

This might have been the day I decided to finally just do the studio full time...

[AxeSlash]

That's some horror story.

Here's hoping for an easy career...











Who am I kidding?

[burnsy]

OPPSsss
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/6154414.stm)

gig is tommorow they cant get any more local crew as we are busy and the nearest light hire place is 100 mile or so away gd luck to them.

[clicktrack]

WOW.

These are great stories.

And you know what makes a great story? One that the reader can relate to, but is glad that he/she isn't the one who was IN the story...

:)


Keep 'em coming!

[Tim Halligan]

Mine is from my TV station days...

We were covering an interstate cricket match at the WACA that was going all over the state, and we get to the last day. WA won the match ahead of time and the OB is filling to the top (or bottom...can't remember) of the hour, so everyone who is hanging off the feed can get out cleanly.

So, there is a presenter to camera in front of a chroma-key flat which is setup at the back of the commentary box. He gets wired up with a lav, and an IFB from the commentator circuit is shoved in his ear. All good...for the first segment. He throws to a commercial break.

Now, knowing that the end is in sight, I decided that I should get a head start on the de-rig, and start pulling apart the commentators' rig during the commercial break.

You know where this is going, don't you... Yep, I unwittingly pulled the IFB feed that was feeding the talent in the process...and we've still got 15 minutes to fill...

So the talent realises that he can't hear the director and starts fiddling with the volume knob on his IFB box, and dislodges the cable and calls me over to fix it.

At that time we came out of commercial break.

My headset was tuned to the Audio department frequncy, and I didn't hear the call that we were back on air - no floor manager - and walked in front of the chroma-key set. I was wearing a blue t-shirt, so it appeared to the viewing public as if a disembodied head, and some forearms walked through the shot, and started fiddling with his IFB box...when the camera man starts gesticulating wildly at me to get off the set...

As soon as we went to voice-over, I switched my radio to the RIFB channel and plugged the talent's earpiece into it...which got us to the end of the show.

Not a banner day for the Audio department. Suffice to say I had a new one torn...

Cheers,
Tim

[dwoz]

A classic that comes to mind was at Woodstock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock).


If I'm not mistaken, that show was done by a guy named Bill Hanley. I knew his brother, Terry. (at least, I was told he was his brother.)

basically, by comparison, it was the storming of the beaches of Okinawa, compared to spinning CDs for justin & janet.

dwoz

[nobby]

If I'm not mistaken, that show was done by a guy named Bill Hanley. I knew his brother, Terry. (at least, I was told he was his brother.)

basically, by comparison, it was the storming of the beaches of Okinawa, compared to spinning CDs for justin & janet.

dwoz

Correct. And good analogy.

To put together the sound and lighting system, Lang and Goldstein approached 24-year-old Alan Markoff, the owner of a local hi-fi shop, The Audio Center, in nearby Middletown. In typically haphazard fashion, they picked his name out of the Audio Engineering Society Magazine because Markoff was the only Woodstock-area resident listed. Not surprisingly Markoff was stunned when Lang and Goldstein bowled up and gave him the brief -- to create a sound system from scratch for an outdoor festival that they expected to attract somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 people. In fact Markoff thought they were "nuts" and it was a tribute to his organisational abilities that the Woodstock sound crew succeeded as well as they did. Much of the credit for this must go to the unsung hero of the Woodstock sound system, veteran Boston sound engineer Bill Hanley, whom Markoff wisely selected as his chief engineer. Hanley and his crew did their best, but as powerful as it was, in the event the PA proved barely up to the task and it broke down on several occasions.

http://www.milesago.com/Festivals/intro.htm

[Psyko/Acoustics]

Hello all...

Well, this summer I survived a season working for Towers/Clair/Showco Toronto. That in itself was pretty punishing, but:

At the end of all the summer craziness, we had a company get-together. We were all quitely settled into a poker game in the shop and having a good time, eating and drinking... when suddenly our VP received a call. The stage next door at "The Docks" nightclub had collapsed during a performance by a band called Drop Kick Murphy... they were opening for Bad Religion.

All of us rushed out the door with band new 4 x 8 risers and legs to rebuild the stage! The crowd gave us a mixed reaction; some were applauding our efforts but others were angry and throwing drinks. It took our crew 20 minutes of struggling with mismatched parts, but in the end the show went on... it was unreal. The most bizarre part of it was the fact that most of us were inebriated. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

After we were finished, we settled back into the poker game.

:very happy:

Not really a Live Sound disaster, but a production disaster nonetheless.

[graveleye]

this thread would be better with pictures of said pantiless singer-girl.:grin:

[MudCat]

...I was wearing a blue t-shirt, so it appeared to the viewing public as if a disembodied head, and some forearms walked through the shot, and started fiddling with his IFB box...


:lol:

[Jason Phair]

Gabe, if you've ever wondered what 480 does to a 96-way Sensor rack, ask the boys at PRG all about it! :lol:

We rented them ours for the duration of the tour.



Live Sound Disasters.....this one time, I was mixing....and the kick drum had NO thump whatsoever!

hehe

[G. Hoffman]

Gabe, if you've ever wondered what 480 does to a 96-way Sensor rack, ask the boys at PRG all about it! :lol:

We rented them ours for the duration of the tour.



Live Sound Disasters.....this one time, I was mixing....and the kick drum had NO thump whatsoever!

hehe


I'm a sparky.



I ALWAYS test my power before I throw the switch, and I don't care how much of a hurry I'm in.



Gabriel

[clicktrack]

I'm a sparky.



I ALWAYS test my power before I throw the switch, and I don't care how much of a hurry I'm in.



Gabriel

So what happens if your power is clean when you start up, and someone attempts to modify it...when its live?


No Joke. This happened about 3 or 4 weeks ago.


We were hired to provide the broadcast audio for a music awards show. This show was being picked up and broadcast cross-country, so its one that had to go right. I mentioned this incident in another thread, but I'll relive it here as the topic is apropos...

The show was on a sunday night. We loaded in on the saturday morning, interfaced with FOH & Monitor land, ran the line checks and sound checks and recorded the "preview" show that was run that night. Everything went the way a production day should. Everyone was happy and in good spirits, there was no warring between the audio factions, the performers did what they were told and stuck to the script. Life was good.

The next morning, the video guys loaded in. The head of their crew ran his power and, thinking the distro was powered off (it wasn't), proceeded to lift one the legs on the circuit.

To tell you the truth, I don't really get what he was trying to do, because he didn't need 240. However, he delved right in there.

This was the leg feeding the monitor rig and our stage gear. It also fed the truck technical power, but for some reason, we decidied to shut down the truck...just in case (whew!).

My stage guy and I had just walked in backstage, saw what he was doing at the exact same time the monitor rig started screaming. Literally. THe most god-awful sound you could expect to hear an audio rig make. It made it. "BUZZZZZZ-AXK!" I guess thats the sound of 240V across a power supply not expecting it. I looked over and saw smoke billowing from somewhere behind the monitor rig...right about where my stage gear is located.

"SSSSTTTTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!" I yell.

We were lucky.

The furman unit in the stage rack blew, but some of the 240 had made it to the preamps in the time it took the furman to expire itself. Luckily they were all fused, so the fuses took the brunt of the blow.

The video guy didn't make a lot of friends that day. To his credit, he accepted full responsibility and moved quickly to replace the gear blown that day. We were put back about 2 to 3 hours on the production day, and everyone worked their asses off (no lunch or dinner breaks...we ate while we operated). Everyone was dead by the end of the day, but the broadcast went off fairly well.

[G. Hoffman]

So what happens if your power is clean when you start up, and someone attempts to modify it...when its live?


No Joke. This happened about 3 or 4 weeks ago.


We were hired to provide the broadcast audio for a music awards show. This show was being picked up and broadcast cross-country, so its one that had to go right. I mentioned this incident in another thread, but I'll relive it here as the topic is apropos...

The show was on a sunday night. We loaded in on the saturday morning, interfaced with FOH & Monitor land, ran the line checks and sound checks and recorded the "preview" show that was run that night. Everything went the way a production day should. Everyone was happy and in good spirits, there was no warring between the audio factions, the performers did what they were told and stuck to the script. Life was good.

The next morning, the video guys loaded in. The head of their crew ran his power and, thinking the distro was powered off (it wasn't), proceeded to lift one the legs on the circuit.

To tell you the truth, I don't really get what he was trying to do, because he didn't need 240. However, he delved right in there.

This was the leg feeding the monitor rig and our stage gear. It also fed the truck technical power, but for some reason, we decidied to shut down the truck...just in case (whew!).

My stage guy and I had just walked in backstage, saw what he was doing at the exact same time the monitor rig started screaming. Literally. THe most god-awful sound you could expect to hear an audio rig make. It made it. "BUZZZZZZ-AXK!" I guess thats the sound of 240V across a power supply not expecting it. I looked over and saw smoke billowing from somewhere behind the monitor rig...right about where my stage gear is located.

"SSSSTTTTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!" I yell.

We were lucky.

The furman unit in the stage rack blew, but some of the 240 had made it to the preamps in the time it took the furman to expire itself. Luckily they were all fused, so the fuses took the brunt of the blow.

The video guy didn't make a lot of friends that day. To his credit, he accepted full responsibility and moved quickly to replace the gear blown that day. We were put back about 2 to 3 hours on the production day, and everyone worked their asses off (no lunch or dinner breaks...we ate while we operated). Everyone was dead by the end of the day, but the broadcast went off fairly well.



Ouch.


OK, I'm bringing a couple pad locks for my generators from now on, and NO ONE else gets the key, except maybe my L2, if I trust them that much.


Gabriel

[Jason Phair]

I wouldn't give him the key if I were you, Gabe. You can never trust a fucking lampi :D

[G. Hoffman]

I wouldn't give him the key if I were you, Gabe. You can never trust a fucking lampi :D



When it comes to power, I'd sooner trust a lampi than most noise boys. And anything is better than a vidiot!



Gabriel