Posted on Apr 13, 2008 07:48 pm
Rob Stemple
The Czar of BS
Member Since: Dec 31, 2007
Last Thursday, the company I work for, got the gig for Penn's spring fling. It sounded like a good gig. The line up was Gym class hero's, OK Go, and Ludicrous. The show was held at Franklin field. The deal for us, was to set up the gear at 10pm on Thursday, and stay until 6:30am to ensure that everything was up and running for all of the acts. Come back on Friday to tear down. Simple right?
Thursday at 10pm I show up with 2 other techs and three trucks full of gear to do the show. As we walk on to the field, we see that Mountain productions has not built the stage yet. The towers are up, but the roof and decks are still not there.
We found our contact for the show, and asked him what the story was. We found out that Mountain has sent their D crew on this show. Everyone else was in New York for the Popes' visit. Also, the crew here with us, didn't have a clue on the set up of the stage. Pieces were missing, the towers were built upside down. Things were a mess. One of the A guys showed up and took control. So, things were looking up. And they would have the stage built in no time.
We figured that it shouldn't take them more then two hours to finish, so we went and unloaded our three trucks.
We unloaded the trucks, and sat to wait out the stage. At 1am, the roof still did not have a cover on it. At 3am, the roof cover was on, but still not in the air. At 4am, the roof was raised to about 5 feet, when they noticed that the motors that they had were to short. They were going to have to double bridle the roof. Raise it to about 6 feet. Brace the roof, and remove the double bridle, and reattach the first bridle. All of this should only take about an hour. (Yeah, right!)
The 2 techs that were with me, had to leave at 5:30am. They had another show to be at in Atlantic city. So, I was hoping to have their help for at least a half hour. No chance. 5:30 came along, and the stage still was not built. So, my techs leave, and I am still waiting for the stage.
I finally decided to build the fly bumpers and put them in place. Also, all of the wiring mostly in place. At 6:30, the stage is just about done. Most of the stage decks are down, and the roof is raised. Only one problem. The decks were now built over top of my fly bumpers! I had gone out for a cup of coffee, and found that they decided to expand the stage. Over top of my stuff!
After all this time waiting for them, I didn't care. I could finally get everything in the air, and start working on the monitor rig.
I had 12 boxes a side to put in the air. And 30 subs to put in front of the stage. Build FOH, and Monitor world, and I had to 9:00 to do so. Somehow, I managed to pull all of this off. The morning crew walked in at 9:30. Only to berate me on the fact that not more was done. After explaining to them the situation, they asked me to help with the rest of the set up.
On 12:30 Friday afternoon, all was done. I told them to have good gig, and I would be back at 11:30pm to do the tear down.
I came home to sleep. Only to be woken up form time to time with political calls reminding me to vote on April 20th. Some nice people got an ear full about calling at all hours of the day! And that it was over a week away! AHHH!
I returned to the show at 11:45pm. With only 4 hours of sleep, I was a little touche. But, ready for the task at hand. 5 minutes in to the tear down, the skies open up. Rain was just pouring down. I had brought a rain jacket with me, but this was raining so hard that the jacket didn't help.
Enter the lighting. Once the mother natures light show started, all hands were told to leave the stage. So, this goes on for about an hour. The light show stopped, but not the rain.
Finally, we get everything packed. So, now we are ready to load the trucks. Only one problem. The trash company delivered a dumpster that covered the loading dock. Now everything had to pushed around to the other side of the field! Where we can only do one truck at a time. The lighting company was ready before I was, and had all of there gear there before I could.
Now the union crew had been there since Wednesday night. They did not get a break the whole time. So they were on the job for over 36 hours. They were just completely spent. By the time I finished my three trucks, the sun was coming up. It took until 6:30am just to get out of there.
So, how was everyone else's weekend?
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