Hey kiddies, I hope you've been in the shed and gettin' lot's of gigs. Sadly, I haven't been giggin' much. However, I did crew for a sound company recently.

The following could only happen at a music event:

We show up (3 of us, engineer and 2 stage hands) unload and get the stage set. We tie into power, check voltage levels, hook the stage up to power and are getting ready to line check. It's 95 degrees, we've been bustin' our humps for three hours and we're tired. We'll be happy for a break soon.

We're getting' the PA crankin' with some tunes and dailin' her in when-----uh oh the CD player starts acting funky. Kinda crappin' out every so often. We ignore it and carry on. Thirty minutes into line check the guitar player's entire pedal board goes haywire and seconds later the keyboards lose dey mind. The two big power sucks---lights and bass rig aren't powered up yet. Baaaad. Vewy baaaaad! What the heck is going on? The heat? Cosmologic convergence? A brown out? We check voltage levels again. Yup! There it is. The line level has dropped from a comfy 120V to around 108V. Not good for digital equipment. We hope nothing has gotten fried to a crispy crunch.

We decide to take a break from the heat, get some much needed food and water and call the power company. Luckily, actually, quite amazingly, they showed up within the hour. For the power company to show on Friday at 4:00 in hotter than hot 'lanta with the traffic monster throwing cars around at will, there musta been some cosmologic convergence. Maybe that's a good thing.

Hang on a minute.....the phone....... OK, I'm back…definitely cosmologic convergence. Just as I'm writing this and complaining 'bout not giggin', I land a gig. Upright, small rig. Probably won't have any power issues.

Back to our story. Power guy confirms that our power source is crap and that the venue was told before installation that this particular setup would yield bad results under this specific application but......damn the torpedoes... full speed ahead. I know you don't believe club owners would do that but that's a debate for another day. The answer to the problem, go rent a genny.

The genny arrives and we begin tying into it. There's only one problem. We must ground the genny but we have nothing with which to do it. Suddenly, I have one of those outside the box bright ideas that only bass-geeks such as myself come up with. Jumper cables!!! They all give me the doggie look. You know that head turned sideways, ears up, with that wide-eyed, "Whaaaaaat?" look upon their faces. Yup. All we need is something metal to stick into the ground and we'll connect the genny to that via jumper cables. I go get my cables outta my truck. The other stage hand finds a "yard sale" sign in the back of his truck.

Seconds later.................ROCK & ROLL BABY!!! WE'RE BACK IN BUSINESS! We've got lights, bass, guitar, keys…….heck we've even got four fans blowing full speed to keep everyone cool.

Right before the show is about to start I'm standing next to the promoter and the club owners. Now picture this. The four of us are standing there and I point just to the right of the stage, up a 10 foot bank, through a small thicket of trees and some underbrush where there sits, conspicuously and barely visible, a little yard sale sign with orange and green construction paper glued onto a larger white background which reads,

"Yard Sale ------>>>".

I said to them, "If it weren't for that sign, some jumper cables and rock & roll ingenuity, this show wouldn't be hapnin'." They all looked at me in disbelief and then began to laugh quite heartily.

No matter what, the show must go on!!

k-dub

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