A wet show!!!

[Techie]

Was working on a rock festival in cornwall last weekend which incorporated the normal be on site by 7.30am, rig and focus (as well as possible) by 11am ready for the first band, run the show till midnight then derig.

 

All was looking well for the day untill I got up that morning. Got onto site the stage wasnt complete (no cover), opened the van to find no ladders!!!!, Great start.

 

Then the rain started and even with the cover finally on the stage we found that we had a leaky stage. So theres the clay paky moving heads all soaked through and water dripping out the scrollers!!!, Great.

 

Still the show had to go on and so it did, thankfully we were lucky and nothing tripped or became dangerous but I vow never again (highly unlikely). So on monday ive now got the fun of drying out and servicing the kit.

 

Just wondering if anyone has any similar stories?

[mackerr]

While it has been some years, I was once mixing the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York City. It is a pretty big television event, so the mix position was terrible to stay out of camera shots. I only heard rumors of the sound system, I had to have assistants walking around with walkie talkies giving me sound cues. The morning of the broadcast it poured rain and the console (PM4k) got soaked. Magically it still worked. In the middle of rehearsals, about a hour before air, the console in the broadcast remote truck went up in smoke and I got informed that I would have to do the broadcast mix as well. I sent a couple of subgroups to the truck where they used an 8 input portable Sony mixer to mix my stems and some sweetening tracks. I'd like to miss the experience the next time.

 

Mac

[hairyswaff]

A classic happened to me today.

 

Generator wouldn't start nothing we tired got it working so had to steal power from moored canal boat, God knows how many metres of cable run across field, entire sound system off one small generator and cables across busy tow path. God knows how we got away with it!

 

Amazingly we powered everything though sound system didn't work at first due to dodgey cable and naturally it was the last cable I checked that was the problem. 15 mins late up and no sound check otherwise went fine!

 

 

EDIT:- Forgot to add this was after we moved from the original site because it was washed out hence the fact it is relevent!

[Stutwo]

While doing Newcastle Haymarket New Years celebrations a few years back (French street theatre type thing on a fairly large scale) the Lighting guy, who was working from inside a curtainsider 7.5t truck, forgot to cover his desk and went off to fiddle with something. Of course, the heavens opened and the wind started blowing the rain inside the truck, soaking the desk (a Sirius48, it was a parcan rig). This went on for about 15 minutes.

 

He of course immediately noticed the desk was wet and in a panic turned it on. It then went into one of the wildest, fastest chases I have ever seen. The first I knew of this was when about 90 parcans all around the stage on genie hoists went berserk. He reset the desk, it sat for about 2 minutes behaving itself and the chase started up, which although impressive, worried the French people somewhat. By now the French director - doing the very meaningful street theatre finale due to start in an hour - was yelling and shouting at anyone with the patience to stand and listen to him. Luckily, we had a spare desk (Fat Frog) within about 5 miles, so I drove like an idiot, got it back there and we reprogrammed the show from memory with 5 minutes to spare.

 

Happy days.

[bruce]

Not exactly a "show" - I build/design/manage/fix/break data networks for a living - but we were running a fairly high profile event a couple of years ago. Lots of people involved, and a Royal guest...

 

A couple of hours before it was due to start, we lost all network connectivity to that area. Network management tools indicated that the problem was in the plant room in the basement.

 

We went down there, expecting to find a tripped breaker or a blown PSU or something like that. What we actually found was that the basement was about 3 feet deep in muddy water.

 

The amazing thing was that all of our kit survived! Normally when you're installing stuff in a rack, you put the heavy gear at the bottom, because (a) it makes the rack more stable and (b) it's less lifting. But in this particular case, everything had been installed near the top of a 42U rack, the bottom half of it was virtually empty. Even the power distro was high up! So once the place was dried out, we got the electricians to safety-check the kit, arranged for temp power supplies to be installed, and it all worked!

[Guest lightnix]

Back in 1992 I replaced the VL Tech on a Spanish tour for a band called Mecano, running a Series 200 system made up of VL2Bs and VL4s - about sixty heads in total.

 

The equipment had not been very well maintained by the Spanish office, but gradually the operator and I managed to whip it into shape, so that by the last week of the tour we were getting very few failures and I was able to relax a little.

 

Spain had enjoyed a heatwave that year, with record temperatures and crystal-clear skies. All the shows were in open air venues (mainly bullrings) and none of the promoters had worried about booking a roof for the stage, as the weather had been so good. Neither were we carrying any "rain hats" for the VLs (you can see where this is going, can't you?).

 

The morning of the penultimate show started out fine enough, but gradually it became overcast and dark clouds began to gather on the horizon...

 

Second number in, the skies opened - bigtime and you could barely see the back of the audience for the sheets of rain. Luckily the mains and racks were under the stage, but the rig was still largely exposed, although some basic attempts to protect it by gaffering rubbish bags over parts of the truss had been made. Despite my pleas, I wasn't allowed to switch anything off and by the time the band decided to call it a night (three numbers later) we'd lost about seven or eight luminaires.

 

Luckily the next day saw hot weather again, so we rigged it, left the Sun to do its stuff and went for a very long lunch break with our fingers crossed. When we powered up we found that we still had six units down and so the final afternoon of the tour was spent swapping out lights and fixing power supplies - lovely.

[trussmonkey]

while on a european festival tour with judas priest last year we arrived in Bologna, italy. It was scorchingly hot and keen to find out if the weather would hold we asked the locals. They replied " SCORCHIO SCORCHIO " . We carried on setting up safe in the knolwedge that all was good. Until our wardrobe lady pointed out a rather dark and imposing black cloud on the horiizon. To which the Tour Manager uttered the quote of the tour " Dont worry thats not coming this way!" We returned to our work.....then the rain fell and fell and fell. Then the wind picked up and it blew and blew and blew. We began to run around and plastic coat our kit etc but where were the locals. They had all chipped off to the catering tent while us poor tour gimps were left to battle the wind, rain and hail ( the size of a small childs fists). At that point we hadnt minded things too much, that was to change. With one large gust of wind the roof blew off and away down the field and the rather large pool of rain water that had been gathering dumped itself onthe monitor desk!!. It was at this point we decided to leave the stage for the safety of catering. On arriving to catering we discovered that the local crew had been told to leave the stage because the back of the stage was lifting inthe wind!!! Eventually things died down and we managed to get all the wet and damamaged things packed away only to find out that the band would really like to do the gig after all. We managed to coble together the house lighting rig and gig the gig in the open air with no roof. The show went down a storm ( literally ) the crowd really apprieciated our efforts as did the band.

We had got fresh clothes on for the load out which was nice. As soon as the last note had been played guess what..... yes the heavens opened and it bloody threw it down just in time for the load out!!!!!!!!!!! Our fresh clothes didnt stay fresh too long.

[mikienorth]

Not quite in the same league, but at a four day festival I once worked at, we went through two FOH sound desks in a morning due to a slightly inadequate FOH tent...

FOH tent ended up looking like a big burka by lunch as the FOH got fed up with being wet and cold and seal himself in as best he could.

Yesterday, not quite my gig but I was there doing a form of work, the British MotoGP (F1 for two wheels for the uneducated) was delayed at the start by a failure of the start lights, they were supposed to be red, and were flashing yellow, it was raining. Lots. Coincidence?

[Andy Mel]

Glastonbury this year anyone.....

 

I was looking after a stage for Fineline which featured the most unwater resistant roof I have ever had the mispleasure of working under! Upon making it over to the stage about 2 hrs into the storm I found the roof tarp had been slashed to clear the puddle which was sitting approx 5ft deep (the tarp was resting below the roof trusses onto my lighting truss!!). So a quick look to survey the damage and I came to the conclusion not one fixture hadn't been drowned.. this included 2k profiles, 500 and 600s and some 4 way bars and for the time being it was too dangerous to go on stage..

Bit of carefull drying and tentative powering up later the full rig bar one par was up and working - I can still barely believe it. Futhermore we made it through our next 3 days with only minor issues!

 

I've been known to say I like the wet years at glastonbury but I think someone was testing us, most fineline stages suffered in some way or form (as did all others) but by friday night we were all up and on it.. damn were good!

[unis]

1991 - Working for London Bubble on "12th Night" tour with the line in the epilogue " the rain it raineth every day " and it did. Every single day of June that year it rained in which ever damp patch of London we were in that week.

 

1994- Dukes Lancaster out door prom show, Tech week for the Hobbit. The production manager couldn't keep a fag alight long enough to smoke it. So a tech session was cancelled. We still had to do the de-rig tho! I remeber the LX team ending up at the deps house wet through and going to pub all wearing various of his clothes coz none of us had any dry ones left at base camp.

 

2004- Show of Hands at Abbotsbury Gardens. Some folk singer started a song about it raining, it started raining, continued raining for the next 4 hours. The audience sat it out! all the spks hurriedly bin bagged and dimmer city under the stage barricaded in.

 

There have been others, those are just the most memorable ones. I recall in my interveiw for LX assistant at the Dukes being asked what I liked most about working on outdoor shows. IIRC my reply was "when it stops raining" .

 

Unis

[PoppaDom]

Which Festival was that?

Am located in Cornwall myself currently and have been suffering the lovely Cornish summer including our current show that is running, which after tonights downpour, I am relieved to say is still running!

 

Poppadom

[jayselway]

Hey, was working on a dance show down south, hiring pa, radio mics + playback. The show director had brought their own noise boy, so I decided to do radio mics (girlfriend at the time was dancing ;)), so I stood at the edge of the stage for the show. At the interval, house lights went up, and the SM made sure the stage was clear before pulling what he thought was the iron lever. Sadly, this was not the iron lever, but was the lever for the stage drencher, one of the outlets for which was right above my head. I got drenched, the pa got soaked, all the amps and radio receivers got wet, and nobody was impressed. Especially those in the front row, who hadn't got up yet, and were now sitting in puddles.

 

Luckily I had the spare amp and radio racks in the van from a previous job, so we could replace the racks. No power down, as the feed tripped. Hence, second half went okay - with borrowed jumpers and towels all over the crew! Looked like a load of monks, and jumper enthusiasts!

 

Thankfully a dry out after the show, and a couple of drivers were all that was needed to repair my end - not forgetting a huge mug of hot coffee to warm me up again!!

[DeanAU]

Outdoor Theatre Show (don't ask)

 

1 Hog 1K, 2 Mac 500's, 2 Mac 300's, 4 Citycolours.

 

Rain halfway the show. Ended up halting it and getting the macs down in 3-5 mins. So its ok - we can still run on Citycolours.. right? Wrong. The console got a bit soaked. We ended up having to run it on Open City Colours. :(

 

The console dried off and is still kickin ;)