Every now and then a live show gets interrupted. Sometimes it’s due to some audio difficulty such as a mic or musical instrument has a failure. Often it’s due to power outages. But last week I found a new way to disrupt a show. Flying turf.
So I’m out working with a band called Disturbed. Big in the hard rock scene, they have had the #1 album on the rock charts for 15 weeks. We are averaging about 15,000 fans per night for a co headline bill with Slipknot.
Every night at 8:30 we turn the house lites out and I wait behind the console for the band’s entrance.
Tonite we are in Detroit at the DTE Energy Center, formerly known as Pine Knob. It has been raining steadily all day. The once grassy knoll located on a hill behind me has turned into a giant mud slide for all the kids. Their parents would be proud to see them in their inebriated condition flying face first down a hill into a pile of mud. In fact, the crowd has determined that the entire lawn be turned into a mud pit. I am only saying this because it seems everyone up on the lawn has found something new and cool to do. Rip out large chunks of the lawn and start flinging them towards the people close to the stage.
Of course this quickly reciprocates as the audience in the seats starts returning fire with their newly acquired clumps of grass and dirt. The unfortunate part of all this is that the action starts about 2 minutes before we call house lights out for the start of the set. The lights go out and the first thing I hear is a “thwack” sound. That is the noise made when 35 lbs of muddy grass hits the screen of my Grand MA console. Then I hear a thud. That’s the sound of a large piece of sod slamming into the back of my head.
Then I hear the PA get extremely loud for a second. That’s the sound of turf pushing the grandmaster of the audio console to full.
Within minutes I have my console covered with plastic. I am trying to see thru the plastic to read my cues on the built in monitor. My hands are working in dirt, with plastic on to of them and even more grass is coming in. There is dirt in every fader. Dirt works into the encoder wheels. My hands are full of mud. The strobes are going off by themselves. I call for backup.
Within minutes I have lighting techs out trying to clean off the console. This is fruitless now, will have to wait til morning, but still the show must go on. So Iggy my tech is now standing on a chair catching pieces of sod as they reign down towards the console. But it’s easy to see that Iggy has now become a target for people to throw sod at, so this is not working. Finally I just give up and do the best I can under combat conditions. The band understands why the lighting cues are off a bit tonite. We are under attack.
Finally the set is over and the mudslinging has stopped. The police have arrested 80 punters from the crowd for vandalism. The cost of re sod ding the lawn is estimated at 50k. Of course the 80 people arrested will have to cough up all the money. Good for them, they ought to be ashamed.
I just wish I could be a fly on the wall when the police call the parents of these kids. Love to see the look on their faces when they are told that their offspring are not only loaded, but that the parents need to drop off a check for 700 bucks when they come bail them out.
