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In 1988, I had the chance to go to Cascais, Portugal, on my 29th birthday no less, with a group for which I was LD’ing. I should have known when the airline lost all of my luggage that I was in for a bad trip.
The show was to be broadcast “live” on Portuguese national radio. When I showed up to focus and program, I discovered the lighting rig was only half set up, and there were no local lighting personnel anywhere in the building. As I walked around checking out the rig, I also noticed that the power to the dimmers was not connected properly. I found this out the hard way when I got a nice electrical jolt to my left hand. When the crew finally did show up two hours later, the first thing I did was to let the head electrician know of the problem. He informed me that I was completely wrong and he refused to double-check his work.
The next thing I did was to make sure that we had a minimum of three English speaking spot operators as promised. Once again, I was assured that all was well. After they slowly patched the system, our tour manager threatened to penalize them financially in the event that they didn’t perform up to expectations. Finally, they were ready to focus. Unfortunately for the local company, however, the person they sent to FOH for focus activated all of the faders at the same time and promptly blew up two-thirds of the lamps. Smoke poured from the dimmer racks and that fried component smell filled the room. Sure, the power was tied-in properly. The locals tried feverishly to repair the fried racks, but to no avail. I salvaged what was left of the rig with a quick re-gel and re-patch. As all of the locals abandoned the sinking ship, I realized that I had to focus the rig by myself. I did so with an A-frame ladder onstage while the opening act was performing to more than 2,000 people in tuxedos and evening gowns.
As I sprinted back to the console before the start of our show, I was thinking that this was probably the worst birthday I’d ever had, but that the worst was, in fact, behind me.
Wrong again. Turns out that the locals were a bit peeved about not getting paid in full (they were to get one-third of the agreed amount) and they did a little “re-patch” of their own. As I grabbed my headset to brief the spot ops, I pretty much knew what was next. Yes, there were three spot ops, but only one of them spoke English and he did so very poorly. And of course, there was no translator provided. Happy Friggin’ Birthday to me!
As I was fading up my first scene, I discovered the locals’ “re-patch.” Greens were patched with reds, blues with yellows, upstage fixtures paired with downstage fixtures, Lekos paired with ACLs etc., etc… I guess they had decided that zero pay was better than one-third pay. And that is exactly what they got—zero. I was thankful for the fact that the show was on Portuguese radio instead of TV.
The rest of our time in Cascais was awesome. But it will always be tarnished by the gig itself. Oh yeah, all of my luggage finally arrived at the airport on the day we flew back to London. (Many thanks to our drummer and guitarist for loaning me socks and T-shirts as needed.)
Steve Ponder
Production Services International, Boise, ID
