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Re: bad night



Hi there,

In a message dated 06/28/00 7:43:02 AM, tquincy@sayhhi.com writes:

>Any nightmares you could share and how you handled the situation would
>be enjoyable and perhaps helpful.

Well, my very worst musical nightmares seem to happen mostly in broad 
daylight. About once every decade or so I agree to do an outdoor gig 
assuming 
(always mistakenly) that whoever is doing the organizing (and providing 
PA/stage etc.) will also be sensible enouh to provide some shade for the 
performance area as well. Summertime heat is murder on gear and murder on 
the 
nerves in my experience. 

In direct sunshine you can't see LED patch indicators (and if they're LCD 
then they go blank when they get hot anyway). Heat sensitive gear like 
processors (and especially EDPs) in a rack full of other stuff that's 
ventilated well enough for "normal" use in an indoor setting starts to go 
haywire after only a few minutes into the set on a hot day. 

My most memorable catastrophe of this sort was just a few weeks ago at my 
employer's company picnic (I work as a graphic designer at a music gear 
catalog). Several employees (and  their groups) were playing sets 
throughout 
the day, and (as one might expect) we had a pretty top notch PA setup. But 
nobody bothered to check the electrical system capabilities at the little 
public park amphitheater where the thing was being held. When temperatures 
began to rise as the day progressed we began to have power outages onstage 
about every five or ten minutes (this in addition to all the  other 
outdoor 
maladies mentione above). 

My trio was the last on the schedule and had the worst time of all. I play 
MIDI guitar and use a couple EDPs and a vortex (along with several other 
odd 
processing gizmos) to do the thing that I do. Every time the power went 
out 
we lost what ever loops were playing. And when the power came back on my 
synths, multiprocessors and samplers all rebooted. We tried valiantly at 
first to "play through" these occurances as though nothing major happened. 
But after about the 4th or 5th time the spirit was gone and would not be 
re-invoked. 

In the end, I just had to look up and gesture quizically skywards and 
figure 
that sombody up there was telling me to turn it down (or off). The 
audience 
(though very supportive and sympathetic) seemed to understand my jesture 
as 
well. But, all the same, that's an experience that I don't plan on 
repeating 
again.

T.Killian