All in a day's work
Today, I feel like writing about my old job. Since this is probably just as interesting for most people as a description of my toenails, it is behind a cut. I have written a lot about how the bands at a venue are treated and what they do, but not a single word about what I have done, so that will be mended right here and now. I welcome you to a day of the artist liaison.
First order of the day is unlocking the door, turning on the lights and check that nothing disgusting from the night before is in the band room or on the stage. You might come in to find that whomever worked there yesterday cleaned the place perfectly and it is shining and sparkling as much as the worn-down stage and rotting floor can shine, or that the artists' dressing rooms are filled with cigarette buts, popcorn and carrots all over the floor and someone forgot their guitar, their jeans or even their drummer.
Kick out the drummer, store the guitar and jeans in the closet and clean the dressing rooms. Before the band arrives, check their rider for any sign of get in food or drink. If something is mentioned, sigh and run to the nearest shop to buy hummus, vegan bread (lie! lie like a politician!) and vegan butter. If you didn't get the rider five minutes before, you have already bought whatever you needed. But you will never have brought the correct amount of towels from the hotel you cooperate with. Either you bring seventeen and one is used or you bring seven and they could have needed twice the amount.
While you are chopping the vegetables and trying to make the food you bought (or the food left in the fridge from the day before... always check best before dates and sniff for mould) look edible, the band will most likely arrive. Unlock the door (again), greet the band, potentionally their tour manager and driver (the latter will like to know a million facts about driving that you will not know, having never been behind a steering wheel, but after a while in the biz, you will have at least seven different people saved on your phone under the tag "driving advice". Call them, give the driver your phone and help the band carry their gear. It is not demanded from your job (your position is above mere lifting of instruments), but it feels off to walk besides someone carrying 50 kilos worth of gear and not doing anything.
This is when you will find out that the idiot from the day before made a circuit blow, or turned off the electricity to the stage, not put it on stand by. The correct solution is to give the band some coffee, get your phone back from the driver, give him his advisor's number and run back inside while you call someone who might know if the big red button is red because it should be pushed or should not under any circumstances be pushed.
After pushing the red button and finding that the world did not end and you now have lights, electricity and everything is well around the stage, you will learn that you are lacking two very important things: coffee, and a sound guy. The latter will mumble something about not yet being awake / being a bit late / not knowing it was a gig tonight (it is a Friday! Do we usually have gigs on Friday or did you think that was the day of the Bulgarian knitting circle? A hint... GUITARS, not knitting needles).
Run to buy more coffee. Buy chocolate and bananas as well, to keep the band occupied. The light guy will help you in this, by distracting the band with questions about coloured filters and travel time. This is a good time to draw something in the band book, finish making the plates for their catering and remind them to eat. They will either be famished, so you bought too little food, or not hungry at all. Awkward silences might enter her, or you might smoke and chat with them as if you've known them for years. All depends on the band, your mood and how pissed they are that the sound guy is still in a taxi somewhere.
Sound guy will arrive. Ploinking from guitars will be heard, then the beating of a single sharp drum, bass drum, cymbal. Something won't be picked up properly by one of the monitors, one of the mics will be messed up or something else will have mysteriously broken during the night. Curse the gremlins, replace and move on. If everything goes perfect, start to fear about tonight's performance, as nothing can ever go that perfect without blowing spectacularly up during the next few hours. Repeat your mantra of "it's all going to be ok" a couple of times, until you believe it. Check the first aid kit, just in case.
The band will leave for dinner once the sound check is done, but you can't. Soon the other workers will arrive, and since you have one of the in total two keys to the place, you can't go anywhere. Sometimes, you will ignore this and get some food, other times you will become a champion in solitaire until someone comes along to partner up with you for poker. If you know you are going to be alone for a long time, you have probably already bought your working dinner: two bananas and a cola.
Sit down and play Plants vs. Zombies until someone rings the door bell. Lock whomever arrived inside. Take the verbal abuse from the idiot guitarist from the day before, still in his boxers, and point him in the direction of the band room. Smile as he leaves, calling you words you would like to use about whomever raised him to treat poor innocent bar workers in such a way, and smile to yourself knowing that bastards like him usually don't get far in life anyhow. Plus, he had to walk here wearing boxers with red hearts on them. That is something.
Chat with the first people to arrive, distracting them from their duties of counting beer bottles and cigarette packs, cleaning floors and replacing the posters on the walls. Make sure the barriers are in front of the stage before the doors open. Start to count heads and sweat.
This is where the tense waiting starts. What if the band is late? What if no one comes? What if everyone comes and the band is too late? There is nothing you can do, although sometimes the gig is postponed ten-fifteen minutes to allow for more people to arrive.
Some bands handle this fine, some are ecstatic that for once there are more people in the room than on the stage, and others sulk and moan about it, loosing whichever fans they did have in the audience. But the moment they are on the stage, you can breathe properly again for the first time in hours. Your job is as good as done. If they walk off, you need to be the one getting them back on the stage again, but for anything but that, you are free. They are on the stage, nothing can go wrong here (unless someone plugged their guitar into the light rig and the sound disappears every time the light guy dims the lights... happens more often than you think!).
This is the time for a victory cigarette, a quick clean of the band room, to listen to the gig if the band is good or to sit down and chat with friends and enemies backstage if they are bad. From here on, you know you are going to make it all right.
First order of the day is unlocking the door, turning on the lights and check that nothing disgusting from the night before is in the band room or on the stage. You might come in to find that whomever worked there yesterday cleaned the place perfectly and it is shining and sparkling as much as the worn-down stage and rotting floor can shine, or that the artists' dressing rooms are filled with cigarette buts, popcorn and carrots all over the floor and someone forgot their guitar, their jeans or even their drummer.
Kick out the drummer, store the guitar and jeans in the closet and clean the dressing rooms. Before the band arrives, check their rider for any sign of get in food or drink. If something is mentioned, sigh and run to the nearest shop to buy hummus, vegan bread (lie! lie like a politician!) and vegan butter. If you didn't get the rider five minutes before, you have already bought whatever you needed. But you will never have brought the correct amount of towels from the hotel you cooperate with. Either you bring seventeen and one is used or you bring seven and they could have needed twice the amount.
While you are chopping the vegetables and trying to make the food you bought (or the food left in the fridge from the day before... always check best before dates and sniff for mould) look edible, the band will most likely arrive. Unlock the door (again), greet the band, potentionally their tour manager and driver (the latter will like to know a million facts about driving that you will not know, having never been behind a steering wheel, but after a while in the biz, you will have at least seven different people saved on your phone under the tag "driving advice". Call them, give the driver your phone and help the band carry their gear. It is not demanded from your job (your position is above mere lifting of instruments), but it feels off to walk besides someone carrying 50 kilos worth of gear and not doing anything.
This is when you will find out that the idiot from the day before made a circuit blow, or turned off the electricity to the stage, not put it on stand by. The correct solution is to give the band some coffee, get your phone back from the driver, give him his advisor's number and run back inside while you call someone who might know if the big red button is red because it should be pushed or should not under any circumstances be pushed.
After pushing the red button and finding that the world did not end and you now have lights, electricity and everything is well around the stage, you will learn that you are lacking two very important things: coffee, and a sound guy. The latter will mumble something about not yet being awake / being a bit late / not knowing it was a gig tonight (it is a Friday! Do we usually have gigs on Friday or did you think that was the day of the Bulgarian knitting circle? A hint... GUITARS, not knitting needles).
Run to buy more coffee. Buy chocolate and bananas as well, to keep the band occupied. The light guy will help you in this, by distracting the band with questions about coloured filters and travel time. This is a good time to draw something in the band book, finish making the plates for their catering and remind them to eat. They will either be famished, so you bought too little food, or not hungry at all. Awkward silences might enter her, or you might smoke and chat with them as if you've known them for years. All depends on the band, your mood and how pissed they are that the sound guy is still in a taxi somewhere.
Sound guy will arrive. Ploinking from guitars will be heard, then the beating of a single sharp drum, bass drum, cymbal. Something won't be picked up properly by one of the monitors, one of the mics will be messed up or something else will have mysteriously broken during the night. Curse the gremlins, replace and move on. If everything goes perfect, start to fear about tonight's performance, as nothing can ever go that perfect without blowing spectacularly up during the next few hours. Repeat your mantra of "it's all going to be ok" a couple of times, until you believe it. Check the first aid kit, just in case.
The band will leave for dinner once the sound check is done, but you can't. Soon the other workers will arrive, and since you have one of the in total two keys to the place, you can't go anywhere. Sometimes, you will ignore this and get some food, other times you will become a champion in solitaire until someone comes along to partner up with you for poker. If you know you are going to be alone for a long time, you have probably already bought your working dinner: two bananas and a cola.
Sit down and play Plants vs. Zombies until someone rings the door bell. Lock whomever arrived inside. Take the verbal abuse from the idiot guitarist from the day before, still in his boxers, and point him in the direction of the band room. Smile as he leaves, calling you words you would like to use about whomever raised him to treat poor innocent bar workers in such a way, and smile to yourself knowing that bastards like him usually don't get far in life anyhow. Plus, he had to walk here wearing boxers with red hearts on them. That is something.
Chat with the first people to arrive, distracting them from their duties of counting beer bottles and cigarette packs, cleaning floors and replacing the posters on the walls. Make sure the barriers are in front of the stage before the doors open. Start to count heads and sweat.
This is where the tense waiting starts. What if the band is late? What if no one comes? What if everyone comes and the band is too late? There is nothing you can do, although sometimes the gig is postponed ten-fifteen minutes to allow for more people to arrive.
Some bands handle this fine, some are ecstatic that for once there are more people in the room than on the stage, and others sulk and moan about it, loosing whichever fans they did have in the audience. But the moment they are on the stage, you can breathe properly again for the first time in hours. Your job is as good as done. If they walk off, you need to be the one getting them back on the stage again, but for anything but that, you are free. They are on the stage, nothing can go wrong here (unless someone plugged their guitar into the light rig and the sound disappears every time the light guy dims the lights... happens more often than you think!).
This is the time for a victory cigarette, a quick clean of the band room, to listen to the gig if the band is good or to sit down and chat with friends and enemies backstage if they are bad. From here on, you know you are going to make it all right.