"Excuse me sir, but your greeness is showing."

I have heard from lots of people and friends that travel around with bands that sometimes you forget what city your in and it all becomes a blur. Well, I know what country I’m in, but the city completely escapes me and I’ve only been doing this for three days. What the hell is it going to be like at the end of the month?

My true colors as a total newbie to this are glaring through like the freaking sun tonight. I haven’t massively screwed up or anything, but I have had to ask quite a few questions in order to make sure I am hooking things up correctly. I have been blessed with another crew member that has been unbelievably cool and patient with me, and has been giving me lots of advice where needed, instead of tons of shit along the way, so far.Fin is an obvious veteran of this touring stuff and has gone above and beyond to teach me the ropes. I’m taking this all in stride and taking lots of deep breaths. I have been a really quick study and it hasn’t really been that hard so far, but that’s only because I haven’t had to divert any disasters “yet”!

Tonight I had my first moments of sheer panic. Ok, so, I can tune a guitar in to a standard tuning with my eyes and ears closed, but these guys tune a half step lower than standard and it has completely thrown me. I was handed a guitar at the last second and told to tune it and have it ready to go incase of a broken string during the show. So I dutifully hooked everything up to my chromatic tuner and tried my best (not quite), and then I tried again (nope still sounds terrible) and then I tried one more time (Your screwed Aram, admit it). I couldn’t do it no matter how hard I tried. I was unfortunately left to hoping and praying that all those strings working so hard out there, somehow, knew that I was shitting bricks in the wings and hoping they would have mercy on me! Please? Luckily I was spared, for tonight that is. The next disaster was the main sampler/mixer that is the foundation of the bands rhythm section took a giant crap right in the middle of a song! The drummer looks at me and says “get the spare!” The Spare? The spare? Oh shit! The spare! Where is the fucking spare?!!!!! It’s under the stage! Oh Christ, that means I have to squeeze through sweaty crushing masses in order to crawl under the stage and find this thing. Big mistake #1! Why didn’t you have it ready to go ahead of time Aram? Why? Because I’m a total ADD wonder and even with all the best intentions of organization, I almost always forget something. So off I went, and as I went under the stage all I could feel was hands pinching my ass as I struggled to squeeze my self under the stage. It could be worse, I suppose having a bunch of young, beautiful women pinching your forty year old butt isn’t something I should complain about. I would have traded any amount of bum pinching at that moment to instantly have the skills and knowledge of a super roadie! I did find the spare by the way, but by the time I got it up to the stage they had sorted it out and fixed the other one.Ces't La Vie.

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