Saturday, January 2, 2021

Engineer Gets Ditched In Revenge Of The Week


It's time for the revenge story of the week, and man, is this one a treat. This entitled sound engineer got what was coming his way. It sounds like he was just the kind of presumptuous brat that needed a wakeup call. Fortunately, the crew he worked with and generally drove insane was more than ready to give it to him. And boy oh boy, did that wakeup call come in a brutal fashion. We're talking the guy getting ditched hundreds of miles from home, and eventually having to get picked up by his dad!

1.

Text - r/ProRevenge u/GhostOfSorabji • 1d + JOIN Apprentice engineer pisses off the crew... gets left behind 250 miles from home Lordy! I was reminded of this story after a recent phone call from an old friend. Rather a long one, so sincere apologies in advance. It's part O r/ProRevenge, part Or/EntitledPeople.

2.

Text - Some years age, I got a gig working a weekend music festival. Fairly simple too: ten bands per day and all pretty standard rock 'n' roll fare. Bossman puts four of us out on the gig: me, Dreadful Boris, Big Chris and Hammer. He also said we'd be taking out an apprentice, a young lad who was the son of a local promoter. Well, always nice to have an extra pair of hands, and it's good to help train the next generation-after all, that's how we learnt in the past.

3.

Text - As it turned out this lad was about as much use as an aqualung to a trout, and had an entitled attitude the size of a mid-ranged African country. On the journey down in the truck, he was boasting as to how he was "a really good sound engineer" already and that "he could probably show us a few tricks." Oh, really?

4.

Text - We get to the venue and get busy unloading the truck: we've got a 16-tonner stuffed to the gills with two sounds desks and about 16KW of sound gear for front-of-house and about 6KW of monitors. As you might imagine, this is pretty heavy stuff and it takes all of us to safely unload it and get it stacked up in place-except that, after unloading the first amp rack (all on wheels but still around 80 kilos), the Entitled Brat snottily announces that “I'm a sound engineer, not a humper...", an

5.

Text - Well, we don't really need him gumming up the works-we're all well used to slinging boxes around, so about an hour later we've got the rig stacked up and strapped down, run out the multicore to the FOH desk, and are ready to start cabling up and tying power into the on-site generator. Out of nowhere, the Spotty Oik emerges from whatever hole he had buried himself in and asks what he can do. I say, "I'm going to plug up front- of-house, perhaps you could help Hammer cable up the speakers.

6.

Text - "I don't take orders from girlies!" (Quick side note here: Hammer was 5' 9", drop- dead gorgeous and as hard as nails–hence her nickname. She was also a damn fine FOH engineer and a bloody good mate.) Boris, Chris and I collectively groaned inwardly and winced in anticipation of a full 16" broadside from Hammer (seriously, folks-you do NOT fuck with her unless you want the family jewels dangling from the nearest tree!)

7.

Text - Instead she smiles sweetly (NEVER a good sign) and says, "well l'm sure you'll learn something useful." | then go off to play with cables FOH, while Boris and Chris busy themselves with the monitors. A while later I'm back on stage: Spotty Oik has wandered off again. Hammer has this resigned look on her face: "what happened?", I ask. Turns out that, despite cables and connector ports being well labelled, The Oik had managed to make a complete pig's ear of plugging up the amp racks. Trust

8.

Text - I found The Oik some moments later and told him that it was not the proper way of doing things, and that if he wasn't sure what to do that he should always ask one of us beforehand. What then came out of his mouth absolutely floored me: “I don't need to know all that shit. I'm a sound engineer!" <blink>

9.

Text - Hammer, who was standing a few feet away, snorted derisively and rolled her eyes heavenwards. It took me a few seconds to process this particular nugget of stupid: “Well, you HAVE to know how all this works; it's part and parcel of the job and as you're here to learn, I suggest you pay attention." "Well, you're just a bunch of roadies; what do you know?"

10.

Text - Upon delivering this charming bon mot, he ambles off (again) leaving me to retrieve my jaw from off the deck and Hammer barely able to restrain a fit of laughter that would have incapacitated a rhino. At a guess, this idiot thought he was going to be white-gloving front- of-house for the whole gig. An hour or so later, we're all set up, and we now have a fair idea of the acts that are going to be performing. In situations like this, you rarely get the opportunity of a full-blown soundchec

11.

Text - A bit of exposition: it's convenient to reuse channels across acts, so I generally keep the first twenty or so channels for drums, bass and guitars, and the last half dozen or so channels for vocals. If a band comes in with anything else- percussion, brass, Tibetan nose flutes etc., we whack them on channels in the middle. Keeps things nice, simple and consistent across the board, and becomes important in a moment.

12.

Text - The working procedure in-show is also simple: Dreadful Boris and Big Chris run the monitor desk, and Hammer and I run front-of house. We'll do two acts each before handing over to the other (saves wear and tear on the ears) and when we're not running the desk, we'll handle setting up the stage for each act and troubleshooting where necessary, as well as doing runs for food and coffee in between.

13.

Text - We also tasked the Spotty Oik with helping with the stage setups, which rapidly proved problematical. We finished the first act and aimed to do the turnover within fifteen minutes. Generally the incoming act will tell us their mic requirements and we'll write up a mic plot which then gets sent up to the front-of-house desk. Up comes Spotty Oik with the mic plot and he goes back to help with the stage setup. As I'm checking each mic, I notice that I cannot hear the vocal channels. No soone

14.

Text - Seconds later he's back on the cans: "Do you know what that fecking idiot has done? Only repatched ALL the vocal channels so that all the plugs on the stagebox are “lined up neatly one after the other!–his words!!" Ye Gods!

15.

Text - Boris rapidly repatches the mics and we're good to go again. A few hours later and l'm starting my second shift out front (I won't bore you with my experiences of riding herd on Spotty Oik on the stage shift which–shall we say, was interesting. Currently on stage is a rather nice jazz septet (I love doing jazz-give me a nice 20-piece big band and I'm a happy bunny). Up strolls He Who Shall Not Be Mentioned and asks, "When can I have a go at mixing. I'm really good, you know." Seeing as

16.

Text - he's here to learn I tell him he can take the next act under my supervision. This happened to be an acoustic duo–two guitars and two vocals. Even the most tyro engineer should be able to handle something so simple, right? Wrong!! I've already set what I regarded as a sensible baseline on the faders for him to work with. First thing he does, he reaches for the master faders and cranks in another 15dB–NOO000!!! Immediately the rig teeters on the edge of feedback and I rapidly pull the mains

17.

Text - He then starts making wildly inappropriate changes to the channels' EQ-again the rig starts to squeak. Ok, enough! I shove him out of the way and bring it back under control. I won't fatigue you further with the endless catalogue of foulups and attitude that he managed to effect over the rest of the weekend, suffice it to say that despite the best efforts of myself and Hammer to try and teach this guy, they all went to naught. Couple this with the constant drip-drip-drip of snide commenta

18.

Text - Come the end of the event and it's now the fun part of striking the rig and loading out (I'm being sarcastic about the fun part, by the way). Two solid days and we're all knackered and the last thing we want to be doing is the get-out but, of course, it has to be done. It's always an all-hands- on-deck situation... except the Spotty Oik has, once again, vanished into the woodwork.

19.

Text - Two back-breaking hours later and we're all done, and the truck loaded to go home. So where is the Spotty Oik? Nowhere!

20.

Text - We give it a good fifteen minutes-but no joy. We then decide to go look for him, so we spent another twenty minutes trolling around the site trying to find him. Again, he's done a disappearing act. We get back to the truck-it's now close to 3am-and almost simultaneously we say, “Fuck him!". We climb back aboard and drive the 250 miles back to the warehouse to unload. Next afternoon, Bossman calls me to find out why we'd left the Spotty Oik behind. I gave him the Cliff Notes and was then t

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