Dastardly Deeds - Coming and Going...

[Remoteness]

Ah yes, dastardly deeds that were played on us or that we played on others, especially during live or on location when we rarely have a chance to cover (or recover) ourselves.

Has anyone intentionally bagged you or is everyone just as wonderful as expected?

...Any takers out there?

This could be a fun thread or a terrible reminder of how stressful our line of work really is.

I have plenty of stories to tell, but I'm going to start off with an old trick that was played on our drummer by a rival musician during a multiple band contest we did back in the late 70s...

Someone used a small pin to carefully puncture a few tiny holes in our drummer's snare drum, right around where he hit the skin. When done right, (and it was done perfectly) the skin rips upon impact. It was show over for us since we didn't have a second snare drum to swap out...

The lesson learned was to always carry backups with you and never leave your stuff unattended especially during a "battle of the bands" scenario.

There are plenty more stories I can through at you folks. Some are really funny tales with plenty of sad experiences to tell.
What crazy situation can you folks recall?

[boojum]

^^^^ You never did anything like that, right?

[iluvatar]

There was a post on HC a while ago about a monitor guy getting even with a particularly rude guitar player by inserting a pitch shifter (1/4 or 1/2 step, I forget) on the guitar channel and engaging it only when he stepped up to take a solo.

-Dan.

[maxpidge]

i've always enjoyed talcum powder in the hi-hats myself.....

[Remoteness]

Originally Posted by boojum

^^^^ You never did anything like that, right?

I've done some crazy stuff, but never to sabotage another band or engineer.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of folks that play that game all too often.

[t_chance]

Originally Posted by iluvatar

There was a post on HC a while ago about a monitor guy getting even with a particularly rude guitar player by inserting a pitch shifter (1/4 or 1/2 step, I forget) on the guitar channel and engaging it only when he stepped up to take a solo.

-Dan.

I think I work for this guy. At least he's done it one one gig that I know of. The offending solo act apologized promptly on hearing his monitor go a few points off after being a PITA for the FOH/monitors engineer.

[justpushplay]

Originally Posted by iluvatar

There was a post on HC a while ago about a monitor guy getting even with a particularly rude guitar player by inserting a pitch shifter (1/4 or 1/2 step, I forget) on the guitar channel and engaging it only when he stepped up to take a solo.

-Dan.

Much fun can be had with that when you involve an SPX-90 in pitch shift mode, and a vocal quartet. I've have never seen singers glare at each other with such intensity....:-)

[John Willett]

I loved the one in the old analogue days........

TRD recorder.

My friend recorded a reel of tape with 900Hz tone - he then disabled record so it "looked" as if it was recording but wasn't.

He then asked a trainee to record 1kHz tone and sort out the problem on the machine.

Poor chap - recording 1kHz and hearing 900Hz off-tape.

Took him ages to suss it.

[fifthcircle]

Besides pitch shifting monitors (or in-ears), you can also really mess with people by putting delays on them. Singing or performing with a latency can be really rough...

--Ben

[justpushplay]

Originally Posted by fifthcircle

Singing or performing with a latency can be really rough...

--Ben

In my experience, 55 ms is the magic number. How do I know? Many many years ago, I was doing the safety announcement from monitor world before the start of a show, and my FOH guy ran my vocal back into my cue wedge with the 55 ms delay. It not only stopped me dead in my tracks, it's actually disorienting. I was reading from a script I was holding, and I not only lost my place, I forgot exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Very strange sensation, indeed. Of course, this was just one in a series of pranks we pulled on each other, and other crew members.......