Give us your top 5 'hairyest' moments!

What sort of wild things do you have to get up to in 'audio emergencies' mid recording?

Muting a channel for a split second (between vocal lines) to insert stuff?

Tell us some hairy experiences tales!

Does the assitant ever have to run out onstage to change stuff mid performance? (and be watched doing it by millions on TV?)

Lets have a remote recording "heart stopping top 5" from all of you.

I will kick the chart off!

1) Limelight club London 1986, 4 massive corner mounted PA stacks made feedback a nightmare, especially as the pair pointing at the stage could not be disabled for the duration of the concert.

Line up:

Bassoon
Classical guitar
+ too many other insanely quiet acoustic instruments
"Whispering" vocalist with less vocal projection than a mouse.

Recording kit -

Fostex 8 track

Me doubling as live sound engineer

This was both my debut AND RETIREMENT as a remote recordist!

To say there was considerable feedback would be a gross understatement

I dont think the label even asked for the tape, I spent most of the evening trying to avoid a band member that wanted to kill me.



Hats off to the Pros!

[Remoteness]

There are more then five events, that would be considered the most hairyest...

There may be five insane events per year, times 26 Aura-Sonic years and a few more "on my own" years.

Let me think about this a bit. I want to discuss this with my friends and associates first. They may bring more light on picking the best of the best... Don't get me started, I made end up with a book.

Almost tipping the truck comes to mind as hairyest, but it happened after a gig... Long story, but we made it through without a scratch. I'll keep you posted on this one for sure.

In the meantime, does anyone have a crazy gig story to share while I get my stuff together?

[cram]

So many, so very many...

These are tour related not studio related, but here goes.

Grey Moose: Old concrete bunker with concrete covered buttresses every 12'. Absolute sonic nightmare. During last set the guitar players floor pedals arc to wall outlet 3-4' away. carpet onstage catches fire, crowd cheers.

Holy Cow: Group of girls show up to the show and muscle their way to the front of the stage, pull down their tops and rest their dangly bits right on the stage. We didn't miss a note.

Bar and Grill: first song, I step up to the mic and an arc goes from the grill to my lip. Knocks me cold and fuses my pickups to my strings. I had a bruise on my lip and face the size of a baseball.

Liquid Joes: During a live radio broadcast a drunk guy throws his shoes at our guitar player (?). I tell him to chill out and he takes a swing at me. I jump off stage and proceed to kick his ass live on the radio. When I'm done I jump back onstage and the band hasn't stopped playing and they don't miss a note.

Mangy Moose: During a drunken night on the road we hi-jack a cover bands instruments and play a bunch of Hendrix songs. When we get off stage the owner tries to book us for the rest of the summer.

Kamakaze Cafe: We finish the gig and the owner tries to pay us in coke. When I protest he pulls a gun, so we politely accept his offer. When we come back later with the cops he tells me he is going to kill me, right in front of the cops. They proceed to show him the error of his ways while we help ourselves to the money on his desk.

There are so many more...

[Fibes]

I used to do some work for NPR and was forced to use this DBX converter unit to get into the digital recorder. The damn thing would blacken fish if on for only a few moments. I burned myself so many times, watched cups melt and leak into it and received so many dirty looks keeping people away from it during quiet symphonic passages that it took almost 10 years to record to digital again.

I had to mic and broadcast people pissing into a public toilet for pirate radio one time. It went on for a least 10 people (men and women) and the stench was so bad by the end of the performance I almost threw up... Did I mention we didn't have a mic stand?

[Jax]

Back in about '91, we meant to play a few shows at UCLA, but it didn't turn out that way. The bass player's Dad offered to drive us down the coast in his van, which would've been better off put out to pasture. We felt relieved when it would go 45mph on a flat stretch of road, because when we hit a grade, we would be going 20. A trip that normally takes 7 hours took us 12 hours.

It gets better.

The guitar player/singer suddenly seems to have contracted a nasty case of the flu. When we're about 6 hours into the trip, he looks dead except when he blinks. He decides to go on. What a trooper.... lol

We met our friends on campus and setup outside a dorm. No place to warm up before we start, so we went right into the first tune. Immediately, the sick guitar player's amp head sparks up twice, and goes intermittent throughout the set. The bass player breaks a string. But everything else is ok! lol There were about 30 people watching us when we started, which quickly thinned down to about 10, and half of them were our friends.

Later, the other guitarist screwed a hot little chick who he said was coked up and ferocious in bed. I got drunk as a skunk and had me a good ol' time, so it wasn't a total loss.

The singer was getting too sick, so we left the next day. On the way back, he was shaking whenever he wasn't asleep. The other guitarist and I were just delirious enough that we would laugh hysterically every time we went under a light on the the freeway: if you looked closely enough, you could make out a Yeti in the green hai on the back of the bass player's head. The bass player got sick of being taunted, so he grabed my foot and twisted my ankle as hard as he could, trying to break it. If I hadn't made myself flip over, it would have broken. I told his Dad to pull over so I could kick the shit out of his son but he didn't (of course).

The van broke down twice on the way back. Made it a 14.5 hour trip with the Dad getting out to work on the van and I'm sure he was lovin' the pouring rain and darkness.. lol

Fun trip! Great war stories when I see the fellas at parties, though.

[JayCrouch]

about a year and a half back I broke one of the cardinal rules of gear - always test the piece out before you bring it to a gig.

I was doing a small 8-track remote where I needed a 2nd 4-channel rackmount 1x2 split for the vocals. Needless to say, without testing the unit the last song of the 1st set turned into an instrumental halfway thru - basically had to admit my faults and make due with a free mix, live and learn, and learn, and then learn from that some more...

All good fun but lets try to stick to live recording as the central topic! We can have an 'on the road' thread elsewhere!

[matingduck]

One of the hairyest moments I remember was driving Steve Remote's truck back from Buffalo, NY, in the rain after a long day of recording. Although this did not affect the recording, it is still part of Mobile Recording services. Steve, feel free to add to this or any other story that you may remember.

I was working a live sound gig with another company the day before we left, also in NY state. On the way home that evening the truck I was driving managed to get a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. We found a pay phone and estimated it to be about two to two and a half miles away. This estimate was from the amount of time that it took us to walk to and from it.

Needless to say I was late for Steve's call time the next morning. By the time I got there he had the other guys pack the truck. Basically I drove to his office, checked the truck out and then proceeded to drive to Buffalo. Thank god Steve can keep you awake while you are driving.

The next day we woke up bright and early, I only had a few hours sleep. Steve recorded the event and afterwards we packed up and drove home. While we are driving the nine hours home we ran into a wicked rain storm. Now, when I need them, Steve and the rest of the crew are out cold. I am dead tired, can't see the road in front of me due to the rain and lack of sleep and all I can think is that this damn truck is going to make it back to Queens in one piece come hell or highwater.

Fortunately the great god of the road was watching us. We made it home in one piece and I even drove back to NJ from Queens. I don't think I have ever been so tired while driving, even until this day. And I was doing this in a truck with millions of dollars of gear and some good friends in it.

[Jay Kahrs]

So Steve, what's the deal? Got any stories for us yet?

Jules, when I was out with Steve we got the audience mics up about 30 seconds before the truck went live to air. One of them had some RF problems or something and we sorted it out by swapping the cable a few times and trying different channels on the snake. Finally got it right a few songs into the first band. Also, I was witness to a few patches being done while live on the air. So, I guess that kind of stuff is just business as usual. When I talked to Steve last week he said that one time he got knocked across the room while tying into the house power! So, I can't wait to hear what he comes up with.

[Remoteness]

The deal is, I got a good story for you and it just happened yesterday. It's fresh on my mind, so I'm gonna give it to you now...

ASL regulars, Jon D'Uva and Robert Carvell along with Danny Dennison; the main guy at the ASL field shop and I did a gig in the Grand Ballroom at the Plaza Hotel, NYC. At first we were hired to provide 32 track digital recording locked to picture, 16bit, 48K DA88 & DVCAM to be exact. About a week before the gig, I was running down my things to do list and called the sound guy in charge, to ask him to fax me the input & mic list and maybe a stage plot. Any two of the three items mentioned would have been a start. He kept promising me the stuff, but everytime I asked him where the fax was, he said he was gonna do it next. The information was never provided. From that moment, I knew we were in trouble all the way. We got the input list the night before the gig when we dropped off the splitter. They wanted to interface with it before we got there.

To make a long story short, (if that's possible?) I'm gonna keep this down to only two of the many problems we had and corrected that day.

We set up the audio and video control rooms in one of the smaller banquet rooms not too far from the Grand Ballroom. Our snake run was about 240 feet of cable to the stage. Once we had the room built, I started checking the frequency response of the our control room. On live broadcasts or stereo mix events when the truck is not used, you should do a full frequency sweep of the room, so you know where you're at. On this gig, I only had a three freq. console oscillator available. I was limited to the full audio spectrum, but I found that the mix position sweet spot had a huge dB drop at 100 Hz. That standing wave almost completely muted 100 Hz, exactly at the sweet spot. We spent about twenty minutes or so, trying different things. We finally set the active two way speakers with the woofers on top and pushed back about 8 inches or so to move the node behind and away from the engineer's sweet spot.

After figuring that out and having everything up and running, we were getting into our scratch and snuff of the mics and DI's. That's when we found out, everything changed and we needed 40 not 32 mix channels. As a backup, I had 48 mic pre's, 40 channels of DA88, but only 32 channels of mixing board. We where only about 2 hours before the orchestra rehearsal, which was the only time I had to get a mix up, check playback, gen-lock to picture and stuff. I asked Danny to race back to our field shop, just over the river in Queens, to grab an additional mixer to submix the upright bass and string section. Man, Danny came back within an hour and we were rolling through the rehearsal/sound check like champs. The funny thing was, I heard more "clams" made by the orchestra, then were served at the Oyster Bar Restaurant downstairs in the Plaza.

Fortunately for us, my client and the video crew were really fun to work with. We had a blast from start to finish.

Yeah Jay's right. We got those audience mics up seconds before we went live. Duke Markos had the working audience mic panned to the center, until we got the other mic working. Duke's great under pressure. IMO, he's one of the great live Jazz mixers out there today. We were up against the clock, because the mobile stage was not completly built when we arrived. We couldn't set anything onstage until it was finished.

Yes, when there isn't enough time for a full setup, patches can and will be made while going to tape and/or live on air. One of the things I loved about my old Harrison MR4 was, it had an insert on/off button for each I/O. You could have the channel up, then patch the needed processor into the chain, dial up your setting visually, then punch the button and you're on. Every live console should have this feature.

[Remoteness]

Audio emergencies can happen anytime. Assistants running on stage in between camera moves to fix a mic or stand, or to add or change something is par for the course. That's why they wear black. Last minute feeds or runs are standard in some production ventures. Wild things happen to us, but not always in the control cabin. The really hairy experiences have happened before and/or after the gigs for us...

Well, here's my list of the top five hairiest moments in Aura Sonic's history....

Pick a story you want to hear about from the list below and I will post it.

1 - Club Lauralei ratchet story... Or, "How to short all three legs (before the fuse) of a three phase AC panel with a stainless steel ratchet and live to tell the story about it?" story.

2 - Blinded in Sag Harbor... Another wild and explosive story about a power panel and the light that blinded me for 30 minutes.

3 - Truck tipping story... Or "How does the 15 ton truck know it's on a soft shoulder?" story.

4 - How does getting locked in Chicago hotel room cause an accident w/ truck? This story is also known as the, "How did bubble gum fix our damage and get us to the gig" story.

5 - The nice fork lift operator destroys important piece of equipment before a TV shoot in Alaska and there's nowhere to go for a replacement.

Hey, if those weren't powerful enough story titles, here's a few more to pick from...

The alternate stories.

6 - The assistant that pulled all the mic split patches just before the video shoot, because he wanted them to look nice and neat.

7 - Double barrel shotgun hold up at the Pilgrim Theater in Alphabet City.

8 - The Angat story.... Or "How do you persuade an idiot musician to be tied and gagged for a live to tape, TV interview and getting away with it?" story... I even got the video to prove it.

Well, there you go my friends. Pick a story from the list above and I will post them as per your request.

Enjoy!

[cajonezzz]

How about the truck tipping... a story close to home!

I wanna hear em all!

Take your time!

[Remoteness]

Craig:

I hear you loud and clear. When you mentioned your truck tipping story in a past post, I immediately thought about my situation.

OK, number 3 - The truck tipping story...

Back in the mid to late 80's we had a three person truck gig upstate in Buffalo, NY. We were there to record a live gospel album for our client. We showed up with two A2's and myself. We did our jobs and the gig went very well. Our preproduction and pre trip prepping kept us looking great. After the gig, the crew and I retreated back to the nearby hotel for a night's sleep before we headed home...

I forgot if it was that night or the following morning, but our driver/A2 (at the time) came up with a cool idea for us to do before we headed back down to NYC. He suggested we should go and check out Niagara Falls, since it was only a few miles from where we were staying.

I started saying things like, "Hey guys, it's a great idea, but we only have the truck. And, Niagara Falls is part of the State Park, only Parkways run through State Parks and no trucks are allowed. Maybe if we had a rental car, etc." I went on to tell them, "Since it's all State Park around there, There's a strong possibility that we could drive the truck past our exit and get stuck deciding if we should head towards Canada (this Way <), or go through the State Parkway, (that way >) even though no trucks are allowed.

When our second A2 didn't mind going, I started thinking, "Hey, we need a break, screw the rental car, if we're careful and don't miss the exit, we'll be just fine." I said, "OK GUYS, LET"S GO!"

HELLO!

Well, we headed towards Niagara Falls, jamming to some tunes, talking about this and that... Next thing we knew... WE PASSED THE EXIT FOR THE FALLS FOR MANY MILES!!! The next thing we saw was two signs that read, CANADA "THIS WAY," STATE PARK "THAT WAY." I couldn't believe it. I usually go with my instincts, but I wanted to do the right thing by the team. Next thing I hear is our driver saying, "I'm gonna pull over and figure this thing out..." Half way through his sentence, I screamed, "DON'T PULL OVER, IT'S A SOFT SHOULDER, JUST STOP ON THE ROADWAY." Not even screaming at the top of my lungs to stop, let alone, mentioning that exact scenario hours before, made him listen to me. It was like I never said a thing. He pulled over slowly, kind-a-like, he knew he was doing something wrong, but was still committed to the task. Once the truck passenger's side tires were in the mud, he came to a complete stop. That's when we started to sink into the mud. We were all freaking out. The angle we were on, was intense. The guys were saying, "what should we do, what's the next step." It was just about a few seconds, but it felt like minutes to me, I said, "Listen carefully, do not turn the wheel at all, everyone must slowly move to the driver's side of the cab, then you can throw the truck into reverse and back out very slowly on to the roadway." He did exactly what I suggested.

We were back on solid ground. We hung inside the cab for a few minutes, trying to collect ourselves. We just could not believe it. Once we were feeling better, we got out of the truck and looked at the soft shoulder and side of the truck. Man, you know how large truck tires are, right? The mud line was north of the half way mark on the tires. The bins were completely covered with mud. It was a miracle we got out of that mess.

We were freaked out by what just happened to us, the guys did even want to go the Falls anymore. I said, "Let's just proceed to the Canadian border and tell them we missed our exit and we need to turn around." I continued to say, "if we don't miss the exit again, we should definitely go to Niagara Falls, especially now!!" After all that, I needed to make it my mission.

Well, that's what happened, we had to wait at the border a bit, but we didn't miss the exit the second time.

I believe, things happen for a reason. When we got to Niagara Falls, I soon figured out why this happened and why we needed to go to the Falls in the first place...

We got to the Falls, we parked the truck and proceeded to the elevator that took us to the top of the Falls. While in the elevator, we were staring at a few dudes that looked like they were in a rock band. Once we all got out of the elevator, I said to them, "Hey, this may sound weird but, you guys look very familiar to me." One of the guys said, "We're Nuclear Valdez from Miami, Florida." I said, "We just recorded and broadcasted you guys in Boston, MA a few months ago." They replied, "Yeah, and two of the songs you recorded ended up on a CD single as "B" sides to our single "Summer Time." They told us, they loved the recorded performance and added the songs to their CD single release. They told me to call their label and get a few copies sent to us.

That's when I realized, if all this sh*t didn't happen, we would have never met them and ever know about the record. What are the odds of meeting a band you recorded in Boston, that was from Miami, in Buffalo? That was a real trip!


----------------------------------


Jules:

Cool, I want to tell them all, but one at a time my friend. I don't want to bore anyone with this stuff...

Somebody must pick the next one....

Start picking.

[cajonezzz]

Scary cool. Funny how the universe works huh? (still trying to get the damn truck pics posted, sorry)

[Musiclab]

Your truck tipping story is over the top.

I'm curious about #4 "The Chicago Hotel story".

So, how does getting locked in a hotel room cause an accident that was fixed by some bubblegum?

[Steve Smith]

Originally posted by Remoteness

1 - Club Lauralei ratchet story... Or, "How to short all three legs (before the fuse) of a three phase AC panel with a stainless steel ratchet and live to tell the story about it?" story.

I have the second chapter of that one, self-explanitoryily titles " Never touch the ground prong of an edison plug when your three phase distro is hooked up to three phase power and the tech forgot to mention that last night he joined the ground leg to one of the phases because he was at a venue with two phase power and he thought it would be a good idea because when your unsuspecting index finger hits the aforementioned ground pin the 240 volts that go throuh you make you not feel or be able to move you right arm for 45 munites, although for some odd reason you still wont go to the hospital.."

ok, so that is not really just the title :)

[Jay Kahrs]

I've heard 1, 2 and 4 already so how about #5? If you want to hold that one for a bit I wouldn't mind hearing #7.

[Jax]

"7 - Double barrel shotgun hold up at the Pilgrim Theater in Alphabet City."

Do ya think you could've taken 'em if it was one barrell?

No. 7's title reads like a spaghetti western so I like it.

No. 1 has the chance of self-inflicted death due to stupidty and short-sightedness in it, so I like that one too.

[BevvyB]

Why is it always injury???

Many years ago I was keyboard player in some stupid funk band. The venue in question had a small raised stage with the monitoring hanging from the cieling.

We had to go on stage by climbing up from the audience as our large band prevented us coming on from the main entrance. It was a chest height stage, so you'd have to make a big lunge up to get up there.

As I did this I whacked full force into the very sharp corner of one of the monitors with my temple. I nearly threw up, didn't, everyone looked at me as if I was mad 'cos they hadn't seen what happened, and we started the set.

Apparently I played a really good solo. I don't remember much. By the end of the set I had a Laurel & Hardy bump sticking out of the side of my head I kid you not 2cm big, and the side of my face was blue. It went black.

We didn't play there again.

[NYC Drew]

Ok.

One night I'm mixing FOH in Florida. The console is near the front entrance of the venue, with a partition between the "hall" and the coat check, cashier, etc.

A shoot out begins in earnest out in the front lobby, I duck down, the band stops playing, the bad guys are repelled and head for the hills.

No harm, no foul right?

The band strikes it up again. For whatever reason on of the keyboards is not coming up. I whip out my mag lite, I'm checking this, checking that...there is a (waist high) bullet hole in the console at that channel. Funny, I never saw that big ol hole before. I move the keyboard line further down ( I think this was a Soundcraft 200 or 500. Problem solved.

At the end of the show, when the lights come on, I notice a hole in the wall. The trajectory of a bullet would take it through my body, and into the offending channel on the console.

I think I'm now down to 6 or so lives....

NYC Drew

[Remoteness]

Drew,

You're a very lucky guy!

------------------------------------------------

Well, here's story # 4:

How does getting locked in Chicago hotel room cause an accident w/ truck? This story is also known as the, "How did bubble gum fix our damage and get us to the gig" story.

We were booked to record a live performance in Chicago back in the late 80's. On long distance dates, we always try to get into the area at least 16 hours before the event for all the obvious reasons. Who would have thought the hotel room door would fail and lock one of our techs in their room?

That cost us a major delay in getting to the gig. While we were waiting for the hotel maintenance guy to get to his room, we were thinking of ways our tech can get out of his room. We happened to have adjacent rooms, so we tried to do a room to room transfer through the windows via a small ledge between the rooms. Unfortunately, it was way too funky to take the risk. We looked into trying to remove the door but it was impossible to remove from the inside on our own. We just had to wait. That situation kept me booking adjacent rooms with inside walk thru entrance ways for a real long time.

By the time the maintenance dude showed up, we were already late and still 30 to 40 minutes away from the gig. Knowing how uncool showing up late was, the pressure was on to get to the gig ASAP. What are the odds we're gonna have another serious problem getting to the gig? The odds were very good...

We're now heading towards the gig in plenty of Chicago traffic until a family van short stops in front of us. Obviously our driver slammed on the brakes only to find, the air brakes failed. One of the mud flaps folded inwards and gnawed the air brake line the night before. When he slammed on the brakes, it finally blew. No air pressure yields no brakes!

All the standard stuff that occurs at accidents, commenced. We exchanged driver, vehicle and insurance information, assessed the damage, gave each other dirty looks while we waited for the Police to arrive. Man, this took forever, but it gave us some time to brainstorm and figure out a way out of there. Like the title suggests, bubble gum saved the day. I had everyone chew a pack or two of gum, then made a big ball with it and surrounded the hole where the line was gnawed. Once I had the gum in place, I duct (not gaffer) taped to gum around the air line. We started the truck up, air pressure started to build up and the system was stable with proper air presure and no leaks. We made it to the gig (very late), did the recording and got to the repair shop the following day before we took the "bubble gum" fix apart.

We were really lucky the air line didn't blow the night before during the long trip on I-80. It was very windy, raining cats & dogs. We passed by many accidents and a fair amount of jack-knifed tractor trailers in ditches all along the Interstate. Man, if he had to slam on the brakes, we would have been toast.

Our long distance travel procedures have been modified because of this event.

[Remoteness]

Here' you go Jay,

Story # 5:

The nice fork lift operator destroys important piece of equipment before a TV shoot in Alaska and there's nowhere to go for a replacement.

Well, th