Yesterday I had the opportunity to do a show where the legendary band Stillwater played. It was pretty awesome.

Today is the last show on this little tour I’m on, it’ll be the last time I hear people yell at the band to play free bird, and then actually hear it be played.

I’ve learned so much on this tour, as you may get from my last post, I haven’t exactly been excited about the crew out here, but it’s been a good learning experience. I don’t want to go into to much of what I’ve learned because I have to get through the day yet.

At what cost is it worth it to put up with these types of people?  Are they so good at what they do their not replaceable?  I mean come on, it’s not rocket science, it’s not even gym teacher science, what we do for a living, most every tech started with no schooling on how to do this, and figured it out by just gigging, you just have to have work ethic, and a little bit of common sense.

And since this is my blog I’m going to say it, I think we need to start firing the tech’s that are like this, are they really worth the headache?  Is listening to their pissing and moaning really worth their mediocre job performance?  And the sad part is, it’s like there’s two types of tech’s now, one half has only been in the business for a short period of time, and they all want to act like they’ve been in forever, so they act like the other half which have been in the “business” forever and talk about it all the time with such gruffness.  It’s such crap, to me it’s like the longer your in the industry the more you forget what it’s like to work without bitching the entire day!  There’s plenty of good tech’s out there that need work!

Today we were finishing up a few things, and I had put my “wind meter/temperature thingy” on my work box and walked away for a second to work on something else, when I came back the temperature said 137 degree’s and change, I took a picture (for this post, I think ahead sometimes) and then noticed it kept going till it hit 140 degree’s then the meter said “HI”, I wonder if it was saying HI temp. or HI as in hello dummy get me off this case it’s 140 degree’s on here stupid!

I thought that was pretty funny, for years I’ve always known that the cases get hot just sitting around in the sun, I mean it’s not rocket science to figure that out, especially when you touch them. Just earlier in today we were stacking our led cases (3 high) and I kept telling the guys “the cases are hot so…. hurry up”

Doing festivals can be a lot of fun, it can be a good place to catch up with bands and band crew that you don’t get to see all the time, for the most part I have a lot of fun doing festivals.  This particular festival all the crew, lighting (which is just one guy, Travis, for a 160 par can rig and 20 movers maybe, is a lot of crap for one guy, bless his heart) and audio just happen to be tour guys, and some really good friends of mine, which makes this festival feel more like a tour show, rather than doing a gig up in the black hills.  Also this festival is one of the few festivals that I do that the hotel accommodations are pretty awesome.  Just thought I would throw that in there.

Today one of the the opener bands was Petra, it was pretty awesome to see and hear some old school music from old school guys.  Only 2 of them were actually ever in Petra, but one of the cool things was seeing Bob Hartman play again, I mean he is Petra but has been the behind the scenes guy since the mid 90′s, that was pretty cool.  The last time I saw Petra was in the 90′s my mom took me to see White Heart/Petra/Grammatrain/Johnny Q. Public show, that was a good show, I can still remember it, we sat house left in a church in Georgia.  I didn’t know much about production, but I remember it being cramped on that stage, and my mom liking everybody, except not caring much for Johnny Q Public (haha)

I think I’m doing pretty good, I’ve got a little bit of luck on my side with the job I have, being able to travel to places that I normally would have no reason to go too except for work, like San Diego, it’s just not some place that’s on the way to anywhere.  So missing an opportunity to go to a Padre’s game would be stupid, the park had a lot of interesting features, the nice people in front of us (Certa) explained to us some of the cool things about the park.  Like the building in left field was historic or something like that so the city wouldn’t let them tear it down, so they built around it, and put bleachers on the side of the building, and made the inside the official store.  To me that’s what make it special.

You can’t ask for a better day off, baseball, peanuts, souvenir cups that cost $8 full of Mt. Dew, and hotdogs. Oh and we sat behind home plate, yea there was nobody there, but we still felt special, and it was easier to heckle the visiting team, and all the scouts there watching the players.

So it’s been a while since I’ve done a good ole fashion picture blog with some short stories, starting with what we did all day at the venue on Sunday, after loading in we got a lot of people to play some wiffle ball!  we were in a small area of the loading dock, and kept adding players when someone would walk by they would jump in, until we had like 10 to 15 people playing on each team, it was a ton of fun.

Following the show we went out to try and find some food, we succeeded, a little P.F. Chang’s at midnight on the strip, yea that’s right.

The Strip

Where we stayed.

Us heading back to the hotel after walking around for most of the night/morning.

And just for the record I was “up”, if you know what that means when it comes to playing some cards or slots. It was fun.

And then there was going to see Mystere, my friend Sam and I were able to go and see the Cirque Du Soleil show, I hadn’t seen a “Vegas” show, all the times I’ve passed through, but this time I was able to actually go, and it was AWESOME!!! I love Cirque shows, this one was the first to come to Vegas and I loved it.    Big thanks to Sam for taking me, I love that guy.

Yesterday was the first day back to work from the Easter break, we happen to be in a place that I hadn’t been too in a long time, the venue is awful but the surroundings are really nice, I had done many a show back in the day at this venue, so I knew what was around the area pretty well, so we walked around outside and took some pictures of the things that are close by.  In my trying to get back into taking more pictures.  It was a good day.

The ship above is the Queen Mary II, the first time I did a show at the venue we were in, I was there for a week, and the group I was with booked everybody in the super nice hotel next door, (the Westin) and stuck the only lighting guy, (me) on a boat that I had to take a bus to get too.  No internet, I smelled like sea water after showering, and the beds were pretty much the size of a cot.  And it was awesome, I was pretty mad at first but an experience that was amazing.  So many stories just from the week I stayed on the boat or is it a ship?

So here’s a good excuse.  I got to thinking about the last week or two, and the things that have ensued, and I’ve realized that I’ve tried to write a post through the course of the whole day and sometimes multiple days, saving and then getting back to it later.  Well that didn’t work out so well, it just made things even more random, because as apposed to just posting something, I would go back and filter the rants, or think the post was boring, then change things up.  It’s a lame excuse but I think a good one.