Last night I did one of the bazaarist but fun shows. A few weeks ago, we had a guy swing by the shop that wanted to rent some video gear, so I talked to him, kinda figured out what he wanted (he didn’t speak very good English) gave him a quote and didn’t hear back from him for a couple weeks. Then out of the blue I start getting calls from him and his boss about renting the gear.
The show was yesterday, load in was at 8am the show was suppose to be at 8pm, that later turned into 1130pm when the headliner went on, I’m getting to that. It was a pretty simple LED setup and even easier camera package, even with the simpleness of the show, I still needed crew, I was able to acquire the services my friends, what I like to call the A-Team, not just because their amazing at they do, but also because like the A-team in the tv show, we’re always doing shows that turn out to be a little unorthodox, you know the shows, when you show up, and you’re given tool shed to do a show in, but we always make the show happen and the client happy.
That and the shows themselves are a little different, for example last night, the entire show was in Spanish, and we (the video crew) don’t speak a lick of Spanish except for “¿dónde está el cuarto de baño” (Where’s the Bathroom?), which I learned doing shows in South America, having drank the water there, I was, for the first week in need of a bathroom frequently, it was essential for survival.
(Sorry the picture is blurry, all I had was my phone)
The artist last night we were there for to do was Pedro Fernandez. Like I said we had heard that the show was suppose to be at 8pm, well there was a mariachi band with a tuba on stage at 8pm, which that was the first time I had ever done a show where there was a tuba, then we hear that we don’t need to be on camera till 10:30pm, holy crap 10:30? The girl that was on stage, opening for Mr. Fernandez went right on by the 10:30pm mark, and since the entire show was in Spanish, (the only song that happen the entire night that we understood was when the headliner started playing “Thank God I’m a country boy” by John Denver … in Spanish) we weren’t really sure what was going on, the one thing that I was sure of was that I really wanted some chips and salsa, now 11:30pm(ish) a large band of bull fighters came on the stage, there were like 6 violin players, and 4 guitar players, but non of the guitars were the same size, one was really small, one really big, one missing strings, and one had more strings than there should be, I think the rock industry could learn from this, they started playing some pretty cool music, which we started running camera, but not really knowing what Mr. Fernandez looks like, we started with the older gentlemen that was singing at first, yea… he wasn’t the right guy.
Finally the right guy came on the stage, and that’s when it happen, the crowd bum rushed the stage, the artist started with the hip shaking/thrusting, the butt clinching, I threw up in my mouth a little, and the underwear started flying from the crowd. All the while here’s me, a redheaded gringo up front pointing a camera at this guy, dodging bra’s and trying to follow a guy that is hip shaking from one side of the stage to the other.
It had to be one of the funnest shows I’ve done in a while, we laughed so much talking on com and seeing things that we’re just not use to seeing at shows, I don’t think I had a camera shot that was rock steady all night because I was laughing so much.
