After two weeks it's time to send Lion King packing. Tomorrow Sunday, we will have two shows 2:45 min each. After the last show we meal break for half hour around 9:30. Loadout starts at 10pm. Loadout continues overnight until 7 or 8am Monday morning. Break for eight hours. Back at 4pm to finish taking out the rigging for another four of five hours. Then directly after the last Lion King truck leaves at 10pm Monday we prep the stage for Lyle Lovett. Should be another four hours Monday night. Tuesday morning 8am back to begin load in for Lyle Lovett show. This post sponsored by Red Bull
I just got home from USITT. It was weird / great to see the industry show up. The most common conversation of the week was the shortage of crews and how screwed everyone is going to be this year.
It's a real problem. Tour schedule since last October has been unbelievable. And with vaccine mandates nobody can work a Broadway show without vax. Not to mention many venues require it to work any production. All Live Nation venues last I heard. My friends still in corporate have really taken a hit it's slow to come back. Picking up though. Got a buddy tempting me over to 4Wall...
Hey man, look on the brightside. This is probably as close as you're ever going to get to throwing a leg over Julia Roberts.
A good friend/fellow beeber/racer, is in the AV production biz as V.P. of a company ...A lot of traveling coast to coast and he has to 'hopefully' find help at the host city of the event. He will also drive one of the 18 wheelers they have to an event....He's trucking to Orlando today from Cincy i believe....VP, suit and tie, to truck driver. lol
Jeeze.... you didn't e en complain about peeling up all that gaffers tape. The few times I've worked breaking down stuff was fun. But the nonstop put up take down would definitely get old.
Two injuries, one minor, one not so minor, and I had to break up a fight and replace two crew members at around 3am.
I’ve been part of a few productions from the special guest on the main stage of a sold out NFL stadium to a backstage hand. the dumbest rule I’ve ever seen is that nobody can touch any vehicle for any reason at the Chicago auto show. All because It’s union. Asshats dropped my R6 in the back of a truck and smashed the quickfill tank a week before Daytona for the 200 one year. Had to build a new one in a week. The same manufacturer I was with then had an issue with the union leader previously because they wouldn’t let them put the battery cable back on and drive the cars out themselves... he told the foreman they if he made them stop then he’d go tell all the lazy asses on break that the union was charging them $50/hour for their services but only paying them back the $15/hour... they stood down.
Chicago exhibition halls were the worst. Call in electricians to plug in a cord. Riggers to climb more than 2 steps on a ladder, etc. They havent been that way for a quite a few years now, at least the ones I've been at. Never messed with cars but could see them being real A$$hats about it. F*&% unions!
I had a buddy that was the stage buffer and pole polisher at a chain of Gentlemen’s clubs We’d pride ourselves on the puns we could come up with about his “show business”
One of my roommates in the mid 80s was "friends" with a couple of the dancers in Raleigh. They were reasonably nice, but not the brightest bulbs on the tree. Most of what they earned went up their noses. One was trying to have her last name changed to "Bon Jovi", there was a reason, but it wasn't entirely coherent. One other girl I went out with a couple times tried to become a dancer, but her assets were not up to the task. Hanging out with Nantucket when their practice hall, next to a buddy's race shop was as close as I ever wanted to be.
After waiting an hour for my bike to get out of the back of the display truck I called my main handler in Cali and ask WTF? That’s when he told me the battery cable story... I couldn’t believe they were serious... then I go over to see the smashed quickfill tank and was livid. What’s worse is I put the bike in the back of the truck myself. My onsite contact was for the event talk show that I was a guest on and we didn’t know about any rules thankfully. Brooks and Dunn was there for their last tour as the other featured act so that tells you how long ago it was, it was at McMillan(sp) place not the Rosemont, not sure if the Ohare area has the same rules.