great mistakes #1

So I thought I'd make a series dedicated to the times when I have had things go wrong, at work, on stage, in studio, or funny things that have happened.

The main thing that comes to mind was when I was doing sound on the shows at Jupiters Casino. We're talking way back in about 1996. I managed to stuff up so badly that the curtain had to be brought down for a whole minute and 3 seconds. Which is an AWFULLY LONG TIME!

What happened? WELL, we were about 6 weeks into a new show. Magic, dancing - typical casino show stuff. Anyway most of the music was played off an 8 track digital tape - remember the days of Tascam DA38? The show was given a major reshuffle - dance numbers cut, change of order of routines etc. Which meant a new show tape had been made. I came into work, grabbed the show tape which I was used to grabbing, shoved it in the machine, did all the pre show tests, curtain went up, first couple of numbers were fine, then we hit the Diner scene and guess what? Wrong music. Goldy had put the old show tape in the machine. Dancers were trying to dance to the wrong music and in my panic realising it was the wrong tape I just instinctively pushed stop, no nice fade out or anything. So then the dancers had no music to dance to. And it caused mayhem with the lights because timecode on the show tape was running the lighting board. So it had to be reset which is what took the longest. the curtain came down, i was about to have a fit, thinking I was going to get sacked. Anyway the show finally got going again.

The funny thing is though, everyone thought it was my boss who had stuffed up because he was the one who always made the mistakes, not me or C. So he got all the blame. And unwritten law in theatre is when you stuff up you have to buy the crew a case of beer. So my boss brought in a case of beer the next night. Once I had gotten over the embarrassment of it all I was trying to get the credit for it because R was taking credit. So I was going backstage going "I did it , not R!"
So anyway I didn't get sacked.