Mix Live Blog: This Won’t Work

There are days when patience is the better part of not blowing a fuse, and sometimes it’s a struggle…

First up was a mistake I can only blame myself for—sending out an itinerary showing that our flight was leaving from LaGuardia. It wasn’t. Oops.

When I looked at my Delta app, I thought it was strange to see “Gate A11” for the departure because I didn’t think flights from LGA to O’Hare left from Terminal A (the old Marine Air Terminal). They don’t.

Still half asleep—thanks to my neighbors who think it’s okay to stand in front of their house and chat LOUDLY at 2:30 a.m.—I clearly wasn’t thinking clearly. As my synapses began to fire, I realized that the app was trying to tell me that the flight was leaving from JFK Terminal 4, Gate A11. Yikes!

I sent some quick texts to the driver from our cartage company and the band guys who were on the same flight to clear up the confusion. Most of the band had already caught my error—too bad none of them cared to point it out to me! Luckily, I was still close to home and able to direct the cab driver to the new destination: JFK Terminal 4, aka Departure Hell.

If you haven’t been there lately, this terminal is under construction and it’s a disaster. Typical issues include overcrowding on the sidewalks, only one lane of traffic open to access the Departures area, random closures of said ramp, and traffic officers “directing” drivers to drop off their passengers at Arrivals—which is fine if you’re traveling with a backpack, but not so much when you have 10 to 12 pieces of band gear in fly cases.

Unfortunately for us, our cartage driver was denied access to the Departures ramp on two attempts, which, due to the traffic, took almost an hour. We were now about 20 minutes away from the deadline to check bags (most airlines won’t check baggage within an hour of departure time). The only solution was to ask the cartage driver to meet us at Arrivals (which is also a mess due to construction) and dump the gear onto the curb there.

We already had a skycap cued up to check the bags, and he was kind enough to allow us to drag him down to Arrivals (more fun waiting in line for the elevators) and pack most of the gear onto his baggage trolley. The remaining pieces would go on a couple of those luggage carts you can rent for $5,000 each (I’m kidding; they’re six bucks each). My crew and the skycap—now with gear in tow—headed upstairs to the Departures area. Fun.

We were able to check in the gear about five minutes before the window closed, and mind you, we had already been there for more than an hour. I’m no rookie—there’s a reason we arrive at the airport at least two hours before departure time. I went straight to the gate and was relieved at the idea of taking a nap on the plane.

Later that day when we arrived at the venue, my monitor tech was greeted with a box full of wireless IEMs. Notice I did not say “rack full” because soon-to-be introduced gear is such garbage that you can’t rack it.  We were not happy. We both know crappy gear when we see it, and this brand has no business mingling with the likes of Shure, Audio-Technica or Sennheiser.

The house crew commiserated, having already had some bad experiences and explaining that the theater’s Technical Director insisted that we use the Playskool IEMs. I called the TD to voice my concerns, to which he replied that he wasn’t able to rent any real-brand IEMs and to at least try the ones on site. Which we did, and predictably couldn’t find a single frequency on which to operate any of them. There’s a reason they sell these at the price of a grand for four systems: they’re absolutely useless. I won’t embarrass the manufacturer by mentioning their name.

I made another call to the TD to inform him that the Playskool IEM systems were unusable and still I was managing to keep my cool, mostly because I have a long-standing relationship with these folks and didn’t want to ruin it. He agreed to get us some real IEMs, but they were at least an hour out from the venue. Fabulous. I wasn’t happy, but I was happier than I’d be if the IEMs took a poo during the show…

The new IEM systems arrived at 4:00 p.m. Wait a minute…didn’t the TD tell us there were no other IEM systems available for rental in the area? Or was the real truth that they didn’t want to spend the $$$ to rent them versus using (or trying to use) the in-house junk? Something smelled like old sushi. Anyway, the replacement IEMs worked without a problem. Woo-hoo!

The rest of the day went off without a hitch—sold-out house, great audience, great show—but I can’t help but think of the aggravation we could have avoided if we’d had the right gear for the job in the first place.

Hopefully this weekend will be a little easier—but I’m not holding my breath.