Saturday in Madrid. It couldn't suck worse. We're playing Festimad, a huge festival. We have a hard time getting onto the festival grounds. Directions were wrong and none of the police or workers at the perimeter know how to get to the backstage area. Typical third world country crap. The production office is about 100 degrees and stays that way until around midnight. Catering's good (for a festival). The biggest problem today is the fine sand that flies through the air all day and all night. I've got every door and window in the office open hoping for a breeze, but that just brings more grit in. Have to keep the computers covered when not working and even have to clean them twice during the day.
The band is bored at their hotel and want to come to the show early. Bad idea. Conditions couldn''t be worse for them to come hang out. Eddie, the production manager, quickly talks them out of that.
Before sundown, the wind starts to pick up big time. No problems until around 9pm, when a huge gust lifts the roof above the stage just enough to pull some of the truss apart. It hadn't been pinned together properly when built, and after the wind lifted it, it dropped about 6 feet in the front. Scared the hell out of a few folks. The show was stopped for HOURS while our production manager and the festival people tried to sort out all the safety issues. Finally after the wind settled down, the roof was brought down and repaired, then raised back into place. It took 4 hours to get the show going again. As time wore on, the punters (kids) starting throwing rocks, bottles, pretty much anything that wasn't nailed down at the stage. It was covered by the time Incubus started playing at 2am. System didn't go on until 3:30am. Off at 4:50am. The crew buses finally left at 9am for our 1000 mile drive to Milan for a day off, which won't be a day off because we'll be on the damn bus all day getting there. We were gonna get there around 10pm, but now who knows…
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