Oops!
So I was at a show last night at a club where my friends and I play pretty frequently. A good friend of mine was doing sound, I was sitting with his wife in the back near the soundboard.
I got there at the end of the early show which was a cabaret act, the later part of the evening was a more songwriter oriented rock n’ roll kind of a thing.
The cabaret act had one number that was to be performed with a CD. As soon as my friend heard this he thought, “Oh, fuck.” As soundman the CD was his responsibility but he knew how much the CD player sucked and he was sure he would have problems- which he did.
This CD player often won’t find the beginning of a track if the CD is burned, it’ll spin a bit then start playing at a random point- usually within the first 20 sec of the song. That’s what happened when it came time to play the song during the cabaret singer’s set. When he pushed “Back Skip” it skipped back to the prior song rather than the beginning of the track that should have been playing. Then he had to skip forward, this time it caught the beginning of the correct track and the number went off with no other problems.
Now, when you’re the soundguy you feel horrible about this. When you’re onstage waiting for it to happen correctly these mistakes feel interminable. But in reality all of these mistakes happened in under 7 seconds and it really wasn’t a big deal at all. Still my friend was a little worried, partly because when he does a job he wants to do it well, and partly because this cabaret singer can sometimes be quite the diva, quite difficult to please.
Luckily she was very sweet about it and didn’t hold it against him, but thanked him for doing, overall, such a great job making her band sound wonderful.
He told us of his relief at her understanding and kindness while we were sitting at the soundboard with him. I made the joke, with his wife facing me as I was speaking, “And, of course, she handled it much better than Ashlee Simpson.”
At this moment his wife, facing me with a view over my shoulder, thought to herself, “Gee, that looks like Ashlee Simpson.”
:eek:
It was later confirmed (after I left) that it was, indeed, Ashlee Simpson.
This was last night, I was just told this story today. When I made the comment I had no idea Ashlee Simpson was there. We don’t know whether or not she heard me but I was speaking loud enough for my friends to hear me over the bar noise, and she was less than 3 feet away from me.
Oops!
