wanna commiserate? winge about it?  Here's yer forum for tales that usually begin with, "This is no shit, guys".
e-mail your grief-ridden, driver-blowin, oil-spottin, tales of doom to:  joebobzen@earthlink.net , and I'll postem.

me first......

That statement was the only real poop I knew about this particular live event by which I was eventually bludgeoned.  It shoulda been cake.  But it was Hell.  The job was nothing out of the ordinary.  Provide audio at a local auto museum for a wrap party thrown by cast and crew of a popular TV show.  Low stress stuff.  Free food.

The program for the evening was straight-ahead; some dialog from downstage followed by a Billy Vera and the Beaters set. My bud Brad had been mixing FoH for the band for the past six years. I had mixed wedges for the band on & off for a couple years.  It was a gorgeous spring Saturday in Southern California with breathable air and a noon load-in.

First off, I missed my freakin' call time by 10 minutes. Upon reaching the gig I come to find that it's actually on the roof of the museum's parking garage.  A parking garage with a 6' 8" clearance.  In a tent.  A tent with a clear plastic canopy.  Really clear.  Kinda like a greenhouse or solarium.   By mid afternoon most vendors at this gig were reduced to the parched blathering of oaths like, "Yow!", or, "It's really hot in here!",  and "Whew!"

Brad drove the band gear up in the band van, a full sized Econoline which came really close to whacking parts of the ceiling and plumbing.  And I mean CLOSE.  The sound truck pulled as far as possible into the structure, we tilted the gear,  and transfered the sound gear into the band van. Six Econoline trips of kak to get it all upstairs and then we began to set.

No problem.  We were going to just pop a pair of 3x3's on each of the stage left and right risers provided by who knows who.  4 monitor mixes thru eight wedges.  A cocktail party sound rig.  Cable runs were reasonably short and relatively few in number.  The rig went in nicely, the stage eq'd agreeably, all the lines were good.  So we ate food while a dj played wallpaper arrival music.   There was a nice view of the city and a decent breeze from the north.

Ten minutes after doors, breeze became wind ultimately graduating into gales with frequent gusts.

It wasn't too long after this that that accursed sweat box of a clear plastic-ceiling'd tent really started moving.  Yeah Man... when the sun went down behind the nearby mountains the cooling air whacked the still warm earth and...

I thought, "It's springtime and I'm on a roof in a TENT!".  I examined the tent with newfound interest.  It was basically four tent sections.  Each covered a specific area; Front of house, the house, the stage, and backstage/green room.  The tent poles were duct taped to 60-pound stanchions.  Once those stanchions began popping about three feet off the deck, I knew we were in for an interesting evening.

True to form, the band did not sound check and the final member arrived about 30 seconds before show time.  They were a bit put-off  by Mother Nature's display of blow but, being  seasoned troupers, shrugged it off as just another gig.   About this time, a huge gust lifted the stage tent off the deck and one of the stanchions took a downstage platform along for the ride.  This in turn caused one of the horn players personal wedge to topple upstage atop a sweet little alto sax in its stand.  The owner of the smashed sax was mortified...I thought he was going to cry.

As the horn players attempted to console the bummed saxman, a castmember was downstage center doing a bit of chit chat with the audience when a real beauty of gale wound up, lifted all four tent sections, and KERPUHTHUD!!!  The front of house left sound riser collapsed and the pair of 300 pound loudspeakers came down and damn near hit Billy waiting in the wings.  The crew ran to assess the damage while the castmember downstage tried to calm the now nervous audience.  We ditched the twisted remains of the risers and stacked one box atop the other.  The only damage was a smashed EP-8 connector, got a new one, reconnected the box.  We then went over to house right and did the same drill, ditched the cheap risers and stacked the boxes.  It turns out that this action was none too soon, as these risers were about to pull an encore performance.  I could hear tweeter hiss from both boxes that fell, so I gave Brad a thumbs-up and the band was introduced.  The boys came out and played one of the best 2 hour sets I had ever heard despite the winds.  Only the bravest and drunkest punters were around to hear it though.

After the set we began to strike.  We enthusiastically awaited the arrival of Thomas, a rested crew member,  who was to help on the strike and drive the truck home.  Upon his arrival we were treated to stories of a 30-hour-long orgy from which he had just departed.  Great.  Fresh horses my ass!  Anyway, the strike continued in a slightly diminished fashion with chants of  "Gonna make last call, gonna make last call..." coming from the lighting contractor until CLICK...All work lights went dark!

OK.  It's just about 1:00 A.M., I'm still on a rooftop, it is the windiest night of the year, there is a tent trying its damnedest to kill someone with a stanchion or pole,  I've got a delirious, whining crew member and now I'm trying to wrap a bunch of audio kak in the dark.  I guess things could be worse - NOT!

Our strike was occasionally interrupted by the now violently undulating tent.  we would occasionally have to dart out from under the tent to avoid a flying stanchion to the skull.  Anyway, we  eventually got everything but the two F.O.H. stacks out in the open and ready to load in the band van for the six or so trips down to the truck waiting at street level.  We had 3 out of the four loudspeakers on their caster plates when the daddy of all winds lifted the tent 5 feet up and threw the stanchion nearest us at Brad. It missed his head by inches as he tripped over something gashing his leg.  The moorless tent pole came straight down Mr. Murphy's Alley and ripped right through the grille of the prone 3x3 loudspeaker and ventilated a spendy 15" driver.
We had to get a photo of this one.

After a half-dozen clearance-sign-smashing trips down in the Econoline we went up for the last time to load the band gear and get the hell out of Dodge.  In the words of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, "It was one king-hell bitch of a wrong Saturday night in Woody Creek and it ain't over yet.".  When we crested the ramp, we saw that the god-forsaken tent had finally collapsed entirely - right on top of the band gear.  Some of the tent's tie lines had worked free thus enabling the tent to waft about 30 feet in the air whenever the wind came up.   Bit by bit we were able to dive under the collapsed shelter and retrieve amps, drums and stuff until we finally had all the gear with which we came.  We cursed the day and went home gouged, parched, and aching.