Welcome to My Nightmare

8 a.m., Sunday morning, and the big Christmas program at Trinity Church International in Lake Worth, FL is about to get underway. Loads of planning, months of rehearsals, hiring a string and horn section (small orchestra) went into this. plus stage setup, chairs, mics, and programmed lights. It's gonna be a great show.

The Gig: A famous DJ hosts a family-type party at one of Orlando's big theme parks every year. The party always has one big name artist who we will just refer to here as "LL."

Around 1990 I was working for a sound company in Cleveland Ohio, and my first day on the job, we did a show with Murphy's Law, The Dwarves and The Exploited. Murphy's Law plays, nothing out of the ordinary happens. Perfect. We do the set change and out come the Dwarves. I remember the singer wearing a tutu, but the guitar player was naked. Wearing only his guitar and some beaten up tennis shoes.

A long time ago and in a nice Texas town called Austin the production company I managed was doing about six stages at SXSW. These were spread out over several miles, and we maxed out every piece of gear and every audio engineer we could find.

We were scheduled for a new tour of a Steven Sondheim musical review. It required us to provide all sound (10 lavs and six handheld wireless), six monitor mixes plus side fills, some backline for an eight-piece orchestra as well as scenic elements.

I work at a large contemporary church in suburban St. Louis and ran FOH in our main auditorium for eight identical Easter services. Part of the service involved the band playing along to a timed video, which was being driven via an iMac with the click embedded in the video's audio track.

It was an all-day festival at a restaurant on the opposite side of town. The highlight of the day being a carnival and a reunion of the longtime house band from the restaurant.

I was hired to "run" the new sound system in the remodeled lounge at a local Vegas casino. The system was installed by a local music store (now defunct), and had a few decent pieces, but was void of some desirable items, such as subwoofers and such. But I was game, having worked several casino rooms, and I had previous experience with volume issues in this type of venue.

The article "Delivering a President's Message to the World," about the 2009 inaugural sound system, brought back memories of a system I designed for the same purpose, but 40 years earlier, in 1969 for Richard Nixon's first inauguration. We estimated the crowd at about 50,000 people.

I was mixing sound for a church Christmas production consisting of a choir with 94 voices, a 20 voice children's choir, two flutists, a double bass, percussion, viola, harp, piano and a pipe organ.

Once I was supplying our Meyer system for a speaking engagement where the guest speaker was the Prime Minister of our country, Brian Mulroney. It was the Cattlemen's Barbecue held at Poplar Hill, Ontario. Mr. Mulroney was one of those gifted public speakers who is able to talk and hold the audience in the palm of his hand. He talked and everyone just stopped and listened.