Welcome to this week's selection of Picks, where we've been reliving our glory days at Roadie.Net, a site dedicated to those brave gear-lugging guys who make it all happen behind the scenes at rock concerts. You see, in our previous lives we were roadies: hauling amps for Black Sabbath, rigging disco balls for the Jackson Five, tweaking mic levels for Run DMC. Remember that big glowing spider on Bowie's last tour? Someone had to suspend that sucker over the drum kit, right? Yep, that was us. Oh, the stories we could tell...
If there's one thing we learned while on the road, it's that you can't be too literal about things. Like in the early days, when we hooked up with those college kids out of Oswego who told us they wanted to make it big in the New York Underground. After all kinds of mining permit hassles and union problems with a crew of engineers, we managed to set up the band's gear 200 feet below the Big Apple, just to the right of a 19th Century aquaduct and (unfortunately) on top of a modern day sewage line. When our manager found out he, he--well, let's just say Bjork's roadies weren't the first to tour the South Pole for a year. How were we to know that the heart of the New York Underground was actually a loft in an abandoned building in Tribeca? Go figure!
So, we did a stint in Antarctica. It's true. The Chilling Fields is how we like to refer to that time in the frozen wasteland, searching everywhere for signs of life. At first we didn't think management was that peeved about our New York subterranean snafu, because they told us we'd be working with Seal next. Turns out they meant seals with an "s"--as in blubber and all that. So there we were, listening to a bespectacled researcher in an orange Anorak belching "I am the Walrus" to the background screams of a graduate student whose frozen toes fell off as he peeled off his socks. Frightening. That's when we got the telegram from Pink Floyd mentioning something about the dark side of the moon.
Besides rambling all over creation, roadies have to work pretty much 24/7. But if you remember you've got a paycheck and a nice comfy bus to sleep in, then the long hours don't seem so bad. The key is keeping it all in perspective. Take some of the worst gigs in history: That horrible European tour of 1939-1945, for instance. Sure, it wasn't as bad as Manilow in '77, but it weren't no picnic, neither. Take a look at Guts and Glory, the online companion to PBS's presentation of "D-Day" and "The Battle of the Bulge" on The American Experience. The films are full of archival footage of the invasion and pivotal battle in Germany's defeat, while the site brings first-hand accounts, an interactive timeline, and biographies of the major players in the action. So remember, next time Rod Stewart chews you a new one 'cause he can't find his hair spray, just be thankful you're not trying to rig a busted fog machine in Normandy.
One of the biggest misconceptions about roadies is that they're a bunch of party-hearty longhairs who lug stuff in order to hang out with people like Don Henley. Well, our experience tells us that nothing could be farther from the truth. Several roadies we worked with over the years had Ph.D.'s. One guy, Lenny, spent his off hours translating Galileo Galilei's Notes on Motion. He regaled us almost every night with tales of the 17th Century scientist's theorems and propositions, punctuating his narrative with quick gestures to a dog-eared sheaf of parchment that Lenny referred to only as "Codex 72." We fell asleep dreaming of the mathematics of motion and graceful sepia-hued arcs, angles, and vertices. Then we'd wake up in the morning and unload the dry ice and the guillotine. That was the best Alice Cooper tour ever.
Speaking of grim scenes, we've witnessed more than our fare share of rock star fatalities on the road. We lost Bucky Wonderlick to a nasty paper cut gone septic. And no one will forget that unfortunate on-stage incident involving Jess Jericho, 30,000 volts, and a loose microphone wire. Then there was Paul Lomo, lead singer of Miasma, who mysteriously drowned in his pool. Of course, some say it was foul play. Hunt down the culprit for yourself at Paul is Dead, a slick new site featuring the rock n' roll murder mystery. Apparently every single member of the band hated his guts and claimed that they'd be "happy to see him snuffed" six months before his unfortunate demise. Who knows, maybe the guy just tripped.
Of course, the best thing about being a roadie, aside from the cool t-shirts, was the money. Yes, dedication, expertise, brute strength, and a grueling travel schedule can add up to some pretty handsome financial remuneration. The problem was that most of the bands tended to pay us in odd foreign currency, which made it difficult to keep up our car payments. Still, we wouldn't trade our time on the road for anything in the world. (Except maybe for getting our hearing back.) So, as we said to Eddie Van Halen just before he went onstage at the Hollywood Bowl back in '84, "Don't forget to take your pick(s)."
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