Organized insanity.: My first load-out
I was ill prepared for the level of chaos I was about to drive my little orange fork lift in. For you to understand the well-choreographed chaos I have to explain the vast majority. Each show is basically built in three stages, no pun intended.
First the roof rig. At any show, if you look at the lights you will see black or silver truss that those are attached to. That, my friends, is the roof rig. In a nut shell it hangs beneath the structural beams of the roof, stage, theater, hall or convention center. The people in charge of that job are the riggers. They are very good at their jobs. Want to know how good? Just ask them, and they will be only too happy to tell you.
Usually that whole rig starts on the floor, then gets attached to one-ton chain motors and pulled up to waist level. Lights, pyro, audio, video shit even Wi-Fi get built on-to these trusses. Then when it’s all done the riggers use the chain motors to raise the roof (bah dum) and then we move on to the second part.
The second part is the big fat thing that everyone will see, the stage. We have tunnels, trap doors, and all sorts of technical demands of the stage that the audience will never ever see. So, it can be technical, and lucky us, it's all heavy-as-fuck-steel and multi layered ply wood. Even the smallest stage is heavy as fuck. If you're wondering just how heavy “Fuck” is I can tell you, it’s fucking heavy!
The third part is FOH A.K.A. front of house. Usually it's a basic structure that houses all the control boards Lighting, Audio, and Pyro, if that’s part of the show. On every show any one of these steps will vary in size and complexity but for this show everything was big.
By the time I found myself standing on the edge of ring road by good ol’ pillar forty-five, the chaos of the load out had been playing out for over six hours. Gone was all the floor seats, ground lights and even half the sage deck had been stripped off exposing the aluminum ‘I’ beams and Scaff below.
The front of house was completely gone. It blew my mind because there was literally thousands upon thousands of feet of cable leading to the empty twenty by twenty square patch of concrete where the two-story structure stood mere hours ago.
“You Conner?” someone said behind me.
I turned around to see a mid-forties mop headed punk surfer looking guy.
“Yeah.” I said
“Good bud, we got a fun gig for ya.” he said, putting on a big grin.
“Uh huh.” I said hesitantly.
His sadistic grin grew. He knew fresh meat when he saw it, and I was fresh indeed.
He went on to tell me that the production has to get every last stitch of gear out of the dome in fourteen hours. If they didn’t have everything out then they would get hit with a million-dollar fine. Every, single, hour. GOD DAMN! THAT IS A LOT OF MONEY, A MILL. AN HOUR, SHIT!!! well that’s what went through my head anyway.
So, they decided that instead of stripping the lights, audio etc. off of all the truss, it would all stay on. The truss was broken into thirty-two-foot lengths. I was to work, in tandem, with another fork lift. We would lift the truss, one on each side, ensuring our forks weren’t damaging any lights or other gear, drive through an army of workers, put it on the back of a flat bed and repeat.
Then those trucks would go outside get unloaded, all the gear would be put on bigger trucks and driven to near by ware houses. Then they will finally break down all the gear and cable, send them back to their respective production houses.
I know what you're thinking.
“But Jae, you said that ring road was made so big trucks could drive down into the dome. Why the multi stage truck load?” said you, the reader. (wink and gun)
Well as it turns out you need to be driving a very specific truck to make it down there. In fact, the tolerance is so tight most trucks let air out of their tires to squeeze an extra two or three inches of clearance. But these trucks were just too big to squeeze into the tight tunnel that is ring road that day. Hence us loading little trucks, for the fork ops outside to load the big boys.
Now most people might think that driving a multi-ton vehicle with two large swords on the front, while carrying a truss loaded with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of gear, trying to keep in sync with a fork driver you have not met nor can you hear, would be nerve racking. Especially since an army of workers are pushing cases all around you, clueless as fuck just walking in front of you. I felt utterly at home.
“LOOK WHERE YOUR FUCKING GOING RAY CHARLES!” I wanted to scream at yet another asshole that just walked in front of me while trying to move the aforementioned gear. But I was a little hesitant to yell at people like that. I mean who am I to talk to someone like that.
I know I make it sound like a mess but I really found myself at ease in the insanity. I felt like I was killing it and when all was said and done, I walked out feeling good about the work I had just done. I hadn’t felt like that in years, and to this degree, never before.
As I made my way from the Skydome to my car I was buzzing, like an athlete after a big game. I think, I don't know I'm kind of a tubby fucker but judging from the movies, me and athletes have more in common now than just a mutual drug dealer. The ring of my BlackBerry snapped me out of my rhythmic step as I struggled to find the right pocket. I pulled it out and didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s The Legend.” and no, he didn’t introduce himself that way, I just figured you got this whole nickname thing down.
“Oh, hey Legend, how are you?” I said putting on my best used car sales man impression. Then he said words I would soon hear a thousand times over.
“You want a gig?”
I stopped dead in my tracks and smiled.
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