Backstage Spotlight™
July 2003 Rigger Rich - Page 5
What advice
would you give to anyone who wants to get into the live production end of the industry?
Stay abreast of the technology! Keep learning as much as you can about everything. Protect
your hearing! The minute you think you know all you need to is when you start falling
behind. You will work real strange hours. You will meet real strange people. Weekends will
come to mean nothing. You will develop a fear of natural light. Other surprises await, and
I don’t want to give it all away.
Do you have a favorite show memory? (Or something funny that happened at a show)?
Working the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour at Alpine Valley. Mick and the boys may be
dinosaurs in some peoples minds, but they do put on a kick-ass show. The crowd had an age
range from ten to sixty, and the little kids knew the songs.
Funny things that happened, oh man, I wouldn’t know where to start. Okay here's one.
Spinal Tap came to Milwaukee, and the control system for Derek Smalls' flying entrance
screwed up. He was really stuck about fifteen feet above the stage, furiously motioning to
his techs that he wanted down, like NOW! After about two minutes (I'm sure it seemed
longer to him), they got the flying rig to work. Derek got back to stage level, and the
crowd went wild. Then the big goat head that was supposed to spin around to reveal the Big
Bottom didn’t work. So some roadie goes out on the stage with some conduits spliced
together with gaff tape and a drumstick, and starts whacking the goat/bottom like a
piñata, till he got it to turn around. And the crowd went wild......
If you could work for any show or for any artist, who or what would it be?
I really gave that one a lot of thought, and I can’t come up with an answer. Ummm,
whoever pays me the most. I subscribe to the Stage Mercenaries Creed: "When the
money's gone, so are we."
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Spotlight" in the subject line. Include your title, company, description of your
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