Technical Contract Review

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Music (Brown Out)

Hmmm, you may ask what does brown M&M removal have to do with technical contracts. It’s a true urban legend from the days of Van Halen concerts. Its not unlike a CRC or checksum from the world of software.

When you figure a big concert may have hundreds of life safety related issues as far as rigging staging, and electrical, this little checksum probably saved a lot of headaches, and more so, perhaps even lives.

Years ago, as a musician, it was a common occurence that a venue did not have enough power even for our little group. We had about 50kw of lighting, and another 12kw of audio. The common solution of the 70′s and early 80′s was to haul around your own breaker box and cabling. Then when arriving at a sub par venue, a crazy guy would disassemble the fuse box, and clamp on to the service entrance cables with huge insulated jumper cables. I’d really hate to think what the big shows had to put up with. We never rigged off the ceiling as is common practice today. Everything was trussed from the floor. Our only real concern was the floors integrety. It was a manual crankup system that we used.

In the late eighties, I saw Mylon’s group… they had Super Genie lifts, I sure wanted some of those back then. At one show, I still remember a guy riding up to the top of the lighting tower on the 8″X8″ super genie lift.

I’m glad that Van Halen started the practice of technical contract riders, with a checksum review… the lack of brown M&M’s. Its worlds safer today that it was all those years ago. Then again, having union electricians and riggers at most sites sure makes a difference as well. Yes, I hate paying $200 for a 15 minute hookup as much as the next guy… but you are getting a much safer environment that the lassez faire approach of old.