As a young man, and budding musician, I was fortunate to have the chance
to work as a roadie for a drummer named Jeff Pallay. Playing all over
the tri-state area, I had plenty of opportunity to learn about being in
a rock band, and doing what ever it takes to make it through the gig
(sometimes it was an adventure itself just getting to the gig, but
that's another story). As a roadie, one of my jobs was to make sure
that if something went wrong (and plenty did), I was able to find some
way to set it right. We had spare drum heads, sticks, even a spare
thrown, and of course, a spare snare. There were even spear cymbals as
I recall, and some special purpose percussion instruments I didn't even
know the name of.
There were plenty of times when a head would blow out, the carpet would "disappear", or something would go wrong with the sound system -- all pretty typical stuff for any Jersey rock band on the road. But there was one particular time that stands out. Not because the gig was particularly big or any more important than any other. It could have been any one of a hundred venues on any of a hundred different nights. That never mattered. Jeff always brought his A game, so I always had to be ready for anything.
On this night though, I had more going wrong than we had spare parts for and we needed to get a little creative to make it through the second set. The band was about half way through their second set of a three set gig and the snare blew out. I heard it right away, but didn't react -- I just froze. Jeff signaled me with his stick and pointed to the spare snare. I jumped up and ran it over to him, and he talked me through swapping it out during the song, while he was improvising around the fact that he had no snare! It was pretty crazy, but it worked and nobody seemd to be the wiser.
I recall feeling pretty good about it and sat down and began checking out what broke on the underside of the swapped out snare drum -- then, it happened again! I heard it clear as day and ran on stage, only this time there was no spare left to swap in for the busted drum! I grabbed the under side of the drum and held the snare coils into place with my left hand and started reaching around with my right, looking for some way to fix it. Jeff was trying to talk me through some way to get it fixed up, but there just wasn't anything we could do. I sat there holding the snare together for the rest of the second set, holding my free hand over my closest ear to try to keep sane. After the set was over, Jeff and I frantically re-strung both snare drums and finished out the gig with our fingers crossed.
I was a hell of a thing, and I'll never forget it. There were plenty of other times I look back on and smile, but this one holds a special place on the list. It was fun, a little crazy, and a testament to the work ethic of a serious drummer. I'm not a roadie for a drummer anymore, but I still have that same work ethic -- do what ever it takes and have as much fun as you can while you're doing it. It serves me just as well as a technologist as it did then as a roadie. I now specialize in business continuity and disaster recovery planning for large financial firms and always recommend triple redundancy for critical systems -- just in case the first spare bails on you, you're ready with the second. :D
rgr