Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire – An Xperience Column

Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire – An Xperience Column – by Rob Skane.

I have a lot of stories that begin as follows: “I was in this band once …”’ Well, I was in this band once with a drummer who fancied himself as a “MacGyver” type of fellow. However, there were very clear gaps in his knowledge base – independent from the fact that he had a tough time counting to four and then starting over again, which is sorta important if you’re the drummer.

We had begun playing gigs here and there. Some nights we were pretty ok and other nights we weren’t. We were young and still trying to figure it all out and you can only really do that in front of people. Typically, the gigs were three sets and we had a handful of our own tunes but it was mostly cover songs.

Our drummer friend – let’s call him Wrongo – used to complain that he could never hear things to his liking when we were playing our gigs. We were often louder than we should have been, but it was fun and we didn’t know any better. Anyway, Wrongo got the idea to build his own personal monitor so that he could hear what he needed to while we were kicking out our jams. In theory, this was a great idea. In practice … not so much.

OK, let’s get knee-deep into this stupidity. I had an old guitar speaker cabinet that was built to contain 12-inch speakers, four of them, to be exact. The cabinet was empty. I have no idea what happened to the speakers, but I DO know what happened to the cabinet.

Wrongo asked if he could turn that very big and very heavy speaker cabinet into a personal monitor for him to use – all the better to hear you with, as they say in the biz. So, I let him do his thing, and he wires up the cabinet to now hold one 12-inch speaker. At best, it looked like a 7^th-grade wood shop project, if only it functioned that well.

Our next gig was booked at a bar that, unbeknownst to us, was a relatively rough place – imagine “Night of the Living Dead” having a “Cheers.” To add to the fun, they hated us on sight. I mean, as soon as we showed up to load in our gear, it was uncomfortable. So, we kept our mouths shut and got our stuff set up. Wrongo positions his personal monitor at the appropriate angle on the snare drum side of his drum kit, and everything is good to go. Until we start playing.

Believe me, I’ll never forget this. Our first song of the evening was “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” by the Georgia Satellites. It was THAT type of bar, and we were trying to play nice because we knew the night had the potential to get ugly. And. It. Did. So, about 30 seconds into the song, Wrongo stops playing, and I turn around to see that his hand-wired, homemade Frankenstein of a speaker cabinet has burst into flames. He was blowing on the flames in a very misguided attempt to quell the fire. Fire, kids – it was on fire. Wrongo, it seems, had pumped about 5000 watts of power into a 25-watt speaker. Do the math.

Someone came flying over with two pitchers of water and doused the flames, not to mention our spirit. I thought we were going to get the living daylights stomped out of us that night. It was tense after that, like scary tense. It was our own rocknroll “Blair Witch Project,” I suppose. Flames notwithstanding, we finished our contractual obligation, were asked never to come back, and they stiffed us on the pay. We didn’t care; we got to leave with only bruised egos and nothing more. What a night.

We ended up leaving the charred speaker cabinet next to a dumpster behind the bar. The agent who booked us screamed at me the next day and never got us another gig. Wrongo is now living in exile in an undisclosed location. The United States consulate made him turn over his drums to the proper authorities and has forbidden him from using a soldering iron in perpetuity.

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