Things I never thought working at festivals would teach me:

* Where guns and knives are most commonly hidden (socks, jeans, lower leg, bags)

* What's a good whiskey and what's not (hint: Jack Daniels - not. Not at all.)

* Bellydancing

* Water has to be over 70 deg Celsius to kill bacteria

* Breathing exercises (Don't kill the singer, just breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth and find the vegan, eco-friendly, fair trade strings for his fucking guitar.)

* There is a drink made from equal parts red wine and cola.

* Said drink doesn't taste as horrible as you would think.

* How easy it really is to sneak into a backstage area (and how to politely escort the lucky ones out again... and again... and again...).

* What the best American candy is. (M&Ms with a pretzel centre. This was the result of an hour long discussion at a metal festival I worked at.)

* How to best nail a sheep's head to a pole (Icky details: you have to do it while the head is frozen. If it thaws, it will go SPLAT all over the walls, floor and you. If it's frozen, it will look good. At least until it thaws, when it might start to drip.)

* What different metal singers use to make it look like they are covered in blood, and the pros and cons, like how hard they are to wash up from the floor, off your hands and out of your clothes.

• Pig's blood - smells horrible, can cook under the lights from the stage, easy to get off the floor, walls, sink and your skin, hard to get out of clothes. Most popular in the Bergen metal scene.

• Store bought fake blood - you hands will be dyed red to the day you die. If you were blonde before, you are now a ginger. If you got some on the floor, you will have to paint the floor. If you got it on your skin, just nod and smile to all those who asks if you've been out picking blueberries. The truth is not an option!

• Home made fake blood - often smells chocolatey, tastes ok and still looks cool if you drink it and spit it on the audience (but it does tip the audience on that it's not real). Quite easy to get off, and even if you don't get it completely off your clothes, it doesn't look like blood so you're spared the most awkward questions. Why not more metal bands use this is a conundrum to me. Probably because it contains chocolate, and chocolate is not metal.

• Theatre blood - the perfect blood. Easy to clean, looks real at all times, doesn't cook under the lights (although it may harden, which makes it impossible to clean off clothes).

DJ in a bar

Not a DJ myself, but I've worked at a bar where we had DJ before and after live concerts. I have no clue about equipment, but I know that you're able to take breaks as long as you have songs lined up. Depending on the equipment that means you can put on 2-3 songs and bugger off for ten minutes, but any breaks longer than what you need to smoke a cigarette, pee and buy another beer is frowned upon (and doing all three at the same time is really stretching it).

DJs always get the most flack, and I'm saying this as an ex-bouncer! Sure I got some drunk moron quarrelling with me for fifteen minutes ("I'm not that drunk!" "Yes you are." "How do you know?" "You were asleep on the floor." "I got sleepy!" "You were sleeping in your own vomit."), but they had the morons who wanted them to put on [insert popular pop song / ancient rock ballad here], turn up the volume, change their whole playlist... People even managed to complain about the metal songs being played before and after a metal band played (it's too noisy! This band isn't metal enough! This band is death metal, but the music is black metal! It's not black enough!). They kept complaining about it even after the DJ put on the band's newest CD and buggered off.

Stories:
A legend in our bar is the tale of a DJ who finally had enough. He was told to put on [pop song X] by a couple of annoying girls. First he told them he didn't want to. When that didn't work, he claimed he didn't have the CD. They pointed the CD out on the shelf behind him, where they are lined up, and he pulled it out, opened the cover, broke the CD, showed them the pieces and calmly said "Like I said, I don't have the CD."

Another time one of our DJs was thrown out of the club for playing music the owner didn't like (indie rock at a rock bar). She went and started a club concept at another bar, which "stole" a lot of our clientèle the years she kept it going. This was the source of whole lot of drama between the management and the ground floor workers (bar, security, DJ), as we were all on the DJs side.

Another kernel of drama is when you have more than on DJ that night (mostly only on club nights, aka. no live music, only DJing), and they can't agree on the last song of the night. At least for our DJs, the last song of the night is something special. The one time I remember one of the DJs wanted to play "Je Ne Regrette Rien" and the other one wanted to play "Time Warp". The Edit Pjaf lover won the stone-paper-scissor contest, and went around bragging while we all cleaned up for the day that the whole room had sung with him, and even started leaving on their own accord when the song was over. This caused the other DJ to claim they were escaping the music, and the only one singing was DJ A. The bar crew actually had to declare a winner before we could leave that night (Edit Pjaf won).

At our bar, the DJ staff are the only ones allowed to drink at the job, which means the rest of the ground floor crew usually don't like them very much. They rub it in people's faces. This can fall back on themselves if they get too drunk, though, as we're allowed to thrown them out for drunkenness just like a regular client. In those cases we find a mix CD to put on and call in a replacement.

The punishment for spilling beer on the equipment is buying new equipment, which no DJs working for the kind of pay they got where I worked could afford, so most DJs stay sober enough to avoid drunken accidents. Accidental destruction of property while sober is not punished, but the moment you've had more than one beer everything you break is put on your tab.

Pay to play? Requests? How do you get gigs?

I've worked at the opposite side of this, as the stage manager on a bar / small venue. It's a bit different from coffee houses, but some of the information might be useful for you. The bar I worked usually had small, local bands, we had a lot of first timers, but we also had famous (as in "internationally famous") bands play at our stage to pay us back for giving them support at the beginning of their careers.

1) How do you get gigs?

By sending in a demo to the email address on our web page, by calling booking (a hard feat as they do their best to keep their numbers hidden from prospective bands) and try to get a gig or by word of mouth (someone working at the venue saw you somewhere else and loved your style / make up / lead guitarist and told booking).

Pestering anyone else at the venue, or even pestering booking usually hurts more than it helps unless you're completely new (in which case we'll blame ignorance, not stupidity or desperation, and usually set you straight). Now if you apply to every opportunity we have for a band of your genre, that's just a good thing. At our venue we have several two-day festivals for unsigned bands of different genres (punk, pop, metal) as well as two-three Thursdays a month for Rock N Roll Thursdays (for all new / unsigned / inexperienced small bands who wants to play on a stage). Now this might not be how most others handle it, but it was how we did it.


2) Do you have to pay to play a gig? / What do you earn playing a gig?

Depends on which country you're in. In England (especially in London) it's common to pay a fee to be given stage time. In most other countries (Norway and the US, for example) this is unheard of. One American artist I asked was almost offended by my question, asking why he should pay to do his job. Now what you earn is really dependent on how famous you are (and sometimes how good you are / how much the ones booking you like your music), but I have never heard of anyone having to pay here. That's money going the wrong way.

On the other hand, this doesn't mean a band starting out is being paid much. And by "much" I mean "anything at all". I know my venue used to give them 24 beers to share and nothing else (this is considered being generous to small bands, so other venues can give them even less). We've sometimes paid part of their travelling costs, so they wouldn't go broke performing, but I've never heard of a band earning anything the first years of their career. In fact in Norway you don't do it for the love of money, and even nationally famous bands like Enslaved have second jobs to keep things afloat.

I know that sometimes when booking falls in love with a foreign band, they will go together with venues elsewhere in Norway to split the bill for getting them to Norway and around the country. The band will not be paid anything besides transportation fees, though.

3) How are requests handled?

Badly. Very badly.

I'm kidding, but only somewhat. Bands don't like being told what to play. No, not even if its their own song and you really, really, really love it. Really small bands might still be flattered that you know the title of one of your songs and play it as a reward, but most others will curse you out then and there, or wait until they get backstage. I've been at concerts where requests were made and responded to (most notably Roger Waters and Travis), but mostly the band ignores the request makers. Roger Waters told the young boy he had excellent taste, but they unfortunately hadn't played it in so long he didn't want to risk it, and the singer of Travis started laughing, wondered loudly if they still remembered that song and played it because it was one of the first songs they made and they were flattered anyone remembered. Every single other concert I've been at where requests were made, they were either met with insults or just completely ignored.

If the band has asked for the audience to give requests, that usually don't fare much better. Unless the band is a cover band, playing other people's songs, they don't want to play Smoke on the Water or Stairway to Heaven. (Not to mention playing them on stage actually leads to you owing money to the original bands, which is a pain.) If the band asks for requests, most will either be "funny" ("play something by Smokie!") or just miss the point completely, asking for songs already played or something equally stupid.

This might just be me being an old grump, and being wrong, but rock / metal gigs rarely have requests, and rarely get requests actually worth playing.

4) Forcing the band off stage?

If it's an open mik night, forcing a band off stage with booing can be done. Some places even have a ritual where the bar's owner or some other authority after some booing makes a big deal out of chasing the band off stage. Where I work, that has never happened. We book bands for a certain amount of time, and we won't chase them off stage until they've finished their set.

Now if they go over their allotted time, that's a whole new deal. First the stage manager / sound guy will give them a sign that this is their last song (holding up a single finger). If they keep going past that song, we'll give them a sign to stop playing (drawing our fingers across our throat). If they keep going, the stage manager lets the sound guy know to cut the sound. This means the only sound heard out is the drums, drowning out the other music, and they look like asses. It's not a good way to stop a concert, and it's only done if there's many bands playing and a tight schedule.

These bands will be told off that playing more than their alloted time don't increase their fee, and might even have a harder time getting a new gig at that place because they can't obey such a simple rule. Going over their time despite signals is rude as hell, and it pisses of the next band and everyone working with them at the venue. How well-loved a band is does not influence their playing time, but if they follow the rules and the audience love them they'll probably get more stage time the next gig. Not to mention it almost guarantees them a second gig at that venue. Always leave them wanting more!

If they, on the other hand, are completely hated by the audience, that can lead to so much. Most of the time the audience just don't give them any feedback, but sometimes someone throws bottles (a practice the venue I worked at tried to stop by kicking out anyone who did this). I know that at Reading festival there's a sport in chasing unpopular bands off the stage by bottling them, but that's a rain of bottles, not just a beer glass or two. As a safety feature we don't give out glass bottles during gigs, but give them flimsy plastic glasses that can't hurt. The best advice I was given on my first concert was "Never bottle the band. More likely than not, they have better aim than you.", and I have seen artists throw back and artists climb down and let their fists do the speaking. (Of course they spoke directly to my face, giving me the best shiner I've ever had, as I was working as stage crew that evening and tried to break up the fight.)

The only times a concert has been stopped by the audience were times when they managed to get beer over the sound booth, short circuiting some of the equipment. Note that this is rarely taken well by the audience or the venue, and you will find yourself banned for life as well as given a hefty bill to replace what you broke.

Fun with riders

A basic rider is in two parts: technical rider and catering rider. It's the latter part I've been working with as a venue coordinator, but I usually get both since I'm the one who has most contact with the band and knows who to send them to in case something is missing or different from their demands. And let me tell you this: there is always something different. A technical rider worth its salt is usually scribbled all over with the changes arranged with management. If you're very lucky, the band has been informed about this.

The technical rider is usually pretty boring (Iggy Pop's is an exception), with detailed descriptions of everything they need for the stage. Everything too large or expensive to travel with is the venue's job to get. Pianos, drum sets*, monitor, amplifiers and anything else they can think about. It usually contains a stage plot, which is a description of where everything should go on stage. Ideally, a stageplot should look something like this. More often than not, it looks like this:

*) Bands sharing the stage at a festival or a concert with short changeover will usually share a drum set, with each drummer having his own specifications as to how it will be. For bands travelling on a small budget, drum sets are usually on the technical rider. Very new bands sometimes assume cymbals and drumsticks are included. Protip: they're not.|

In the technical rider is often a spot where the band asks for local riggers to help them carry their stuff, and negotiates a fee for every local rigger who doesn't show. Small bands don't actually need any help with their gear, but it's a good way to earn some extra beer money in case the riggers don't show up. Larger bands will be pissed if they don't show, as it leads to a lot of unnecessary work for their own crew.

Now small bands sometimes try their luck with a technical rider asking for better gear than the venue can afford or their music need. Most of the time they get "nice try" scribbled on the rider and whatever sound/light gear the venue's got lying around. If their requests are completely ridiculous (like eight moving heads in a venue with a roof so low they would probably knock themselves unconscious with just one) they will be mocked mercilessly for years to come. (But mocking happens a lot in this business. The light engineer who's strobes sent a guitarist into an epileptic fit twice still gets to hear it whenever he fires up his rig.)

Now to the catering rider. A catering rider is where the band note how many dressing rooms they need, what food they want (both dinner and backstage catering), drinks (water, alcohol, smoothies). This is also where they alert us about allergies, vegetarians (and vegans *shiver* **) and any other medical condition we need to take into account (like epilepsy or back problems).

**) I don't have anything against vegans, but my country does. It's almost hopeless finding anything vegan in Norway, where even the margarine contains milk. The vegan artists I've worked with have been surprisingly good sports when their lunch turns out to be potato chips, bananas and tofu.|

In Norway we usually go to great lengths to fulfil the catering rider, which I know is uncommon in the rest of Europe. In the US it depends on the venue, and in the UK you need to be pretty famous before the venue even bother reading the catering rider. Since we're so far away from everywhere else, we try to feed bands so they come back. We take pride in fulfilling as many of the non-stupid requests on the rider as possible.


STUPID REQUESTS
Don't ask for drugs in your rider. Most likely scenario is that you won't get them, but you just made sure that everyone will pay special attention to you, both to grab the dealer and make sure he never gets in again and to make damn sure you don't take anything before the show. If you need drugs, be discreet about it and don't even think about asking before your gig. We care a lot less what you do to yourself after you've fulfilled your part of the contract. In fact most of the alcohol will in many cases be held back until after the show, as we don't care for having a shitfaced singer get his foot stuck in the barricades (yes, this happened), or stripping onstage (yes, this too) or beating up the drummer the moment you're off stage (yes, but they fired the guy on the spot). We don't care if the rest of the band has to carry you home as long as you finished your job before you got drunk.


FOOD
Bands starting out have three choices when it comes to food: pizza, stew or nothing at all. More popular bands (especially those who don't live in the same city they're playing in) get three options as well: take out (e.g. pizza or chinese), restaurant food brought to the backstage (high-class take out) or a buy out.

The venue prefers buy out, since giving them money in hand and sending them out to get their own food is always the simplest solution for us. We're usually more than happy to recommend a restaurant, and more often than not the buy out is more than the food would have been. Everyone wins!

Get in food is true to its name food prepared for the band when they get to the venue. Smaller bands usually have very small demands (bread and spread), while larger bands wants more fancy stuff. Often special requests for juice, fruit baskets, cheese platters and particular kinds of bread, along with speciality teas (with honey, ginger, lemon or whatever they like in their tea). Coffee is a given for get in, to the point that no one has to request it in a rider. Unless you want caffeine free coffee, in which case you really need to explain your logic (repeatedly!).

Generally the more famous bands get more and better food. They can demand both get-in food, lunch, dinner or buy-out and after-gig food. The latter is almost always pizzas, as not much else is open at that time of night. After gig food is necessary as some artists prefer not to eat too much before a concert (after all if you're in a rock / metal band, a concert is a pretty hard work-out).

My own personal trick is to always by a bunch of bananas, some to give when the band arrives for get-in. It's usually their first meal of the day, and sometimes they're hung over from the day before. Coffee and bananas fix bad moods better than anything else I've tried (especially as many bands refuse to eat chocolate). They're also great to hide away to the evening, when some of the band members are hungry, but don't want dinner, or are hungry after the gig but don't want to leave yet. Why they don't pack a lunch I don't know. Maybe it's not rock n' roll enough for them.


DRINK
Bottled water is expensive. Fancy imported bottled water even more so. Bands asking for local stuff are appreciated (even more appreciated was the artist that asked for bottled water, adding "Evian is NOT water"). If you ask for fancy important water, more often than not you'll find that you didn't get it. I've yet to see someone throw a hissyfit over this. Maybe I've been lucky.

Juice is by request only, and even requesting individual cartons won't lead to you getting them. It's damn expensive, and usually they get the largest family sizes one can get. Anything more fancy than regular orange and apple juice has to be searched for, and usually we don't have it.

Beer: Local beer is king. Usually the venue has a deal with the brewery that provides them with beer for the bars to also get them backstage beer. Unfortunately that doesn't include *insert fancy imported beer here*. We can get Stella Artois and Guinness, but if you want other pale ales or stouts, we really have to like you to bother trying. American beers are almost impossible to get in Norway (face it, even most Americans don't like American beer). Anything besides Duff and Pabst (yes, we have hipsters too) has to be especially ordered from neighbouring countries.

Eco food and drink: We'll try, but sometimes it's just impossible. It's a hell of a lot more expensive, and things like ecological gherkins and eco-salt is impossible to get. We probably won't broadcast the fact that we couldn't get the eco version of something, and most artists understand that we did our best. When it comes to eco alcohol (beer, wine), that is actually easier than getting eco bread, both because we have a local eco beer (nøgne Ø) which has been a world champion these last few years, and because ecological alcohol don't cost that much more than regular alcohol (which is seriously overpriced in this country), you'll probably get it.

Spirits: again something we really have to like you to get you, at least if the alcohol contents is over a certain point (I think 0.17%). If you're "everyone and their father knows who you are" famous, you might get spirits. If you're not, you won't get it. Same goes for cigarettes and snuff.


BY SPECIAL REQUEST
Now for the fun part. Some bands add the weirdest things to their rider. This is a list of my favourites:

• clean socks,
• my favourite dvd (for their tour bus),
• Eddie the Head action figure
• four different flavours of chocolate milk
• a leather cap
• a bullwhip
• the gayest pair of underwear I could find
• Elvis Presley (we made him out of carton and had him share the stage with them, so now they can brag they've played with Elvis)
• glitter
• a picture of [unpopular politician] to deface
• necklaces to bring down to their scorned wives after the gig
• chocolate cake with candles
• a small lego toy, worth no more than $12
• cornflakes, to mess up the backstage area when they leave (we used up a whole roll of duct tape band-proofing that box. They did not manage to open it, so they took it with them.)

OTHER
Masseuses and chiropractors aren't unheard of. The stress some artists put on their bodies can be enough for chronic conditions (tinnitus and joint / back issues are the most common), and the stress of a tour can be enough to break even the hardest of musicians.

Special requests with payment for the gig only happens when the band and the organizers know each other well, as any mess with payments can get all parts into trouble. I know of cases where a band got paid with a check containing 200 staples (impossible to cash before the staples were removed) , got paid only in coppers (copper coins; in Norway the only coppers left are worth $0.09), and one band who played Hot, Warm, Cold (no: tampen brenner) to find the check we'd hid backstage (it was in the CD player).


FURTHER READING
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstage

Let there be LIGHT!

A very short dictionary over terms and ideas related to stage lights.

Moving heads (no: moving heads)
Also known as intelligent light, moving heads are programmable lights that can change colour, project different light patterns and move around on stage during a concert. They can also be used as strobe lights.

Nerds (no: nerder)
Light engineers are known in the business for being the biggest nerds around. Some of the light has to be programmed in Linux to work.

Par cans (no: parka)
Regular, non-moveable lamps with different coloured filters. Used to set the scene. Some bands have preferences when it comes to colours, others couldn't care less and the only instruction is "make us look cool".

Smoke machine (no: røykmaskin)
Two kinds: smoke machines and fog machines. The latter costs more, remains longer on the stage and lies lower, while smoke machines disappear quickly off the stage, but spreads through the stage.

Strobe lights (no: strober)
Lights that flicker in different tempos. Can trigger epileptic fits. Unfortunately many light engineers think they "look cool".

About Nøkken and Nisser

Nøkken is a man, sometimes beautiful, most of the time horribly ugly. He lives in still water (no rivers or streams, those are the homes of Fossegrimen), usually at the deep, sometimes under water lilies, which we call Nøkkeroser. Sometimes he showed himself to people as a white horse and tricked them to ride him. The moment they were on his back, he sprinted towards the water where he drowned his rider. He can also take the shape of a wooden log, to fool people. He's deadly, but not necessarily evil, like the trolls.

We never use nøkk in plural, as they are very solitary / lonely creatures. He's either called nøkk or nøkken ("the nøkk").

Nisser is a part of the crowd we call "de underjordiske" ("those who live under the ground"). Every farm has their own nisse, and how well you treat yours decides how well he treats you. There are stories of nisser who's killed cattle and led families into starvations for snubs like not greeting him properly, or not giving him enough butter in his porridge. Some families still out porridge to the nisse on Christmas eve. It's important that you give him enough butter in his porridge, or he will be angry!

I remember one story where a farmer got himself a new wife, who refused to give the nisse porridge. The nisse in return made his cattle sick and his farm fall apart. The moment the farmer left his wife, all was put right.

There are also stories where nisser makes sure to protect the farm from storms or starvation because of previous acts of kindness. But for the nisse, it doesn't matter if you're good or bad. What's important is if you're mean to him.

Plural for nisse is nisser.

I also have a blogpost about Norwegian trolls.

Police Tweets

My country's police force have the best tweets ever.

"Majorstua: complaints of a street musician who plays only one song. Has been going on for months, according to caller. Police on site to request a wider repertoire."

"A person was waving a machete at the Railway Square. Police on the spot arrested the man. Machetes are not supposed to be used this way."

"While we are busy with all these serious assignments we get a notice of three loose horses by Gaustad. If you find them, capture them and call us. Thank you."

"A police patrol finally got to Gaustad. Since they forgot their lasso they can't catch the horses. They are currently standing and looking at them."

"Quiet today. The musician at Majorstua has started again. A patrol who knows a thing or two about accordions were sent to check the quality."

"A drunk man called the police for help when he couldn't remember where he'd parked his car. The police did not help him."

"Man called the police when his drunk buddy was missing by Ikea. Police were dispatched and the man was found in callers car."

"Police and fire services dispatched after a report of smoke at the train station. Smells more like sweet rolls than fire. Undramatic." 

"If anyone happens to see a naked man in Storgata with a trash can on his head, please call 02800 [the police's number is for non-emergencies]."

Five minutes later:
"The man in Storgata have put down the trash can and put on some clothes. He's to be brought to the police station to sleep it off."

"Smoke in Sofienberggata: a well-known character struck again... a pot boiled dry. No one was hurt, but we're having a chat with the chef."

"Police took control over a person at Schous Plass. The rapport was that he had a knife hidden along his leg. It turned out to be a spoon."

"200 kg frozen king crab stolen from Oppsal this weekend. If anyone gets a crab-offer too good to be true: Call 02800."

Timmy - NaNoWriMo

Core Commands:

!startwar <duration> <time to start> <an optional name> - Starts a word war

!listwars - I will tell you about the wars currently in progress.

!boxodoom <difficulty> <duration> - Difficulty is easy/average/hard, duration in minutes.

!eggtimer <time> - I will send you a message after <time> minutes.

!credits - Details of my creators, and where to find my source code.

Chain Story Commands:

!chaininfo - General info about the current status of my novel.

!chainlast - The last paragraph of my novel, so you have something to base the next one one.

!chainnew <paragraph> - Provide the next paragraph of my great cyberspace novel!

Challenge Commands:

!challenge - Request a challenge

!challenge <challenge> - Add a challenge

!challengefor <name> - Challenge someone else

!challengefor <name> <challenge> - Challenge someone else, and store it for approval

Amusement Commands:

!get <anything> - I will fetch you whatever you like.

!getfor <someone> <anything> - I will give someone whatever you like.

!eightball <your question> - I can tell you (with some degree of inaccuracy) how likely something is.

!foof - pillow !defenestrate - window !summon - summons !fridge - fridges someone !woot - cheers. Hurray! !creeper - BOOM