In February of 1980, the band I was working for at the time opened for The Romantics at a club called “Le Pretzel” in Montreal. The twist on this particular gig was that while we were the openers, the headliners were using our production.
I have no idea whatsoever of how this came about, booking wise, but the logistics were that we had headlined at the same club the night before. We had done a showcase for RCA records that night, and it had gone so well that we landed a record deal. That was Saturday night.
The next day, Sunday, I and three of the band members went down to the club for 2 pm to meet The Romantics’ crew and get them set up. They weren’t there. And, they weren’t there at 3 pm, or 4 either, or 5…
They rolled in somewhere between 5 and 6 pm. I never did hear an explanation of why they were four hours late but looking back on it, I suspect they had just misjudged how long a drive it was from Toronto, where they had played the El Mocambo the night before, to Montreal.
This is understandable if you consider the “city-pairs” encountered in touring in the U.S., especially in the Midwest and Northeast where you often play a city that’s a couple of hours or less down the interstate from last night’s show. (Think “Columbus-Akron,” “Philly-Baltimore” and so on.)
Toronto-Montreal was a solid six hours of driving at the time, and while I’ve since come to appreciate the scenery, an exceedingly dull drive. I remember on one trip, cursing myself for leaving the book I was reading in my luggage, in the back of the truck… and then a minute later remembering, “No wait, I’m driving!” But I digress…
Getting It Organized
While we were waiting for them to arrive, I had suggested to the team (the band members were also the crew) that we move our stuff as far downstage as we could so they would have room to set up when they arrived. This we had done, and I was proud of having thought of it.
However, as soon as their sound tech walked through the door and saw our gear still on the stage, he went ballistic. This quickly turned into a head-butting contest between me and this fellow, who was named “Big” something – “Big Jim” as I recall.
I realize now that it was perfectly correct for the headliner to expect a clear stage when arriving, but at the time I’d had exactly two nights’ experience as an opening act the previous summer. Two consecutive nights opening for the same band, and, to give you an idea of how that went, the headliners graciously
allowed the band I was with to do an encore on the second night as we were playing for our hometown crowd.
So, the argument between Big Jim and little me (I was maybe 130 pounds at the time) was on. I was also all of 18 years old (and therefore underage to be in a club), but my band didn’t know that. I’d only been with them a few weeks at that point and since my “ID” was long hair and a full beard, I doubt that it had occurred to them.
It was actually a conversation in that very same club a couple months later that clued them in. On a break, I had gone home for my birthday and when I mentioned that they asked, “Oh, how old are you?” and I answered, truthfully, “19!” Then they asked me when I turned 20 and, again, truthfully (I don’t do lying well), I said “In about a year…” at which point they said, “Wait a minute, do you mean that you were underage this whole time?”
Anyway, Big Jim insisted that without a clear stage, they weren’t setting up. I countered with “Four hours ago you would have had a clear stage,” and he shot back, “That’s it! Load the truck, we’re outta’ here!” to his two young companions. (And wow, were they young. They looked like kids to me, and as I mentioned, I was 18! It occurs to me now that they were probably around the same age as me, and, if they survived and stayed in the business then they’re 60-something veterans now too.)
I said, “Fine, we’ll play to your crowd then!” This went back and forth for a bit, then the promoter’s reps got involved and slowly it came around to an agreement that they would set up, but then Big Jim wasn’t happy with various aspects of our sound system.
One of these was our monitors, a pair of Yamaha 2115Hs downstage and Yorkville 12-inch wedges everywhere else. I remember one young promoter rep saying brightly, “If you don’t like the monitors, we’ll get you some other ones!” I didn’t reply to that but I remember thinking, “Really?! At 6 o’clock on a Sunday night in Montreal? Really?”
At some point I said, “Look, we have a show to do here. Let’s get you set up and sound checked and I promise you that tonight, once my band’s set is over, I will do everything in my power to make sure you have a great show.” Which is how things progressed from there.
Very Large Kit
I don’t remember much about their rig except that they had the biggest cocktail drum kit I’d ever seen, or seen since. It was just kick, snare, hat, rack, and floor toms and cymbals, but the kick was at least 32 inches, the rack tom was the size of our floor tom, and the floor tom was the size of our kick drum!
On the load out, they left a spare head for the kick drum behind. We threw it on our truck… where it rode for months before we finally abandoned it at some high school, thinking it might help out their marching band.
I also don’t recall how we delineated between Big Jim’s settings and mine since we were using the same console, a Yamaha PM-700 with my trusty PM-180 as the drum sub-mixer, but it might have been as simple as using a grease pencil to mark any changes right on the desk.
By the time their sound check was over it was time for doors. I hurriedly got my band re-set and shortly after we went on and did our set, which went as well as it had the previous night. As soon as the set was over, I went into high gear to get the changeover done as quickly as possible.
I don’t remember exactly how, but I’m sure that I’d arranged things so that my band members wouldn’t have to go back on stage for the strike in full view of the audience they’d just played for. This may have been as straightforward as me bringing bits of gear to the edge of the stage for them to put away but that wouldn’t have worked for the B-3 organ and the CP-70 piano. Maybe the “kids” from The Romantics crew helped. I don’t remember either of them having a specific job, like lighting or backline, but that was probably why they were there.
In my youth, I was very physical on the job and I especially liked climbing – parkour before parkour was a thing. So, I scrambled up the back of the PA to focus the downstage lighting for The Romantics… I remember startling a female patron when I jumped off the stage-right stack and landed not far behind her.
After 20 to 30 minutes of this fast-paced activity, the changeover was done and The Romantics took the stage and put on a killer show. Of which the only part I recall is the finale, their mega-hit “That’s What I Like About You.” There was something un-alterable about the position of our upstage lighting and the position of their drummer, with the net result being that the poor guy essentially did the show inside a 12,000-watt Easy-Bake oven.
By the end of the set, there was a quarter-inch deep lake of sweat covering the entire head of the floor tom, held in place by the drum’s rim. When the drummer ended the final song with a triumphant hit on the floor tom, the sweat went flying everywhere.
After the show, everyone agreed that it had gone well and Big Jim was appreciative of my efforts, so much so that he made me a peace offering of some illicit substances. I declined, but we shook hands and moved on to the next one.
