In 1967, San Bernardino was rife with new acts getting on board the new rock 'n roll music scene. Among them was a band called The Good Feelin's. With the right combination of people, and the right connections with a record producer, the band reached number 1 on the Inland Empire charts (see www.GoodFeelins.com).

Forty years later, the drummer, Michael K., started looking up the band members in an attempt to put together a new song and provide new content to add to old data for an upcoming review in Ugly Things Magazine, the publication which reviews bands from the era. Mike was successful in finding the majority of the members who are still on the planet. A recording studio session was scheduled, and the band recorded a new song with yours truly helping out on vocals, production, etc.

This past weekend, the 2nd Inland Empire Hall of Fame induction concert was held. The first one was 20 years ago. You'd be surprised how many musicians from the area made it into bands you've heard of. Sammy Hagar, Jim Messina, Al Wilson, the legendary drummer Hal Blaine (Michael K.'s uncle), The Bush, and Frank Zappa are just a few of those from the San Beranardino/Riverside area.

The location of the concert was a private property owned by a concert promoter from the past, and the property had quite a collection of junk laying around which included dead horn cabinets, fried power control boxes, and at least 200 blown par cans. The stage, which was supposed to be set up days before, hadn't been assembled by 1pm that day, and the first act was supposed to go on at 3pm. As you can imagine, the day was delayed considerably, and the first 3 or 4 hours of the event could be considered a classic clusterf*ck.

There were supposed to be two alternating stages, which would allow bands to set up on one stage while the other stage was performing. This makes sense, and is the optimal situation when you have over a dozen acts scheduled to play. But Nooooooo! Bands who were supposed to play on the small stage, somehow talked themselves into playing on the large stage, which cut the setup time to about 5 minutes. Those of you who have seen my performing gear know that this is an impossibility. While I did have my extensive guitar and keyboard support gear assembled on the edge of the stage ahead of time, when we moved it all into place on the stage, there were no lines to the board for my gear or microphone available. Three of the six mics on stage had no sound. It was so hot, the LCD display on my VG-8 was blank; no silent tuner. At 108 in the shade, the guitars were going out of tune rapidly, and we were delayed by another act who wasn't even slated to perform on our stage. Aaarrrrghh!

That wasn't all. The amp that one of the lead guitar players plugged into sounded like a screwdriver had customized the speaker on numerous occasions, and neither of the two guys who were supposed to do all the speaking to announce songs and introduce the band members was active. We found that one of the mic cables wasn't even plugged into the board, and the stage manager was telling us we had to start playing when I hadn't even gotten them to provide cables for my submixer and microphone.

When they finally did plug in my mic, it was about 30dB too hot, and they didn't seem to know how to hit the PAD button on the mixer to attenuate the incoming signal. I had to yell out "PAD CHANNEL 13" at least 10 times before someone got the hint.

Aaarrrrrghh!

OK. Deep breath...

Practice the day before, on the other hand, was awesome! The band really had the chops together. The beginnings and endings were tight. The vocals were rich and on. If they ever get a chance to perform with a competent stage crew and sound man, they will kick butt again, and let everyone remember why it is that they were number 1.

I hope to get to play with them again when that happens.

Have YOU ever had a rotten experience with a sound man/stage crew? If so, tell your story right here. I may contact you to provide video of your story to be included in my How-To series called "So you wanna be a rock star?" coming soon to a ViewkBox (my video jukebox invention) on one of my websites.

Thanks for visiting!
Michael