They say you should 'write what you know'. The setting for most of this story is the environment that I work in. Apologies if I use some jargon that you've never heard of (I've tried to explain most of it). Google is probably your friend :P
If you're expecting a stroke story, stop right now and hit the 'back' button. This has a slow start, but the payoff is worth it!
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Turn On The Lights
CHAPTER 1
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The car park was empty bar four cars, so I picked the spot closest to the entrance, got out, and locked the car.
I looked up at the building; it was the classic local music venue around here: a big, brick box whose only identifying feature was the enormous neon sign on the side.
I'd been told to head around to the side and find the stage door; after a brief investigation I found it unlocked and open slightly. I poked my head through the door and looked around. The lights were on but there was nobody in sight. This was a situation typical of any music venue in the late morning – work had not yet begun.
I pushed open the door and stepped in, looking around me. It was a decent size, maybe thirty metres wide and fifty deep. The walls, floor, and ceiling were completely black, with no windows. Currently, the only source of light was a single huge working floodlight above the back of the stage, aimed out into the audience area. The stage was set back into the wall of the room, and extended a good six or seven metres backwards. It too was black.
Across the front of the stage ran the 'mojo' – the crush barrier for the crowd, and either side of the stage hung two large hangs of loudspeakers.
Looking up towards the ceiling above the stage, I saw what really interested me: the lighting rig. Lengths of shiny aluminium trussing hung up there, studded with large black lighting fixtures hanging off them like some kind of heavy, angular fruit. Reflections from black lenses twinkled here and there.
Above that, I could see the gantries up inside the roof structure itself, criss-crossing the entire room way up out of sight to allow easy access to parts of the lighting rig, amongst other functions. Swivelling my head the other way towards the audience area, I saw the Front Of House position near the back of the room: the raised platform and surround that hid the sound and lighting engineers during the gig. I intended to head over there later and check out what lighting desk they had.
I was tapped on the shoulder.
Shocked at the uninvited contact, I spun around quickly and backed away a step.
The guy who'd tapped me was middle aged – probably about fifty – with a thick shock of silver hair, and a face that showed a lifetime of hard work. The cargo trousers and polo shirt with the logo of the venue on it told me he was a technician here. I was almost right.
"Sorry, didn't mean to frighten you. I'm Dave, I presume you're Chloe?"
"Um, hi. Yeah I am. Most people just call me Scruff. Pleased to meet you." I mumbled.
My nickname comes from my appearance. You see, the technical side of the live events industry is almost entirely male-dominated, and if you're an attractive girl, you spend your life fighting off advances from the other technicians and crew.
I didn't think of myself as particularly attractive, but neither did I want to be hit on by guys, so I didn't really care about how I looked. Or so I told myself; most of the time I was more interested in my work than my appearance. My dirty blonde hair was usually a tangled mess, my glasses were way out of fashion, and I dressed like a boy – camo combat pants and battered band t-shirt with holes in it, topped with a frayed, faded baseball cap I got for free from a lighting trade show. And I never went anywhere without my steel toecapped safety boots, of course – I wasn't stupid enough to ignore safety regs.
I never really liked my face – I always thought that my eyes were too big, and the same applied to my lips. People had told me that I could be beautiful if I wanted to be, but I never really believed it.
The only part of my body that I actually liked was my legs. Years of loading flightcases into trucks, climbing up ladders and trussing into the roofs of venues, and walking miles around venues every day had combined to give me nice, toned legs. Although I only ever shaved them when they began to irritate me. The rest of me was distinctly average.
I was no oil painting, and I knew it. I didn't care; I'd hardened to people insulting my appearance; it didn't bother me anymore. Or so I told myself...so I didn't make the effort. Someone had once called me scruffy, then that got shortened to Scruff, and the name had stuck. I didn't mind it. The only people who called me by my real name were my parents, and that was enough to put me off it.
I'd spoken to Dave on the phone; through a friend of a friend, he'd got my number as a potential freelance followspot operator. Having just moved into the area, I was in desperate need of work, and the regular gigs he offered seemed a perfect fit for my skills. I'd landed on my feet, for a change. It was about time I had some good luck.
Dave was desperate for a spot op – a spotlight or 'followspot' operator - and I fit the bill perfectly for him; I was cheap, reliable, and I knew my stuff.
"OK...Scruff. I'll give you the tour."
He showed me around the place, taking me up into the 'grid' in the roof - and the maze of gantries up there - via the labyrinth of corridors that ran around the venue.
"There's an easier way up," he'd noted, "But it's a pain in the arse for an old bloke like me coz' it's a fair climb up a ladder just behind front of house."
The followspot I would be using was housed way up here in the grid, on a platform about halfway down the length of the room. There were actually two of the spots, about two or three metres apart; both old models that had seen better days.
A followspot looks a bit like some kind of futuristic cannon - it's a big light with a long body containing lenses that allow you to focus the light into a tight circle on the stage. The whole assembly is mounted onto a yoke, which then connects to a stand via a turntable. The result being that you could, as the name suggests, make the spot of light follow people around the stage with minimal physical input.
"Ever used one of these before?" Dave asked.
In answer, I struck up the lamp in the nearest one, checked the bearings and the balance, opened the shutter and focussed it onto the stage down below. I quickly swung it to each corner of the stage, hitting the mark perfectly each time. I had a natural affinity with distances and angles, and after having done the amount of followspot work that I had, it was second nature to me.
"Fair enough." Dave's eyebrows raised, impressed.
I killed the spot, and we continued the tour of the grid.
The grid is not a place for the faint-hearted. Nearly nine metres above floor level, the walkways are made of metal grates; you can look through them right to the floor. To those not used to it, it's easy to discover that you have a fear of heights that you didn't know about. You can tell people who've never been up in such a place – they cling to the handrails that line each walkway as if their life depends on it. It can be vertigo-inducing sometimes, especially when there's a crowd in and they surge and ebb like a tide below you.
"Amps." Dave gestured.
Right next to the spots – one on either side – were the amp racks for the PA system. Large, beige steel frames, their bottom halves were filled with amplifiers, their internal fans whirring away in an attempt to keep them cool in the stuffy, hot atmosphere up there.
That was the problem with followspot work in a large venue – it was great in winter, but in summer, you were in the hottest place in the whole building. The heat from the punters below you rose up here; the heat from the lighting rig got trapped up here; the heat from the amps also got trapped up here, and to add insult to injury, these followspots were ancient three thousand watt behemoths – they got extremely hot when the lamp was on. Most spot ops wore gloves in an attempt to avoid getting burnt, but it was never that easy. The insides of my forearms had enough old burn marks to attest to that.
It was dark, hot and stuffy up here, but at the same time I always found it peaceful when the PA wasn't blaring out. All the sounds of the venue below seemed distant up here – mainly due to the acoustics of the roof. It was a strange environment to work in, but I loved it.
"Occasionally Mike - our main sound engineer - will give you a shout on comms and ask how his limiters are looking. That's those LED meters there. Saves him climbing up the ladder," Dave explained. "You'll also get to meet our resident lampy, Jake. He's a good lad, but a bit juvenile sometimes. He'll probably try and hit on you at some point; just take it in your stride and try not to let him fall in love with you, otherwise we'll have a depressed Jake walking around for the next few months," he chuckled.
"I don't think that will be a problem," I said quietly.
He looked at me and shrugged. I could tell that he thought that it wouldn't be a problem due to my appearance, but was far too polite to say anything.
We continued the tour, and he showed me the way through the labyrinth (that was their pet name for the mess of corridors that all looked the same) to get to the technical office. The tech office was ostensibly Dave's working environment, but also served as a storeroom for bits of equipment that needed to be kept under lock and key, and judging by the sofas and armchairs strewn about the place, a social room for the technicians and engineers. I spied an empty beer bottle on a side table, reinforcing my observation.
"Welcome to the room where the real work gets done!" Dave joked. "If you ever need to find me, most of the time I'll be in here trying to get some information out of some dumb idiot tour manager who doesn't know his arse from his elbow, pardon my French." He slumped down into a well-worn office chair, wiggling a mouse on the desk until a computer monitor flashed into life. He peered at it for a second. "Hmm...should be a fairly easy one tonight for your first gig here, but we'll talk about that when the others arrive."
He clicked the close button on the spreadsheet he was looking at and turned to face me. "But anyway, that's not for a few hours yet. The lads should be here soon, but in the meantime tell me about yourself." He leaned forwards with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely in front of him.
I was suddenly nervous. I'm usually pretty quiet and prefer to listen rather than talk, so being pushed into talking about myself – never my strongest subject – always made me struggle. I dropped my head a little, studying the floor, hiding behind a straggly curtain of my hair. It was a defence tactic I'd subconsciously begun employing years ago. I felt that if people couldn't see my face and read my emotions, they couldn't use them against me.
"Well, um, I've been doing spot for ten years now, but I can operate a rig as well – I've been engineering for about seven of those years."
