One of my favorite things is watching the crew turn over the room when we have both an early and late show. Our staff have that down, so it just like… competence porn. But it is so many moving parts! I think that if most venues had someone say to them, “Hey, you wanna do a 4 act metal show that ends at 10pm, and then turn the room over in 30 minutes for a headlining dubstep DJ?” they’d say, “LOL no, that’s impossible.”

But we do it pretty regularly.

Even more often recently, now that so many bands actually want the show to end by 10pm or earlier. Kids today I tell you, get off of my lawn.

Last Saturday we actually had three shows: we had the four metal bands in main, with a dubstep party after, and we also had three industrial bands in Above DNA icn an unrelated event.

Here’s Saturday’s timeline:

1:30pm:Main Room:Load-in and sound check for the Krisiun show.We stage what gear we can on stage, the rest in the green room or on the balcony.5:30pm:Above DNA:Load-in and sound check for the Suicide Queen show.6:00pm:Main Room:Doors open.6:30pm:Gorgatron, 30 minute set, 15 minute stage changeover.7:15pm:Pyrexia, 30 minute set, 15 minute stage changeover.8:00pm:Abysmal Dawn, 45 minute set, 15 minute stage changeover.Above DNA:Doors open.8:30pm:Our Graves, 45 minute set, 15 minute stage changeover.9:00pm:Main Room:Krisiun, 60 minute set.9:30pm:Front door box office flips from Krisiun to Sanzu.Above DNA:Vile Augury, 45 minute set, 15 minute stage changeover.10:00pm:Main Room:Krisiun: *“Thank you good night! Hail Satan!”*We strike the gear near the front of the stage (wedges, mic stands, etc.) and immediately begin building a DJ coffin there (table, mixers, CDJs, monitors).Meanwhile, we rope off the right side of the room under the balcony and start staging gear load-out there, hauling cases down from the balcony and green room.10:15pm:DJ coffin is live. DJ Zarkin gets a brief sound check.We gently chase the bands out of the green room because it’s Sanzu’s green room now.10:20pm:Bands verify that what’s downstairs under the balcony is all of their stuff, and we start hauling it out to the busses.10:30pm:Doors are open for Sanzu. Music is playing, customers are coming in.Above DNA:Suicide Queen begins their 60 minute set.11:00pm:Main Room:Krisiun’s merch booth in DNA Pizza finally loads out.11:30pm:Above DNA:Suicide Queen ends, and we exit the Above customers into Main. (Always exit through the gift shop! Always!)2:30am:Main Room:Wub wub wub wub wub scritch “Thank you good night!”

So that’s… a lot. It is such a frenetic mess of activity, and it’s all over in 20 minutes, because of planning and checklists.

It’s like that at Cyberdelia too: striking the movie screen and ~100 chairs and transforming back into a dance club takes like… 5 minutes. Maybe 10. Blink and you’ll miss it.

In Summary: Go Team!

Come to our 40th Anniversary Party this Friday and tell our crew how awesome they are.

From jwz via this RSS feed