Day 242 - Last Work Event

I had to work at one last m4m event tonight, in lieu of a day off I had a few weeks prior. Wish I could have ended yesterday so I could have left with a bang, but alas, of course not. We had some amazing entertainment booked who I had to manage on the night, so knowing I was working with them helped ease the pain.

However...when the headlining group Belladiva arrived for sound-check...oh dear. The Belladiva girls are a sextet of stunning soprano opera singers and I have used them a few times at events as they are simply breath-taking and usually there is not a dry eye in the house when they sing. They honestly have the most angelic and unbelievable voices.

The venue's sound equipment was THAT dated when they sang, they sounded SO bad, which seriously is VERY hard to do...I have no idea how the venue can even run any singing/live groups through their shoddy systems, it was so unbelievably embarrassing!!

Please see photos of said equipment below:

Please note, those are TAPE DECKS!!

That is their CD Player...I have seen them on sale for $40 at Big W...shocking.

Cords upon cords...doesn't help the fact your system is shite!!

The events manager was well and truly oiled by that time (one of Queens friends - go figure) and kept going "oh it'll be fine" err...no it won't. Turns out the two main speakers on stage were blown so the poor girls couldn't hear any of the backing track through them. Hopeless.

It was SO bad, we ended up having the girls perform off the stage as the static was shocking when they were it. But then, that meant only mood lighting could be used, not spotties as there wasn't enough power for the two of them to work at the same time, meaning you could hardly see them.

The girls looked like they were going to cry, it was so awful, I kept telling them, it was not their fault and tried to calm them down, as naturally they wanted it to be perfect given it was a black tie event in which 500 people were attending and paying a lot for their tickets. Seriously, it was embarrassing. I couldn't wait to high tail out of there.

The poor technician who was hired by the venue did the best he could, although the performance was VERY stressful, Queen was on the phone every few moments letting us know if it was too loud, soft, which girl you couldn't hear etc, as it was just the shoddiest system ever. I felt really sorry for the girls as they are full on professionals.

The next act were The Zym Boys, an awesome Acrobatic group, they had a burnt CD with each song being burnt at different levels, so the music kept having to be altered, I was honestly shaking my head in disbelief. The final act was Comedian Chris Hague, so that was fine, one microphone 0nly works perfectly everytime!!

As soon as Chris started and everything was fine, I hugged Queen goodbye for one last time and ran all the way home, never looking back. xx