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In my first year of university I volunteered to be part of the residence association’s stage crew. I helped set up and tear down for shows and conferences and it was great. I learned a lot about staging, hanging lights and especially wrapping cables (I actually really enjoy wrapping cables to this day and y’know, I’m pretty darn good at it), I made a few bucks and I got to see a bunch of free concerts (and soundchecks).
Probably the most memorable of the shows I worked (in my first year, anyway) was a Kim Mitchell concert in Fenn Lounge on November 18th, 1989. Mitchell brought in a pretty big crew of his own and as we were setting up I found out that this was the last date on his long tour and Kim Mitchell’s crew had a few surprises in store for the band (and the audience).
The stage required three drum kits, pretty much entirely for the show opener, a Max Webster song called Battle Scar that had featured all three members of Rush on the studio recording. Of course popular lore holds that one needs at least two drummers to make up for one Neil Peart, hence the need for three full kits on stage. The stagehands had surreptitiously covered each of the snare drums with flour, so when the show began with the triple-percussive onslaught all three musicians (and much of the stage) were immediately doused in fine, white powder.
At some point during the concert a roadie scurried on stage and crouched behind the drummer. To any audience member this was a standard move, obviously a mic or something had come loose and needed attention. In fact, the roadie simply busied himself with duct-taping the drummer to his drum stool while the musician helplessly played along and kept time.
Mitchell’s excellent sideman Peter Fredette got in on the game, singing his standard lead vocal on All We Are from backstage while a rough-looking roadie lip-synched perfectly from the stage, surely fooling the entire audience. Kim obviously took all of this in with a smile, as he invited half his crew onstage for the last song of the set. About eight or ten fat bearded men grabbed instruments and played along while the crowd cheered.
The final gag was probably the dirtiest and most subtle of all: when the tech handed Peter Fredette his bass for the encore it was lacking the ever-vital low E string. On-the-spot, Fredette had to adapt to having the bulk of his instrument missing (in practise if not in substance), and he did such a great job that again, nobody in the crowd seemed to notice the prank.
I had been seeing Kim Mitchell a lot in the last little while – this was his second show on campus in as many months – but this concert certainly stands out as a highlight. It was a whole lot of fun to be a tiny crew-insider on a show so full of shenanigans.
It made rock and roll seem that much more fun to a young upstart like myself and wow, the gig even paid me twenty or thirty bucks. Plus I like how weathered the ticket stub looks. That’s the ticket of a hard-workin’ music fan right there (though in reality I just found it on the floor).
(Wow. I can’t believe that I forgot to mention the keyboard player! I tell you, the guy pretty much stole the show. In addition to just killing it on the keyboards and backup vocals the guy was doing everything else too. He was playing one of the drum kits at the start of the show and the one time that he touched a guitar it was to deliver hands-down the best solo of the night. I mean, dude was incredible. And young too. I spoke to him during tear down and I recall him humbly dismissing my enthusiastic accolades.
I retroactively discovered that he was almost certainly none other than Gary Breit, the hyper-talented multi-instrumentalist brother of guitar monster Kevin Breit and the now long-standing keyboardist in Bryan Adams’ band.)
Todd Man Out 