It wasn;t funny the night it happened, but it's gotten somewhat more amusig in the year since--

Our church agreed to offer space for a concert. An amazing number of people in the chain of agreements assumed we had a church PA for music! Wed didn't!

So the booked vocal quartet arrived to find me setting up our own personal (i.e. cheap) 4-channel PA and 4 Shure mics (ours, begged, and borrowed). They were very nice about this, but they did have their own much better quality mics on board and carefully unsetupped the whole thing and re-rigged with their own mics/stands. They did elect to go ahead and use our PA, although they had a roadie/driver who offered to bring in theirs. However, theirs would have been WAY too big for the space, and they had the grace to realize that.

So this was before we had bought the speaker stands, and the speakers that night were set a few levels up off the floor, on carefully-draped folding chairs for the tilt-back. You know, it actually sounded really good. I lent all this gratis, swearing it would be the last time.

The next year under similar circumstances, we didn't volunteer to run sound that would just be all redone by the arriving group. THAT group, it turned out, had spec'd the exact tech specs they requirted, in their contract. We simply put the relevant people in touch with the urgency of meeting these contractual specs, and they did find someone local who took care of it all-- so they sounded good, too.

What I learned, from being part of the venue instead of part of the entertainment, was that it never hurts to check all these technical details in advance, and it never hurts the performer to have a little junk in the trunk in case it's needed. Because some really nice people book musicians without knowing what will be involved, and some of our most fun gigs have had the least to offer, tech-wise.

~Susan