The Pink Floyd Night School

[groovedaddy]

“SO, what are you doing after graduation?”

In the spring of my last year in college I posed that question to at least a dozen fellow graduates-to-be at my little out-of-the-way school in Vermont. The answers they gave me were satisfying in the extreme: not very much, just kick back, hang out, look things over, take it slow. It was 1974. That’s what you were supposed to say.

My classmates weren’t, strictly speaking, telling the truth. They were, one might even say, lying outrageously. By graduation day, it was clear that most of my contemporaries would be trotting off to law school and graduate school and to cool and unusual internships in New York and San Francisco.

But I did take it slow. After graduation, I spent five years wandering around doing nothing — or getting as close to it as I could manage. I was a cab driver, an obsessed moviegoer, a wanderer in the mountains of Colorado, a teacher at a crazy grand hippie school in Vermont, the manager of a movie house (who didn’t do much managing), a crewman on a ship and a doorman at a disco.

The most memorable job of all, though, was a gig on the stage crew for a rock production company in Jersey City. We did our shows at Roosevelt Stadium, a grungy behemoth that could hold 60,000, counting seats on the grass. I humped amps out of the trucks and onto the stage; six or so hours later I humped them back. I did it for the Grateful Dead and Alice Cooper and the Allman Brothers and Crosby, Stills & Nash on the night that Richard Nixon resigned. But the most memorable night of that most memorable job was the night of Pink Floyd.

Pink Floyd demanded a certain quality of sound. They wanted their amps stacked high, not just on stage, where they were so broad and tall and forbidding that they looked like a barricade in the Paris Commune. They also wanted amp clusters at three highly elevated points around the stadium, and I spent the morning lugging huge blocks of wood and circuitry up and up and up the stairs of the decayed old bowl.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/opinion/02edmundson.html?th&emc=th

[meegbear]

1. Anything Floyd gets a K&R

[RandomThoughts]

2. That is a good question, what to do after graduation, hmmm.

I will retire, although there has been a period where the cash I am owed has not arrived(owed from almost a decade ago), although the funny part is nobody exist that owes me for a past wrong. LOL. A bit of an oversight LOL Creates a paradox, it is funny from a certain perspective. Can't move forward till compensated for wrong done, yet have no claim of wrong done. There is irony in that.





But I love questions like that, because I do think of what I will do.

I will retire and travel, meet new people, and chat. Sounds good :)


Edit: Check this out, I walk down stairs, and there was 20 dollars in the pocket of one of my pants that I did not know was there! So I got 20 dollars now. Just after I posted this.

:)

However I should add, if I was owed, I would write it off and not worry about it, based on the grace I have recieved.

[RandomThoughts]

4. Ha! Just heard an interview on MSNBC

Where a guy said he always looks around to be worried about phony 20 dollar bills.

Ha!

I found a $10 and two $5's whew, close one there.

:rofl: Funny coincidence.

[Webster Green]

3. Good story.

I worked on road crews on national tours with big name bands (rock, jazz, country). Sometimes it got pretty contentious between the roadies and the local stage crews.

I've had IATSE Union stagehands just walk away and leave all my shit on the street in front of the Lincoln Center in NYC, because I wasn't packing my truck quick enough for them.
We almost came to blows with the union guys at Cobo Hall in Detroit. They just thought we were fucking hippies and they didn't like us. The Teamsters, who were required to load our trucks would actually try to break our gear.

They had no idea that when I wasn't touring, I was working under the auspices of the local IATSE in Washington, DC., though I was never allowed to actually get a card. It was so tight that you had to have a relative in the union, or you were shit out of luck.

I stopped doing it when I got tired of working 22 hours a day. What a blast though!