The mention of Willie Nelson made remember another embarrassing moment.
His sound man in the 1980s had an ongoing “war” going on with the announcer/ production manager at the Minnesota State Fair, which they opened with a two day stint for years and years.
The sound man would do things like putting a Harmonizer on the announcers voice, pitch him up an octave with none of his actual voice in the mix, making him sound like Donald Duck.
When we took over the sound contract, we were required to have a small mixer which would directly interface with our PA system, so the announcer could not be sabotaged.
All went went well the first day, Willie’s engineer had no way to mess with the announcer. The second night, after Willie’s show, the announcer as usual said “Ladies and gentleman, the Minnesota State Fair Fireworks !”
The fireworks were set to music, which was on a cassette I had carefully cued up to start immediately upon the announcement.
I hit “play”, no music, no meter movement, just rolling silence. The band engineer had run the cassette to near the end, past the recording, requiring it to be rewound.
Don’t remember whether it took 30 seconds or a minute to rewind, but with about 20,000 people waiting to see the fireworks, it seemed like forever
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Art Welter