Monitor Madness

Irony: Poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended.

This week at church we talked about chaos and how it interferes with having peace in our lives. So when a church speaks about chaos, the assumption is that everything behind the scenes is kosher. Well, this week behind-the-scenes was fine, but the lead guitarist couldn't get his act together on stage.
No matter what I did, I fought with the monitors all weekend, to the point that I wanted to jump-off the stage and just listen to myself in the speakers without my monitors in. Let's visit the tragic comedy that I performed this weekend.

Saturday 5:00pm- I forgot to plug my in-ear monitors in before starting the first song, which is an instrumental solo that I lead. Then after the solo was over, I plug in my monitor only to find that the cord is wrapped around my guitar stand...twice. After a moment of sheer terror, I was able to snake the cord off of one part of the stand. Then after seeing my struggle, our bass player, Tom, was able to knock the cord from around the other part of the stand, freeing me to move againd.

Sunday 8:30am- I was really digging the groove we had going on "Marvelous Light" and I was moving more than a corded-musician should. All of a sudden, I felt a sharp snap and realized that I stepped on my cord and unplugged my monitor. Trying to keep my cool, I waited until the song was over and replugged. Of course that meant that I was late in playing during a transition that I was supposed to play.

Sunday 11:30am-During this service, the message is translated into Spanish for our hispanic crowd. Right as we started the first song, they were testing their microphones, which feed into our in-ear monitors. Since I hadn't had to think about the channel they were using during the other 4 services, I neglected to turn that channel down before service, which was a mistake that I will never make again. That being said, during the opening intro and first song, all I kept hearing in my ear was "test, testing, test."