Need advice: anyone ever play on a parade float?

[Borderline Productions]

Looks like they use Orange products

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nomS6kdI1CI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[bclaire]

Just checked out the flatbed... looking good! They put a banner for us on the side:

[Companyman]

That is awesome!

[briany]

I've played on a parade float. Can't say it was the best time of my playing career but it was an experience. An experience I don't care to replicate any time soon! My time, it was on the back of a flatbed just about big enough to hold the band and the gear and it was pouring with rain. It was really one of those fml moments where the moment we embarked, the heavens opened. We were covered over to a degree but of course, rain rarely comes straight down and there's usually a bit of a slant to it so it was still getting in as we waited in the rain and mid march Irish cold for the parade to begin - a 50 minute wait. Anyway, we've got the rain whipping in - it shorts my pedal board, we've got a very loud, smelly, petrol generator going on beside us, we're going over pot holes so there's a *CA-JUNK!* moment every so often causing stomachs to lurch and the only thing preventing any of us from taking a very embarrassing, possibly horribly injuring fall to the ground below is a banner that says, 'Happy St. Patrick's Day!'.

Pedal board gets virtually waterlogged about halfway through and shorts out. Can't use that. Have to plug directly into my R30 which I'm now really afraid to touch for fear of fatal electric shock because it too has become wet. By this point, I have long given up on any pretense of looking cool (not that I look cool usually. Maybe....feeling cool?) and am sitting, hunched over, on top of my amp, partly to keep my balance and partly to shield from any more water getting in on it. This is all going on as we play to virtually no-one (pouring rain) and are then whisked back to our point of embarkation like some kind of weird musical cargo on the open road being looked at curiously by passing drivers.

As if all that wasn't bad enough and we just all kind of wanted to go home there and then we had to play two more gigs that day. This was all for the same pub who hired us to play on their parade float and was sort of a package deal, I suppose you could say. It was a headache inducing day, all in all, and was glad when it ended but it was also an experience and a bit of a funny story. How much did we get paid for this mini-ordeal? Not enough!

They asked us to do it again this year. We respectfully declined.......... and then rolled our eyes when they weren't looking.

So, oh yeah, advice. Sorry, I was making it all about me there for a second.

*ADVICE TO ALL WOULD BE FLAT BED-ISTAS. (Since it's too late for OP)

Bring hot drinks, ask for proper protection from the elements, ask for more money, stay home, bring your cheapest most disposable guitars and amps, try not to laugh when the singer's mic starts giving him little shocks, give little kids your best death stare as the parade float passes. This is all good stuff. I know. I lived it, man...

[bclaire]

Thanks - we had a similar experience. Sunny when we boarded - rainy throughout the parade. I lost two Crown power amps.. everything got soaked

[Gray]

Thanks - we had a similar experience. Sunny when we boarded - rainy throughout the parade. I lost two Crown power amps.. everything got soaked

Not a happy end to the thread.

Sorry about your amps!

[Woodsie]

Thanks - we had a similar experience. Sunny when we boarded - rainy throughout the parade. I lost two Crown power amps.. everything got soaked

Ouch! Hardly sounds like it was worth it. Sorry for your loss Billy

[bclaire]

I'm hopeful that they can be fixed relatively inexpensively.... although we all know how that usually turns out.

I have a new mantra regarding outdoor gigs - any mention of rain, the gig's off.