unattributed string cheese jazz fest taper story meme

[author unknown]

Figured I'd share my recent escapades in case there's anyone left that Rama hasn't told in an effort to continue the busting of my balls. On Fri Jazzfest, I was gonna take in my taping rig (the small version anyway) into the fairgrounds to get the Cheese set & maybe a little extra. One of my crew offered to help bring some of the gear in. I taped all the cables & cords I needed to the inside of his baseball hat. I had my mics inside my hat & the deck & preamp inside the waist of my shorts. As we went thru the 1st line of security where they basically just squeeze your chair bags to make sure you don't have a missle launcher, my buddy's hat slides off his head & plops down on the security table, upside down, wires exposed.

Everyone -- me, him, venue staff -- freezes at the prospect of seeing a hat full of ducktaped wires in our post 9-11 world. 1st 2 Jazzfest head security guys (the "purple shirts") then 2 cops then 2 FBI agents (!!!!) all converge on me & my whole crew. They ask for the rest of it & I at first try to ignore it. Then they tell everyone in my group to stop or we're all going to lock up. I don't want to lose the mics at any cost (or see my wife go to jail, I guess) so I fess up & hand over the deck (which was the easiest to replace). While the cops & venue guys argue back & forth about what to do w/ the deck (I don't want to be responsible, you take it. You're the cops, you take it) I slide off my hat with the mics, shove it in my wife's bag, pull out her hat & throw in on. Trust me, my only smooth move of the day. Then the cops tell me I have 2 choices: they keep the deck or I can go to jail & argue about it down there. The lawyer in me wanted to protest (I mean I hadn't even bought my ticket yet & there were no signs to the point where I was caught) but not wanting to be some murderer's nancy, I gave up the deck & retreated to the car to stow the rest of the gear. Then wife & crew went in. I stayed outside b/c I still wasn't ready to totally give up the deck just yet. I found Mr. Purple Shirt & was able to "buy back" my deck from him for $100. He made me go wait by the grandstand til the cops left & then brought it to me. Capitalism at its finest.

It made for great laughs among the taping crew. Thankfully at least 2 tapes were made of the Fairgrounds set.