Ah, there is nothing that can fray the nerves of a recordist like a day at the airshow. Either its the aforementioned P.A. blasting during a demo accompanied by the now obligatory “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, or its the drunken patrons who think its funny to scream into your microphone, “Hey what’s thaaat?! WUAAAAAAhhh HOOOOO!!!!”……..*tinitus*….

Here is one of my favorites that happened at an airshow in 2004: I was interning at my first gig in Hollywood and had been sent out by my supervisor at the time to go to the show and gather what I could. I was quite excited being sent out on one of my first recording missions. But my excitement soon faded as I faced one noisy problem after another. Despite the noise and the obnoxious crowd I soldiered on and got a few useable recordings.

At the end of the day I thought I would get some recordings of the crowds as they exited trough one of the hangars. The hangar had a large reverb and I thought it would be nice to capture the crowd walla near this space. As I stood recording the passing crowd, I reflected on the days challenges and was relived that it was all finally ending.

It was at this moment I noticed two guys that can only be described as “air show enthusiasts”, smirking at me as they walked by. One of the guys elbowed his friend and under his breath, but quite audible in my headphones muttered his derision: “Audio F*g”. What a perfect end to a rather unpleasant day.

I have since had many fun and also not so fun moments recording out in the world but I have learned that all of them yield something useful even if its just a funny little story.

DIE