Newsgroup: it.fan.musica.u2
Titolo: A Torino ci è andata bene (per tacer  delle mutande sporche)

Da Willy's Diary
Thursday July 19th 2001
The show in Turin is one of the very few outdoor shows on this tour. Its 
also one of the largest, with a capacity of about 80,000, so requires a 
good deal of additional equipment to make it happen. For this reason Joe 
& I headed down to Turin today in order to oversee the first 
construction of the oversize version of the Elevation show, which loads 
in tomorrow.
Flying on regular commercial aircraft, it was an all day journey, 
despite only being a 90 minute flight. There was so much to deal with 
like check-in, boarding passes and Other People. How spoiled we have 
become flying "Elevation Air"!
Night off in Turin where it continues to rain.
Friday July 20th 2001
Mercifully, we woke this morning to blue skies and blistering sunshine 
which put a spring in everyone's step as we prepared for the first 
outdoor show of the tour. Putting an indoor arena sized show into a 
football stadium for one day requires a massive amount of work. Given 
that there would be zero rehearsal time, our approach was to keep it 
clean and simple, making everything bigger where possible. The four 
video screens above the stage were exchanged for four much larger L.E.D. 
screens. I'd had a bit of a battle of my hands to get them as big as I 
felt they needed to be, as there are many practical and financial 
factors not in my favour, but it was certainly worth the effort. Even in 
the sun shine the four screens looked pretty glorious and were certainly 
going to be big enough to reach the back of this huge venue.
Extra lighting and extra sound equipment was also brought in, with an 
army of crew to make it all happen. It was a long old day, finishing up 
with Bruce and I focusing and programming the revised, expanded lighting 
cues till the wee small hours. The stadium is opening its gates at 10am 
tomorrow so there'll be no time to do anything prior to that in the 
morning - not to mention that it'll be broad daylight of course. Not 
sure what time we left, but the poor lampies were like the army of the 
living dead by the time we got out of there.
Saturday July 21st 2001
I'm sure a question hanging on the lips of every reader is 'how do the 
road crew get their laundry done?' When moving at high speed (and the 
crew party moves faster than the band party by a factor of about 300%) 
through unknown territory, how do you get your smalls washed? As with 
every aspect of road life, a system has evolved to deal with this. You 
take your laundry bag to the production office, fill out the front of a 
specially printed little envelope with your name and bus number & put 
$20 in local currency inside. Whilst you say a few Hail Mary's a local 
person hired for the day as a 'runner' then takes all the bags to a 
nearby laundry who wash & dry your clothes, take your money & put any 
change back in the envelope before the runner returns to bring all the 
bags back to the gig. What could possibly go wrong? Well, of course, 
practically everything. I won't bore you with endless tales of laundry 
disasters over the years, but it's a sure fire way of getting to know 
some of your colleagues perhaps more intimately than you would have 
liked. I remember well the occasion in Zagreb, with everyone's laundry 
coming back in one giant bag and being poured out in the middle of the 
production office floor (funny how no-one ever claimed that funny 
looking vinyl thong).
Having given the runner my bag of washing yesterday I was rather 
dismayed to find that he had simply failed to find a laundry and 
returned it this lunchtime still dirty. I was already at crisis melt 
down point with lack of t-shirts and underwear, so this came as a bitter 
blow. However, as fate would have it, a window of opportunity opened up. 
There is a washer/dryer which the wardrobe dept. carry as part of their 
touring gear for band garments which can't be trusted in the hands of 
strangers. As it happened, the proprietor of said machine hadn't come 
into the gig yet, being 'unavoidably detained' after a bit of a bender 
last night, so I saw the gap and went for it. My lighting pal Bruce, 
finding himself similarly sartorially challenged, joined in & so we 
crammed this washer to capacity and went off to do other things. 
Returning an hour later the machine appeared to be finished, but opening 
the lid I found it half full of water & soggy clothes. And then 
depression set in.
The source of the problem soon became apparent. The washing machine had 
been set up in the players tunnel, behind a gate right by the edge of 
the football pitch. It was plugged into a power strip which was gaffer 
taped to a faucet - a metal water tap - which was gently dripping. 
Anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of physics, or indeed anyone 
who's ever owned a hairdryer, will know that the combination of water 
and electricity can bring spectacular results, including sparks, death, 
etc., or in this case a completely melted plug spectacularly welded to 
the water pipe, resembling a tiny Dale Chihuly sculpture in black and 
brown. Drum tech Sam said that on farms in Ireland they have photographs 
of things exactly like it with 'Whatever You Do, Don't Do This' 
underneath. Anyway, to make a long story even longer of course it took 
forever to get this sorted out, but eventually the Italian electricians 
came through for us. By the time all was washed and dried the opening 
acts were well under way, so Bruce and I were able to experience the 
bizarre pleasure of folding up our tumble dried clothes whilst standing 
inside a cage being watched by 70,000 young Italians bouncing to the 
strains of raging thrash metal from some local punk band currently on 
stage. Nice day for it though.
Show was great too. They do love a gig in this part of the world and 
they don't come to watch, they come to be a part of it.
-- 
We scare because we care

 Night off in Turin where it continues to rain.
Confermo. Quella sera ero al Tora Tora Festival con Krapp e non solo pioveva
ma faceva pure un freddo becco. Il pensiero nacque spontaneo: "E se ci fosse
questo tempo schifoso anche sabato?"
Gil/poi invece fu una giornata stupenda, fin troppo... ^__^

 ma faceva pure un freddo becco.
Tanto io, dopo i Massimo Volume e gli Afterhours non sentivo più alcun
evento climatico :)
-- 
Krapp
graymondSEMISHPA...@tin.it
ICQ Number: 50845928