Brussels... Belgian For Blackout...

Safety. I get it. We must do what we can to make things safe. Accidents are always bound to happen. That's why cars have seat belts. That's why the baby industry thrives, so first time parents have less of chance of injuring the little one with an accident.

Heck, even electrical cables have a ground line to prevent shocks. Which brings us to today's blog. The night the lights went out in Brussels, twice.

Last night was our "real" show in Brussels. The night before was a private event sponsored by one of the local cell network providers, Proximus. What that show taught me is that, no matter what your country or nationality, people still don't seem to appreciate something for free as much as they do if they pay for it themselves. That show was DEAD. It was almost like doing a show in L.A.. People are always looking around to see if they are doing the right thing or acting the right way and plopping down in their seat with the attitude of "Entertain me, now." Show sucked.

Anyway, last night's show was for a paying audience, so we weren't as full as we were the night before, but everyone was enjoying the show. During the second song of the show, there's a series of about 12 strong fuzzy guitar cords that I accent with strobe light hits. About 4 hits in... BAM, the entire rig goes out... The ENTIRE lighting rig goes black. There's still video, still sound, still follow spots, but the stage is a complete black hole.
I turn to Mel with my calmest yell say, "WE JUST LOST THE RIG!!!" Mel bolts up from his chair and starts squawking into his radio. About a minute later, I can see the lights start powering up and going into a homing position.

Thankfully, we didn't loose video or follow spots so the show was able to continue as normal. I kept running lighting cues to make sure that when the lights did turn back on we were in the right place. After about 5 minutes of darkness, I was able to get all most of the lights back on line and working. I hopped on headset and asked Wayne, our power guy what was going on.

Normally, in these situations, when you trip the main breaker and the entire lighting rig goes out, it's often because you are drawing too much amperage. But this wasn't the case. Wayne informed me, "We've got plenty of head room in terms of amperage, I don't know what just happened, and I apologize because I don't know if it will happen again or not."

We took our chances and continued to run the show as normal. Not two songs later, I've got a series of big drum hits I accent with the strobe lights and again, BAM, the entire rig goes out. I turn to Mel and before I could calmly yell, he's on his radio squawking. I see the rig powering back up and Mel tells me, "We're gonna leave off the floor lights". I told him I thought it was in the strobes and to leave those off.

After a little bit of delving, we remembered we were having trouble with one of the strobes tripping it's breaker. Which in America is usually no big deal. If there is enough electricity going down the ground wire, it will trip the breaker. Safety. I get it.

But in Europe, they have this wonderful thing called a "ground fault". Which basically means if there is ANY electricity on the ground, it trips the main breaker for the entire system. Now, you can manually set the ground fault to trip at a higher load so you can get some electricity down the ground wire. But yesterday, the house electrician refused to set the ground fault any higher. Which as it turns out is a very common argument you have to have with European house electricians. They want to be completely safe and have the ground fault set so low that if there is even the slightest chance something is awry, snap, off goes the breaker.

We suspect that the one bad strobe on the big hits, was sending just enough down the ground wire that the ground fault was tripping. There wasn't enough to trip our breaker, but the ground fault, being set so low, would snap off.

Which brings us to the other ridiculous argument about safety; Why does the ground fault have to be on the main breaker thus shutting down the ENTIRE lighting rig? It is Europe, we follow the rules here.

Safety, I get it. But at the cost of the entire rig for the show? I don't get that.

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And finally, before I go, I'll answer Jade's questions about the last couple of blogs.

In all the times I've been in Brussels (4 maybe?) I've only seen two outfits on the pissing boy. The Santa outfit at Christmas, and I saw him in Leidehosen around Octoberfest. There is a whole committee designated to dressing the pissing boy and there's a museum in a hotel somewhere that has his outfits on display. But if you want a quick look at 52 different outfits, the tourist trap gift store across the street from the pissing boy has playing cards.

As for wine... I did actually have a couple of bottles I shared with friends over a couple of great meals. One of the follow spot operators in Paris gave me a bottle of his favorite table wine as a gift. I'm saving that one until I'm home and will share it with friends.

Nicole, LOVES deserts, so she was in heaven in Paris. I like deserts, but a meal can always end for me after the meat and potatoes portion. I have to say, I tried a number of different lemon (citron) tarts while I was there and my favorite was from the little panini stand right by the hotel. Perfect amount of tart.

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