Crappy jobs in music

Dave Grohl's mic - now you see it, now you don't.

There are a number of crappy jobs in music – groupie, drug procurer, A&R dude, Bono’s tailor, jazz musician and Dave Grohl’s mic roadie. When Grohl isn’t foo fighting or counting his Nevermind royalties, he occasionally gets behind the drums to pound out some more dollars.

A while back, I saw him play with Them Crooked Vultures and I noticed that when he sang backing vocals while playing drums, his microphone magically swung to his lips when he needed to sing and then swung back when he didn’t need it. At first I thought he had some amazing automated mic pedal which brought it in and out as required. However, as the night wore on, I noticed that a roadie sat at the foot of his drum kit and dutifully swung the mic in whenever Grohl had to sing. I imagine that’s a great view of one’s the world’s best rock drummers but I can also imagine some downsides of this namely:

a) listening to the same set day after day without actually participating apart from swing a mic might get tedious. I don’t remember Josh Homme thanking the mic roadie.

b) being showered in Grohl sweat. You couldn’t probably sell it on ebay but I imagine it would generally just suck and be pretty stinky.

c) If you’ve ever played with a live drummer you’ll know that the drums are an exceptionally loud instrument (especially when played by a hard hitter like Grohl).
Even with earplugs, surely that must hurt somewhat.

So, if you’re currently lamenting your place ion the world, remember, you could always be covered in Dave Grohl sweat as you hang onto his microphone. It could be worse…

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