Behind The Scenes.
A lot goes into preparing to play a show and most of it happens before people start to arrive at the venue. Set up and load out are actually what musicians get paid for. The music is the fun part. The other stuff is fun as well, just a different kind of fun. The kind you want to be compensated for.
Before you can play a LIVE show, you must first do a sound check to assure that everything is working as it should. Here are a few examples of that sort of nonsense. Sometimes, the 1st set.
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
