The shocking truth about Albania -or- How I was electrocuted

Our last show in Albania was in Tirana, the capital city of the country. The venue was at the Tirana academy for the arts, in an outdoor amphitheater, which naturally, shared a fence line with the President of Albania. After having some sound issues the gig before in Vlora, the band leader and I decided to take over and setup the sound system so that we would have adequate monitor mixes and a good house mix. We showed up to the venue a few hours before sound check, and started planning, laying out the channels on the board, running cables, setting up the drums, etc. The mains and monitors had been laid out already, power amps hooked up, front of house plugged into the snake that ran to stage . . . all the hard grunt work was done by the sound guys who were traveling with us. The real fun started when we went to trace down the signal path.

Now, for those who may not know, the signal path is simply this: the path the sound takes to go from the microphone (or instrument) to the mixing board, to the power amps, to the speakers. It is important to have everything running in the correct order, otherwise you won't be able to hear anything, or at best, it will sound awful! I was attempting to figure out how they had run their lines, in the rat's nest of cables, when this particular event happened.

I followed a cable, with my hands, from the sound board, down to a small piece of gear, then followed the out line on that to the ground, and I was holding the cable, sliding my hands down it, trying to follow it around a corner, by a power amp. I slid my hand around the corner on the cable, and all of the sudden, got an INTENSE blast of electricity shooting up my arm. Somehow, either I let go, or it threw me off, or something, but I suddenly found myself on my rear end about 3 or 4 feet back from the board, sprawling on the concrete floor. I jumped up, scared as all get out, my arm still shaking,, and backed even further away. The three albanians who were there (who could speak some broken english) asked me what happened, and when I told them I had just been shocked, they looked at me weird, and then tried to convince me that there was no power running through any of that. I argued with them for about a minute, trying to tell them that I had definitely found some power running through something, because it just through me back on the ground (as they all had seen). One of the guys proceeded to touch one of the wires to show me that there was not shocking him, and then wanted em to go down there and show him where I had been shocked. I can say for sure, I was not about to go near those wires again, much less to repeat what just happened!

I walked backstage, sat down in the shade and chilled for a while. I watched my arm shake involuntarily for some time, and then throughout the rest of the day, felt different parts of my body ache. My finger at on point, then my arm, my shoulder, the left side of my jaw, the left side of my back . . . it was weird how I would feel fine, feel really achy in one of those places, then feel fine. In the long run, It scared me more than anything. It definitely rattled me, shook me up, and I didn't touch another cable the rest of the afternoon.

And thats the story of how I sent 220 volts or so up my arm in Albania,

until next time friends!

--Emmett "shockey" Stallings