Behind the Scenes of The Works!

Fayetteville Street in Downtown Raleigh, July 4 2013

Lots of you saw fireworks last night.  Lots and lots of you crowded Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh, awaiting the 9:15 show, and then some of you hung around to catch the 10:10 show over Red Hat Amphitheater.  I did not see any fireworks though--because I was in the studio waiting to play our soundtrack for the fireworks at 10:10.

Radio 96.1 partnered with ABC-11 to simulcast the Red Hat Amphitheater show.  It's pretty tricky to do that--everyone needs to be in sync. My fingers hovered nervously over these two buttons.  One is to open the show, the other is to close it:

We were in sync! ABC-11's producer called me one minute before the show. We were ready!  They went live to Steve Daniels and Tisha Powell, and then to Anna Laurel at the Amphitheater where she had the city's mayor waiting. We got the cue, we were all ready!   The Mayor of Raleigh counted back from ten, I played our big, fancy intro to the fireworks, and voila!  Nothing.  Blackness.  Dark sky.  Tisha and Steve did a great job of filling and waiting to find out why.  Five minutes later, they're cued that the fireworks are ready to go!  So, Mayor McFarlane counted down again, this time from 5.  "Five...four...three...two...one!"  Aaaaaaand nothing.  Seems that while ABC-11 and we were in sync, neither of us were set with the fireworks peeps.

Look, stuff happens.  It's live TV and live radio!  People weren't dispersing fast enough off of Fayetteville Street from the first fireworks session, and there were too many people in the "safe zone" by the time Red Hat Amphitheater's show was supposed to go off.  But it takes time to find that stuff out.  People were scrambling, and there were lots of crazy things happening behind the scenes.  Text messages, phone calls, TV reporters hustling to find out what was going on.  The fireworks were delayed.  In the end, though, the fireworks went off.  Literally, they just randomly started.  Good thing I was watching TV--I started the music and finally everything synced.  It even ended the way it should have.  Lots of people worked really, really hard on last night's "The Works" celebration in Raleigh; from the folks at the City, to those at ABC-11 to little ol' me, in a studio at 10 at night on July 4th waiting to push a button.  We're really proud to have been a part of Raleigh's big celebration--no matter how crazy it felt to us at the time.  Here's to next year!


Alli



Like Alli Morgan on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter