FREDERICTON, New Brunswick — Local DIY venue Zamboni’s recently installed a state-of-the-art false amp head that allows drunk patrons to incessantly tweak the sound knobs without interfering with the actual audio coming from the speakers, impressed sources report.
“It’s been a real pain in the ass, these drunk guys jumping in to do sound when no one asked,” said bartender, Em Knox while pouring two drinks, ringing in a customer, and motioning for security to grab a guy that was smoking inside. “There’s one bouncer one waiter, and me. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna drop what I’m doing to keep some soused wannabe sound tech from over-cranking the gain on a band I can’t stand anyway. We set up a couple of busted amp heads at the front of the stage and it’s been a godsend. They sit there the entire set trying to ‘fine tune’ everything without realizing it’s doing jack shit.”
The bands playing at Zamboni’s have hailed the fake amp heads as game changers in combatting drunk helpfulness.
“Every time I play here, some jackass starts fiddling with my carefully adjusted knobs,” said Dork Juice guitarist, Scott McMaster. “It would take me days, if not weeks, to get my settings back to the exact way I like them to deliver my famous guitar tone. Thank god for these fake amp heads were installed. Now I can enjoy myself on stage knowing no one’s tweaking my shit and also that these drunks in the crowd get a sense of purpose. At the end of the day, it’s all about the audience after all!”
Spearheading the technical innovation was a suspiciously accredited “Drunk Guy At Rock Show” expert, Dr. Barry Bernier, who studied Drunk Guy tendencies for over 15 years, specializing in DIY venue behavior.
“The fake amp head is indistinguishable from the real thing by your typical drunk guy,” stated Dr. Bernier attaching electrodes to a guy wearing a Sleep t-shirt. “In one test we provided the drunk subjects with a blank cardboard box with knobs on it, which they initially took to, but we found ultimately that the more realistic the depiction of the amp head, the more engaged the subjects were. We are also trying to perfect hologram technology that will project a guitarist’s pedal board in front of a drunk attendee for them to attempt to manipulate, but that is still in the developmental stages.”
At press time, Zamboni’s was reportedly installing an additional five fake amp heads to facilitate the growing demand for shit to drunkenly fiddle with.
Photo by James Knapp.