One time I was heading to my room, and across the hall from the hospitality suite were these guys sittin’ around playing musical instruments. I recognized a few of them from around, you know, and now I know that one of ’em was Jim Coats from California, and Robert Casler from Arizona was also there. There were others. I think Robert’s kids were somehow involved. Later that day I learned that somebody had complained about the music – which was weird – this was a Casino, and they were basically playin’ bluegrass instruments, you know, quiet-like. So somebody must have lost big at the tables, or they were just wound too tight to begin with . . . complaining about acoustic music on the hospitality floor of a big casino hotel. Ah well, I guess it takes all kinds.
So later that night, I’m lockin’ up the projectors and stuff, ready to get a jump on the next morning, and there’s some ACE people millin’ around where the breakout rooms are. Normally that’s all locked off, but I had a key. So I went to see what was what, and they said they’d gotten in trouble with the hotel for too much noise the night before. I remember it like it was yesterday.
That crazy guy from Ohio State – the auctioneer – Randy Nemitz. He’d conned the security chief in the hotel into letting them get together in the breakout rooms. “We’re the one’s rentin’ ’em,” he said. “We might as well use ’em.” I looked in one of the smaller meeting rooms, and it was packed! Well, the next night, they’d gone big-time. They had sound gear, and they’d moved into the back of one of the big 200-seater rooms, instead ofcrammed into those little quarter-sized Easy-Bake Oven type meeting rooms. I was busy enough pushin’ the AV cart down the halls that I didn’t pay much more attention, but lots of people were talkin’ about these guys. Who’d a thought it was the start of something that would turn into anything.
To be continued . . .
