A friend of my brother, who also worked at the Kahler Hotel, owned and operated the KWWK Music Machine – a traveling DJ service for school dances, weddings, etc. I also got to know him when I started work at the Kahler since we both worked weekends. We called him “Disco Bob”. Things got a little weird when my brother and I started our own business – Omni Music Systems.
Bob was one of those people who just had to be a bit better than everybody else. No matter what you would say he would always do one better. For the most part my brother and I just shrugged this off, but one time the opportunity was just too ripe to not play a little practical joke on him.
I came up with a cheap way to get colored lights for our dances: use coffee cans, McGarvey to be precise. A little sawing and drilling along with some custom brackets fabricated by Dad transformed coffee cans into simple reflectors. I added a lamp base from Ax-Man, some colored gel and then painted them black.
One day I mentioned to Disco Bob, “Hey did you hear we have new lights for our show?”
Bob replied, “What did you get?”
I said, “A dozen lights mounted on a truss”
Naturally he went on at length about how he has several dozen lights mounted on several trusses. Bob then asked what brand we bought – clearly a setup to reveal the brand that he has.
I delivered the punch line, “State of the art McGarvey’s!”
There was an awkward pause.
I said, “You have heard of them, right?”
He said softly, “You guys got McGarvey’s?”
I said, “Well just the three pounders for now – nobody can get their hands on the five pounders yet…assuming you could even afford them.”
Bob said confidently, “I know the McGarvey’s personally and they are giving me two dozen of the five-pound units to promote my show!”