Sadly, there is no Teac deck visible in this photo, and it is LITERALLY the only photo from that era in my life (taken by a girlfriend at the time). I never was into keeping mementos or photos of my work, and I also NEVER asked performers for autographs, otherwise I'd probably have a lot of nice ones. It was an unbreakable rule for me. I figured a performer didn't need the staff nagging them for autographs back stage. They had to deal with that crap the rest of the time. I never asked, they never offered, and I think they appreciated it.
On this day there was no one famous playing (unless they became famous later). It was a bunch of local bands playing on an outdoor stage on Lincoln Road mall (an outdoor shopping plaza in Miami Beach). I remember it being hot as hell.
I was VERY skinny back then (I was 24) because I had an, as yet, un-diagnosed thyroid condition. Despite eating like a horse and consuming WAY too much soda and beer, I couldn't gain weight to save my life. It was actually a battle to keep weight on. It also made it hard to maintain muscle mass, despite the fact that I had to do a lot of physical exertion in that job. It wasn't unusual for me to have to load a 22 foot truck full of sound and stage lighting equipment by myself. I was very lean, but deceptively strong.
And yes, that's a stack of CDs next to the mixing console. I think that was right after my company bought it's first CD player, so I was playing those for filler music instead of the tracks we had on reel to reel.
