Hello to all, picking up where we left last week. I’ve spent sometime watching live shows, whether it is in front of my eye, TiVo, television or DVD player. I recall seeing Primus, Galactic, Muse, and Nine Inch nails very visually oriented shows.
I sat down and watched the Primus: Hallucino-Genetics Show. I really liked the arrangement of lights on the stage and of course the abstract video that is playing on 3 oval screens in the back. This show specifically impressed me with video content. I like the fact that video is symbolic or related to the song. It’s not conveying a story but rather a cool visual that can loop or fade to another graphic or b-roll. My preference is to use graphic, b roll, and live footage to fade throughout the song. I think you can set up the video director to get some really cool stuff. I think that it shouldn’t be too overwhelming of a video set. Some bands have too much. It seems to take a lot of attention from the stage performance.
Nine Inch Nails was another great show. Custom LED panels, another LED wall, DL-2s, video screens, you name it. My favorite part of the show is when the screen is in front of the stage and they display some cool indie video work.
Galactic doesn’t use any front light at all. The music is all instrumental The LD orchestrates the lights perfectly to the tunes. They use cool backdrops with LEDS. At certain color temperatures the light projection changes looks on the backdrops.
Last and certainly not least is Muse! The performance of “Star Light” at the European Music Awards was inspiring. 20 Lasers were used to create one of the coolest looks I’ve seen. Gotta give it up to the Europeans, you rock!
Usually while I’m flying the ship I don’t have a lot of time to observe the band. If I do happen to get a cool idea for a song I’ll jot it down as quick as I can on my cue list and try to make sense of it when I’m on the road or at home in the note book. Probably two or three months ago we were getting pretty discouraged about doing bars in the same town ALL the time. Bars are fun gigs don’t get me wrong, but they def. are a nightmare too. With bars there’s barely any security to keep pirates aka drunk old women off stage. You should have seen it last week I literally had to tug the Loch Ness monster off of our lead singer and have her ejected. I tend to let it go when there’s a hot chick on stage old or young I love them all 😉 Most of the time it’s those damn “pirate hookers” that come on stage and cause all of the trouble. It also sucks for me and our front of house guy because we have our gear right in the middle of the jungle. So not only we have to worry about drinks being around our gear we get our ears talked off in the process. Honestly the next person who requests a song to me I may try to strangle them with a cable. Although I get hot girls grinding their booties on me once in awhile, this is nice. When those pirate hookers can’t get on stage they come for the crew. So I guess it can go good or bad sometimes. But eff it. That’s the way the show goes. It can go in so many damn directions its ridiculous. Actually I am curious to some of crazy stories you all have encountered over the years. Feel free to share some stories under comments or email me and I’ll read up. I have a few more funny stories to share but I can’t let all of my tricks out the bag right? Speaking of which, I’ll pick up next week on letting tricks out of the bag. I’m going to start leaving some of my favorite weekly things that I’ve been checking out as of late too. Thanks for reading! ~Tony
Album of the week:
Jimi Hendrix: Band of Gypsys
Movie of the week:
300! Great flick made by the guys who did Sin City. 300 Spartans kick the crap out of the Persian Empire with a great film style.
Cool Product of the week:
Rosco keystroke (new PC program) for lighting.
Favorite URL of the week:
http://www.centerstagelighting.com
EastonAshe URLs:
http://www.myspace.com/eastonashe
http://www.myspace.com/squints4
Don’t for get to email me at:
