Well, he had me. With the advent of the upstage video wall at concerts, the lighting systems have had to fly higher, span wider, gain massive lumens and require fleets of trucks. For years, it seemed, I would watch the brilliant Mark Fisher design something larger and cooler than his last masterpiece. He was brilliant. Yet those big bands he’s famous for never really downsized. Why should they? Well, maybe because they are old and at $600 per ticket, they cannot sell out the Staples Center. I’ve heard tales of old stars canceling world tours midway through as the number of tickets sold was not able to cover the costs of the massive production they carried. Downsizing the show just to make it affordable was apparently not an option.
?? A Summer Block Party
We banter this around for a while, then he tells me his idea. Kid Rock wants to give the fans a great show this summer. He wants to have ZZ Top and Kool & the Gang play with us. He wants a giant summer block party, and he wants to sell it all for a $20 ticket. Everything will be cheap. Every ticket in the shed is 20 bucks; a T-shirt costs you only $20. He will regulate the sale of beer, and it will sell for $4 — less than half of what some sheds usually charge. We’ll have quality opening acts that are all headliners in their own right. We have good sponsorship. “Nook, for a lot of kids this summer, it could be the best night ever.”
And so it begins. I am in charge of looking for ways to cut costs. He is a shrewd businessman. He knows what costs what. I ask him if he wants to nix pyro for the summer. He explains that we have already scaled that back dramatically. I move on to asking him about losing the lasers. We are paying $13K per week to our laser providers up in Toronto. “Nah,” Kid says. “I’m pretty fond of the lasers. You got ‘em doing some bad ass stuff.” I bring up the cost of the tracking video walls. We could just go for the one big TV look the whole show, and save some dough. “Nah, I kind of like having the ability to call an audible and mix up the screens at times.”
Next, I suggest we cut the balloon drop. That costs a couple grand every night. He thinks for a second, then says, “Nah, let’s keep that. But I want to exchange all the balloons for beach balls.” No saving there. I’m grasping at straws now. Maybe since we are moving into sheds, we don’t need the side PA arrays. We lose a few boxes and… “Now Nook, the places are gonna be packed, and the people need to hear.” So with great reluctance, I look him in the eye and say, “Well, I guess that leaves me to hack up the big light system?” He nods and smiles.
?? Doing More with Less
“Nook, in 1998, we were packing arenas with one truck of lights, one truck of sound and one truck of set and band gear. You rocked it back then with half the lights and gimmicks we have now. I can still work a crowd into frenzy with a 120K of PARs. Meet me halfway.” And that was that. I still have three trusses of movers and a splattering of strobes. But upstage, I have a wall of voodoo. Basically, it’s four vertical rows of Elation Razors splattered with some Sharpys and strobes. I tell you, a mere wall of 24 of these moving LED Rayzors just rocks. I get a big PAR can-type look when pointed on stage, but they are not bright enough to blind the audience when pointed right at them. The quick movement matches the Sharpys, and my tiny budget light rig looks fat.
Upstaging has this guy named Daric Bassan running the shop. The guy is now famous as the king of torms. For years, designers would send in their scribbles or CAD drawings of how they would like to see fixtures vertically suspended from trusses. These metal bits were often made out of custom welded pipe and individual set carts that cost the manufacturer beaucoup bucks. Something that wouldn’t be charged for, and may never get used again on another show. So Daric has built himself this little corner of a shop where his company has hundreds of pieces of pipes. The pipes are well-kept aluminum with holes drilled at certain increments.
I told Daric I needed some torms that were 15 feet tall, had 15 fixtures on them, and couldn’t be more than two feet wide, or they would block my video walls and scenery.
The next day he sends me a CAD drawing of what he proposes, and it’s spot-on. All the pieces are in his inventory, already powder-coated and ready to assemble.
In the end, I have taken my big-ass light show and hacked half the fixtures and a guy off it. But with Daric’s torms, the system looks large. I did hear some people at the Garden State Arts Center last night say, “Why is the video screen upstage so small?” Well, it really isn’t. But all I could say was, “Why in the world do you guys have I-Mag screens on the side of your stage that are 40 feet wide by 30 feet high?” They are bigger than the footprint of the stage I have to play in. I don’t get it that Eddie Van Halen needs to see a 60-foot-wide guitar behind him. I do get that the Stones have to be the biggest show on Earth, so they need large video. Paul McCartney is playing stadiums where people are one-quarter of a mile away. They deserve to see their guy. But when does the performance overwhelm the actual performers?
?? Lost in the Dazzle
Twenty years ago, I worked on a big world tour. Amazing hydraulic sets, moving robotic pieces and a massive lighting design. The thing was, all the set pieces, scenic drapery, etc., was tied into aerial trusses from the get-go. And hence, the lighting trim on this huge show was precisely 20 feet off the stage deck. This is how it was drawn, and it still looked big in stadiums. The one thing that always amazed me was that, no matter what was going on theatrically, on any part of the production, you knew where the artist was. They were lit and not overshadowed by the constant flash and lighting accents. I look at some recent tours that show performers playing in front of dazzling walls of video and lights. I look at the wide shots posted on you-tube and I can’t find the performer anywhere. I’m sure they are there somewhere, lost in all the pizazz. It just makes me wonder why and when it all got so big.
