I got a call from a production manager friend last month. His band was looking to go in a new direction, and he was searching for a new production designer. He asked if I would like to submit a design for their world tour that starts next year. “Sure,” I say. “Gimme a few days with a thinking cap on.”
I’ve worked shows in clubs all around the world. Most of them have an in-house lighting system. With that comes at least one tech who knows how his system operates. Or we would like to think he does. Clubs usually do not possess a lot of state-of-the-art fixtures, nor fixtures with all of their parameters functioning correctly. Half of the time I will have a console I know little about. So I am dependent on my local lighting guy. And it’s uncanny how little some of these professionals know about their own gear.
I just got back from taking a cruise. I didn’t go for a relaxing vacation, mind you, I went to work. There’s a new trend now where bands are chartering these ships and creating a musical ride for a few days. This particular ride consisted of 2,500 diehard fans who boarded the vessel for four days of alcohol infused, music blaring, full-on debauchery. That is for the people who paid. For those of us who get paid to control the theatrical lighting on one of these floating tubs, it’s quite an exercise in futility. I believe the majority of these ships start out with some pretty sweet light rigs. Somewhere along the way they seem to go to hell in a bucket.
April 2 is National Autism Awareness Day. In case one doesn’t know, this disease is now an epidemic, and one in every 100 kids born is being diagnosed with this incurable condition. In honor of this day, the Autism society has requested that everyone turn on a blue light. Structures such as the Empire State Building and John Hancock Tower turned blue that weekend to raise awareness about this alarming statistic. The fact that we are using something so simple as a colored light to draw attention to a cause makes me happy. You can see these at www.lightitupblue.org.
As another year closes, I have lined up a birthday party at a stadium, followed by a tour with an old client of mine. Kid Rock is turning 40 and wants to throw a party with one set and light configuration, then go on tour with another one. I have designed every tour he has done since 1999 with the exception of a six-week run he went on last year. I agreed to actually go on tour with this show and make everything look stellar again. I believe this artist is among the most gifted performers in the world, working a crowd like few can. So after a long hiatus of actually touring with a band as an LD, I have agreed to go back on the road.
I got a call a few months ago from my old friend "Shakes." He has been the production manager for Kid Rock forever, it seems. And his boss is turning 40 this year. He wants to have a big party, followed by a week of rehearsals for a tour to promote his album. But he wants two distinctly different looking shows. The party was booked in Ford Field and was all about special guests and being a big party for 55,000 of his closest friends. The tour will last two years and come back to Detroit this summer to play the baseball park across the street. Hence he needed to come up with separate designs to mix it up.
Every year, I find myself at some stadium lighting something. If it's not a rock show, it's often the halftime entertainment or pre-game ceremonies of some sporting event. The gigs vary drastically, but the one thing that they all have in common is that it is broadcast on live TV, and you only get one shot to do it right. Plus, it's inevitable that I'm gonna end up gigging with some folks I haven't seen in a long time.
When I was a young man, I toured with the Talking Heads. They were a "new wave" band with a big following and a light show that was out of the ordinary. The show consisted of all white light – no gels, except for one song where the rear cyc turned red, and all tungsten fixtures except for one HMI 2.5k fixture we used once. Wherever we went, there was always some older stagehand who would question what we were doing at the time and then remark, "Well, I guess we just did it differently in my day."
Sometimes I think that no concert-going audience enjoys a good light show more than the hippies who attend "jam band" concerts. These bands don't follow a set list like 99 percent of the other bands on tour. They usually start one song and then drift into an avant-garde jam session before finding their way back into the original song, or segue into another. They also tend to cover other artists songs at a different tempo than the original version. And the audiences tend to dance along as if they were in a trance.
Every once in a while, we take on a gig where it becomes evident that we are dealing with someone who cannot handle his or her job competently. We witness some questionable decisions being made by someone in charge. It's politically correct to grin and bear it, as we work long hours to make the best of an errant design. In short, part of our job description is not to laugh, but just deal with the amateurism of what I call "the hack designer."
Over the years I have seen tape used in just about every conceivable way to prep gear, label road cases, truss and cables. I don't claim that any particular way is best, but I have certainly seen a lot of wasted tape. And any production cost waste peeves me.