So my gal and I are relaxing watching CNN cover the Republican convention. Final night, it’s time to hear Mr. McCain accept his party’s nomination. So I tune in to see what he has to say. And instead of hearing him I can only think of one thing…, this is the worst lighting and video presentation I have ever seen on TV.
After the last few weeks I gotta wonder about the intelligence of today’s young audiences. They can be talked into just about anything.
Every now and then a live show gets interrupted. Sometimes it’s due to some audio difficulty such as a mic or musical instrument has a failure. Often it’s due to power outages. But last week I found a new way to disrupt a show. Flying turf.
Last week I was out in San Diego and Anaheim doing rehearsal shows for Marco Antonio Solis. My priority to this gig is to board… Read More »Dos Rehearsals
Every couple years I decide to go back on the road and live on a tour bus. It generally takes me about 72 hours to realize why I stopped doing this. But then I look at the money coming in and realize it’s a good thing.
This month I got to program a tour that wasn’t all hard rock music. Quite a change for me after the last 5 concert tours I programmed this year.
Recently I was acquired by a company based out of Omaha, Nebraska named Theatrical Media Services (TMS) to LD the comedy tent for Bonnaroo 2008. If you don’t know what Bonnaroo is then look it up. In brief, Bonnaroo is music festival that has been annually held in Manchester, Tennessee over the years. When it started it would bring bands in that were notably out of the jam band scene with an attendance of 60,000 people. Now it has evolved into a mainstream festival bringing acts like Pearl Jam, Metallica, and The Police with a force of 90,000 fans in attendance along with the jam bands still rocking out.
This year has been really strange for me in the variety of music I have been lighting. I seem to lighting quite a few heavy metal bands this year. Nothing wrong with metal mind you, I just haven’t bought into it since Deep Purple and Led Zep hung up their rock n roll shoes. (Or did they?).
In the spring of next year I am looking to do some workshops for the Mass Communications and Theater departments of a local university. These workshops will introduce how video and lighting are work hand in hand in the live production industry today. I really want to get the ball rolling and get the students hip to what cool toys we get to work with out there nowadays and no matter what major you come from you can definitely find a niche in both. It's only introductory stuff, but I'm hoping they'll enjoy the workshops and I can get rolling with some more technical stuff for them after this trial run. Here's a rough draft I started…
So I’m working with another heavy metal artist this week. A band called Disturbed, a popular hard music act. They are extremely nice guys. If you were stopped at a red light and they got out of the car next to you, it could make you feel a tad uneasy about the impending future. But in real life, they are just good old boys who like to play loud music.
Sometimes I get to a one off gig and see a way I can be lazy and get away with a short programming day. But to be honest, anytime I think I’ll luck out in one of these scenarios, it usually bites me in the ass.
Festival season is approaching! I must say it’s very exciting because there’s a lot going on these next few months. Not only with my boys from NOLA, Bonerama, but also with a brand new festival that is getting a lot hype named Delfest. If you don’t know the basis of how some great festivals were started I have a prime example for you… When I was a younger lad our group of friends heard of a festival that was started in the small town named Limestone in the state of Maine by the band Phish. Here unsuspecting residents were welcoming a crowd of over 80,000 fans for a weekend. It so happens that this same sort of ideal is being placed in the town I grew up in with a multitude of bands based from the bluegrass genre. This year it’s come to my hometown of Cumberland, Maryland where the festival will take place at the end of May with talented acts performing in this small, yet beautiful town in Western Maryland. On another note, they acquired me as the festivals lighting operator for the weekend. It will be an honor to illuminate such acts as Del McCroury, Keller Williams and the Keels, Vince Gill, David Grisman, Sam Bush, Railroad Earth, Dierks Bentley, and many more…