San Diego has been long known to produce some of the best surf-punk-ska style music originated by southern California bands. Slightly Stoopid, an act from San Diego’s Ocean Beach neighborhood, can’t really be labeled under any genre — they play it all. The band has been building up a fan base for some 20 years now; they were first signed to a recording contract when they were still in high school. In 2015, they released their 12th album, Meanwhile…Back at the Lab, and, as is their forte’, they hit the road.
Live shows have been what this band has excelled at their entire career. The action and music are non-stop as the band bounces and runs all over the stage. This summer saw the band work a grueling 11-week tour under the visual guidance of lighting designer Scott O’Connor, their LD for the last four years. PLSN caught up with him during a rare three-day break.
A Variety of Venues
“I love these guys, but this run has been a tough one, in a challenging way,” O’Connor says. “I have really grown in my ability this summer to deal with being thrown into the fire. We are carrying a decent sized system, but it doesn’t always fit in the venues we are booked in.”
Indeed. The band played outdoor venues of all sizes this past summer. Rigging can be questionable, and even borderline unacceptable at some of the gigs, so “B” or even “C” rigs are something that Scott and his tech, Rafael Mojica, figure out every morning as the floor is chalked for rigging.
“This is the stuff they don’t teach you coming up,” O’Connor explains. “Each day I ask myself, ‘How can I fit these lights in, and still keep the integrity of the design without the big circle upstage?’ But I have been made a better man for it.”
A Two-Truck Tour
The rig has a 20-foot circular truss that can stand vertically on its own ground support. But sometimes the question of stage depth negates its presence. Sometimes lack of rigging points or weight restrictions means his rig has to change, but the designer is not afraid.
“We are carrying full production, with two trucks stacked top to bottom,” O’Connor notes. “On my vertical circle truss, I placed seven Robe Pointes and six Eurolite two-light blinders, which can double as strobes. We chose to go with [Martin MAC] Vipers up top, because we loved their stock gobos.”
The tour carries two 40-foot sticks of Tyler GT truss with 10 MAC Viper profiles, six MAC Viper Wash lights and eight MAC Auras strewn in as well.
A Psychedelic Vibe
“There is often this psychedelic vibe to the show. Behind the band, I have a bunch of those Atomic SuperWall panels that snap together and look amazingly different, depending on the angle with which you light them. I rented them through Showcat, these great guys that rent all kinds of theatrical stuff down in Florida. I use some GLP X4 battens on the floor to light them and rear-light the band. The tilt function on the fixture gives me some trippy looks on the Atomic walls, and the band is all about that.” Scott runs his show off of a grandMA2 Light console.
Raised in New York, O’Connor met LD Chris Kuroda at a Phish concert. “I was mesmerized, and knew I had to be involved with lighting.” he says. To get a foot in the door, he moved to Florida and worked for Martin Lighting at their facility in Sunrise. After some time there, he wanted to do more gigs, and in 2011 went independent.
How It All Started
O’Connor was working freelance around the area as a local company named Beachsound was starting to increase the lighting side of their audio business, accumulating gear. Scott did some work for them around town, eventually taking a full time gig as their in-house lighting programmer/director.
Slightly Stoopid was taking some audio gear out when Andre Serafini, founder of Beachsound, said,” Hey, would you guys like some lights and an LD?” And so began the journey.
Scott resides in Miami. He spent the last spring lighting The Joy Formidable, an alt-rock band hailing from Wales in the U.K., before this tour started, and he’s been one busy guy. He was happy for the summer to end and to get back home to his wife Kristina and the family.
