Skip to content

Erykah Badu’s Vortex Tour 2008

Erykah Badu’s Vortex Tour 2008

Some people get themselves stuck in a rut. Erykah Badu is not one of them. Her music bridges multiple genres, she sports an astonishing array of couture and hair styles and she’s not afraid to change the name of her tour or the look of the set two weeks into the tour. The 2008 tour, in support of her most recent album, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War), started off as the New Amerykah tour, but became known as the Vortex Tour to reflect, as Badu reportedly put it, “a swirling cloud of energy that sucks everything into its orbit.”

Read More »

Vectorworks Spotlight 2009

On the surface, the latest version of Vectorworks computer-aided design, visualization and rendering software may not look as if it has had a radical upgrade, but when you replace the 3D modeling engine with a new kernel, there’s a good argument for saying so.

Read More »

Bandit Lites Marks 40 Years

Bandit Lites got its start when founder and chairman Michael Strickland was just 12 years old. In the early years, Strickland would have to “borrow” the lights from a local high school theatre to light the Monkees, the Beach Boys and other bands of the 1960s — hence the name.  Today, Strickland’s company has emerged as a global leader in the entertainment lighting industry, with offices in Knoxville, Nashville, San Francisco, the U.K., Hong Kong and Taiwan, and while the company is still called Bandit Lites, Strickland no longer scours local high schools for gear.

Read More »

A.C.T Lighting Announces Price Rollback

AGOURA HILLS, CA — A.C.T Lighting announced its intention to roll back pricing on MA Lighting products to match Oct. 2007 levels, attributing the company's decision to an unexpected increase in the value of the U.S. Dollar against the Euro. The company said the new pricing goes into effect immediately, and is good on all orders shipped between now and the end of calendar year 2008.

Read More »

Musson Theatrical Expands Existing Facility

SANTA, CLARA, CA — Musson Theatrical, Inc. recently expanded into a new 35,000-square-foot space at its existing facility. “When the business that used to occupy the other half of the building that Musson occupies vacated, we saw  a golden opportunity to expand our business and improve service to our customers,” said Bob Downs, president. 

Read More »

Church Invests in Video Production, Podcasting

WALNUT CREEK, CA — Northcreek Church (NCC), now in the third phase of a construction project that started two years ago, needed lighting, video and stage components for the new building being added to the church campus in response to an increase in church attendance, and relied on Michael Garrison Associates (MGA) to do the job.

Read More »

Elation LED 36 Tri-Brick

I was recently asked to take a look at a new Elation lighting fixture, the LED 36 Tri-Brick. I thought to myself, “Great, yet another LED fixture in the shape of a brick.” But then I turned it on and all I could say was, “Wow.” Elation has once again stepped up and taken the LED fixture to a new level.

Read More »

Kiss Your Sweet Analog Goodbye

On Feb. 17, 2009, at the stroke of midnight, an amazing era comes to a close, and another one begins.  It’s called the DTV (digital television) transition, and as mandated by our good friends at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), every chief engineer at almost every television station in the U.S. is going to throw the big “off” switch on their trusty old analog transmitters.  From that point forward, all terrestrial video transmission at “full power” TV stations will be blasting out ones and zeros, as the sun sets on analog broadcasting.  (Psst— Hey buddy, wanna buy a 50,000-watt analog transmitter?)

Read More »

Take Me Out to the Opera

“Buy me a seat at the opera house. I don’t care if it’s Mozart or Strauss.” —from “Take Me Out to the Opera”

Today, when most people think about opera (if they think about it at all), they envision an elegant night out with fancy clothes, jewels and a stuffy be-on-your-best-behavior attitude. That’s how it is in the movies, and even sometimes in real life. 

 

Read More »