The Greatest Band (Lighting) on Earth

    I’m just waking up again. Now it’s 3PM on a Saturday afternoon. After a long night of party preparation, I finally got some sleep. What is party preparation? It’s a lot of fast programming the many areas of a Bacardi Live Event in Miami.

I have an early loadin this morning. The only unfortunate thing is it's located in Miami and I'm still home in Chicago. Because I had to program another show last night, I could not get my usual day early flight. I have a nasty cold and I'm running on empty.

Hello to all, picking up where we left last week. I’ve spent sometime watching live shows, whether it is in front of my eye, TiVo, television or DVD player. I recall seeing Primus, Galactic, Muse, and Nine Inch nails very visually oriented shows.

 I have long been a supporter of people who ask questions. I would much rather have a lighting tech ask me a stupid question, then assume the wrong answer and have to do something twice because they were afraid to ask.

Ok so last week I ended the blog by telling you about how I incorporate track lighting into my light show. Well, at first I embarrassingly zip tied them to mic stands. It was really a desperate attempt to get a vertical ACL wash across the stage. It began to be a pain in the ass for the band and myself to drag them around so I took the two pieces I had, untied them and cut them down to about a length of three feet each. The day I went to set them up during a load in a really cool thing happened. I placed them horizontally on the ground one in front of Nathan’s bass rig, and the other in front of Matt’s guitar rig. When I patched everything and turned up the faders I was astonished. It lit the rigs up so intense. Everyone looked over at me and said it looked bad ass. I was complimented in a weird way that day by Geoff our drummer and Erik our sound engineer. They told me that I have the most f#*ked up ability to take something shitty and make it into something cool. I was proud that I made it cool, but also analyzing that it was shitty in the first place.

    I majored in English in college. I can write a mean resume'. I can also write my own opinions here. And nothing pisses me off more than a company that is trying to peddle a product, but fails to write a decent manual. Or at least a pamphlet that can explain to any idiot like myself how to operate something they just spent money on and need to make use of right away.

 I get a lot of emails and calls this time of year. Some are old friends, some acquaintances and some people I've never met. They are all looking for the same thing. Work.