Skip to content

Choices for the New Year

Choices for the New Year

The first of the year makes me think about people starting out in automated lighting programming. One of the concerns for a newbie is deciding on a console to master. There are many things to consider when shopping for a lighting console. Essentially, in the United States there are only a few popular brands of automated lighting consoles. There are also many other lesser-known ones at various levels of cost and industry acceptance. As a freelancer, you often will be asked to make the console decision for a production or venue. While this can be overwhelming, it also can be fun.

Read More »

Alice Cooper’s Christmas Pudding 2007

Alice Cooper performs

Shock rocker with a big heart and a lofty goal teams with former pastor to help kids at risk

Just as he’s done thousands of times before, Alice Cooper was onstage preparing to rock the house with his unique brand of heavy metal. But this time, instead of the usual opening acts, there’s a twist. Alice and his wife Sheryl are starting the evening’s event, a charity fundraiser, with an open-ing prayer. It’s a seemingly odd juxtaposition of the persona of the shock rocker, who gained notoriety in the late ‘60s by reportedly biting the head off of a live chicken, and the prayerful Christian about to launch into an evening of merriment for a good cause.

Read More »

Happy Belated Holidays Blog

Hey everyone I got some time to get this new blog out to you now. Well the past month of December has been pretty crazy. Between working and doing the whole holiday season too, the days tended to run into one another which are the cause of this delayed blog. We last left off with the Bonerama shows from earlier this month. Afterwards I snagged a couple extra shows with my local clients in Baltimore (Basshound, Damn Right, and Earthtone). It was definitely a lot of fun running around with these guys spanning from Newark, Delaware to Annapolis, MD. Let’s just say I got to rekindle some old memories with my friend Jim Beam after the gigs.

Read More »

Busy Bodies

Butch Allen

At first blush, it seemed like a really good idea — get all the busiest lighting designers of 2007 to contribute a quote or two about their recent work. What were we thinking?

Read More »

Don’t Look Now – Here Comes 2008

Don’t look now, but your boss is looking over your shoulder. More and more of them are.

Let’s not kid ourselves — you may think your boss is a moron, but you’ve got to give the guy credit for starting and running a business. It’s not child’s play — it’s tough, and it’s getting tougher all the time. But then so is being an employee, especially in these exponential times when technology is changing faster than Hannah Montana concert tickets are selling. And now employees have to take even more responsibility for their own productivity.

Read More »

Used It or Lose It

You may have noticed a spurt in e-mail offers on used lighting equipment lately. In the wake of a trend toward more live performance and the shift to LED-based products, a combination of smaller, more regional lighting equipment providers seem to have sparked increased activity in used equipment. And used equipment in any industry is a kind of bellwether for where the economics are headed next.

Read More »

An older blog found

So here's an older blog I found recently that I wanted to post while I'm working on a new one for you all. I should have it up soon. Thanks!

——–

OK this next blog starts here sitting in a hotel here in Richmond, Va. Currently I’m on tour with Porter Batiste Stoltz some of the damn funkiest musicians to come out of New Orleans, LA. Beginning where I left off on the last blog I had a lot of downtime once I got off the last tour so I did some local shows with good friends Damn Right, Basshound, and Earthtone, worked on my Porter Batiste Stoltz cues I needed to have ready for this current tour, start looking for some new pieces of gear to incorporate into the show, go over some repairs and obtain accessories I needed for this trip. 

 

Read More »