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Let’s Put A Smile On That Face

Buenos Dias Todos,

                         Well my Spanish isn’t quite where I’d like it to be but it is good enough to strike up small talk with some of the Mexican crew and band members I have been working with on the Marco Antonio Solis U.S. tour. Most do speak alright English and the ones who don’t speak too quickly to me so my brain won’t spin. So at the end of the day the communication barrier I once thought was going to be hard to break was quite simple to step through if you’re willing to try.

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Coldplay’s Viva La Vida Tour

“Where do you get your ideas?” The question is trite, perhaps, whether you’re a novelist or a lighting designer, but it gets asked so often because the answer is so mysterious. For lighting designer Paul Normandale, it’s “the most exciting part of what we do” — that outpouring of creativity in the “scribble-CAD-to-fruition” zone. For Coldplay’s Viva La Vida tour Normandale designed the lighting, Mark “Sparky” Risk served as lighting programmer/director, and Justine Cat-terall worked as part of the video content production crew. Here are a few details on how they achieved the looks for the tour.

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Jamming Along with O.A.R.

LD Joe Labbe is concentrating hard on the stage. The lights are out and he’s waiting for the band to come back into a song. It’s just like any other night until Of a Revolution’s lead singer Marc Roberge says to his bandmates, “Let’s go into another song.” Labbe, who is on his first tour with the band, hears about the switch in his personal monitors and panics.  “In a matter of seconds I had to find the right page where the song is,” he recalls. “I thought, “Why are you doing this to me?’ It turned out to be a fun night. I made it through and got it to where it needs to be. It was one of those nights that I walked away feeling awesome.”

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Green, from Radiohead to Toe

If others see that this is both beautiful and that it works, then they just might be willing to try it themselves.  Such is the hope of the lighting and visuals designer Andi Watson and the planet-friendly band, Radiohead.  Lead singer Thom Yorke is a member of the environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth, and the other band members and crew join his interest in taking the steps necessary, however inconvenient, to tread as lightly as possible on a fragile planet.

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The best production ever

     Every once in a while you get to work on a gig that you wish would never end. An event that delights you and makes you happy to go to work every day. Last week I started work on a production that should take at least 18 years to complete.

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PLASA 2008 Show Report

Fifteenth century Italy had its Renaissance men, but we have our Renaissance machines — software and hardware in a variety of areas that will redefine the entertainment lighting industry as we know it.  This year’s PLASA differed from last year’s in that there seemed to be much more change and more innovative new products. And unlike years past, there was more than LEDs and media servers.

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Rob Koenig

Although you can’t download lighting design from iTunes, in many ways it is a lot like music. So says up-and-coming lighting designer Rob Koenig. Koenig is the owner of World View Touring and he’s currently viewing the world and touring with Billy Idol. In this PLSN interview, Koenig tells us how music is like lighting design, why he prefers soft edge fixtures, and why he loves rock ‘n’ roll design.

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Asbury United Methodist Church’s Venue 68

One of the biggest issues facing Asbury United Methodist Church a few years back was parking space. The fast growing church was severely challenged for places to put all of the cars carrying new worshipers. When Senior Pastor Dr. Tom Harrison heard that the ice rink adjacent to the church had become available, he didn’t give it much thought. Then, one day, he drove through the parking lot and started counting parking spaces. He counted 220 of them.

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Brad Paisley – The Fun Continues

No sooner had Brad Paisley’s highly successful last tour, “Bonfires and Amplifiers”, come to end did he announce his next tour, The “Paisley Party.” Lighting designer and director Dean Spurlock, who has been with Paisley for about seven years, was called on to keep the 2008 Grammy Award-winner and the Academy of Country Music Top Male Vocalist of 2007 and 2008 out of the dark, with visuals that would meet Paisley’s goal of achieving his “most spectacular concert yet.”

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Dennis Sheehan – 2008 Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award Winner

Dennis Sheehan has had a backstage pass to rock and roll history. For a quarter of a century he has shepherded U2 to the four corners of the globe and back again. Prior to that, he assisted Led Zeppelin on their historic tours. The one-time professional guitarist has also served a host of acts including Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Siouxie and the Banshees and members of the Sex Pistols, among many others.

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From Slapshots to Shakespeare

Shakespeare & Company was running out of space. The theatre company, founded in 1978 with a mission of combining the strengths of classical British and American acting, first secured residency in the turn-of-the-century estate that was home to writer Edith Wharton, then in 2000 expanded to 30 acres with multiple buildings one mile away in Lenox, Mass.

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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.”

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