I continue to be on tour with the person that I tour with currently, and it’s terrific. The word from the production manager (a fellow of dubious reliability when it comes to future predictions regarding production-related matters) is that we’ll be carrying the same production next year as this year, which I guess suits me okay. I don’t see us going to two semis anytime soon (or ever, considering this artist’s current musical trends), and our truck is pretty much packed to the limit currently, which makes my desire to make our midstage truss pre-rig unlikely to come to fruition. Actually, in my ideal world, ALL my truss would be pre-rig, including the upstage – currently a LOT of time is spent hanging the video panels each day, and if they could be left in the trusses and wheeled around, it would be a massive timesaver. Of course, in my fantasy world, I’d have one of the many stage designs I’ve drawn brought to life, but that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon, either. Unless I find a new awesome artist to work for, which of course never seems likely until it happens, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
I have no new lighting gear to review, and probably won’t anytime until that hoped-for new artist materializes, but I have plenty of new products that I’d like to try: the Martin MAC Viper range, the MAC III, the new Phillips Showline stuff, especially their new 640 LED strobe, the Clay-Paky Sharpy 330 Wash, the ETC Source4 LED, the TMB LED Flare, the TMB 15,000-watt strobe (I can’t imagine wanting this for a show, I just wanna see one in action), the grandMA 2, Chromalec’s new Elidy (Get it? Ell Ee Dee? LED? Clever.) range, Chauvet’s (I know, I know…) EPIX bars and their new low-res LED panel thing, and I’ve recently been thinking about adding a MIDI-control drum pad to my lighting setup to trigger certain “percussive” cues. Which is the one thing on this list that might actually happen in the near future.
And lasers. I feel like there’s a place for those in our show. Oh, and Chroma-Q ColorForce. Yeah.
To be honest, I feel really creatively cramped with this current show. Limited truck space, limited stage space. I rarely get to put up my full rig, and when I can, it’s often on a very small stage that really doesn’t let the design “breathe”. Further, while I’d love to do something different with the rear video wall, our content isn’t really conducive to breaking the panels apart any further than we already do, and adding more isn’t an option. The most I think I could do with the video panels is change their vertical layout, which is fine, but any kind of funky truss layout is gonna be out of the question. Space, both in the truck and the stages we play, is limited. The ground towers can’t get any taller because the vast majority of venues have very limited overhead height. The rear truss can’t be any longer because we rarely have the width. Maybe I could fit two 101s side-by side on the ladders? I have plenty of dimmers open, but logistically, getting dimming power transported around the stage will be annoying. (It means more soco, which I don’t really have room for in cases.) Mostly, I’m limited to moving pieces of gear that I have already into different positions, or substituting them for gear that weighs the same and has roughly the same dimensions. It’s not like an arena tour where I simply have a 3D space in which to place gear however I see fit – I have to design around the limitations of every conceivable space that we might play in, from the bar where one or two or even no bits of lighting gear will fit, to the odd arena show where the production has to look as big and impressive as possible while still fitting on a truck. I think I’ve struck a good balance with the rig I’m carrying now, but the same rig all the time becomes stagnant after a while.
I want some of the designs from my little Moleskine notebook to make it into reality again! It’ll just take time. Speaking of which, I’ve worked my way through the very first soft-backed Moleskine notebook that I purchased way back in 2007. The spine is breaking apart, but the pages are completely filled with ideas. Feels good, man.
In other news, an invisible change is that this site is now hosted on Digital Ocean, because NearlyFreeSpeech was very conservative in terms of what you could do with their service. This new server is a virtual Linux box that I have root access to, and I now host my own CalDAV server here. Enable all the things! I really want to get away from Google, which has kind of a sort of a cozy relationship with the NSA that worries me. I’d install GPGP, but I’m pretty sure the only person I’d be able to converse with is the only other crypto-nerd I know, and we rarely have any reason to e-mail each other. Maybe someone would like to discuss world domination with me via Twofish or AES512? No? Okay.
Exit, stage left.
Sparks