Some Light Shows

hieronymous wrote: I wish I had seen them too. The light show is somewhat legendary - I wonder what it was like? ...

My thoughts on this light-show, go back a bit, to at least 1971 when we moved to Santa Barbara ... and by that time, "light shows" had lost their spark, and were, almost exclusively, completely independent of the music itself, and in some cases, the fame of the guy running the light show for various bands, did what he wanted and the band had no say in it.

To me, it was very obvious that the person "designing" the light show, not only did not know the music, he/she had no talent whatsoever for lighting a stage and making a band look better. And we can go back to Hawkwind, Tangerine Dream, Grateful Dead and several other bands that used lights extensively.

There are only three that matter to me! The Grateful Dead I will not discuss as I never got to see them in one of their full glory shows, to be able to say more, but they had the best folks for it, and my thoughts are that if anyone could do it right, their folks could!

1. Nektar, came to America with its "Light Theater", and one of the members of the band was the lighting man. Now, when I first heard "A Tab in the Ocean", the first album of theirs I heard and got to notice its members and album design, I thought it would be interesting to have the lighting man as a part of the band, since the part that had deteriorated (specially these days, even with Roger Waters!!!!!) was that the visuals were no longer connected with the music at all ... they were just a stony trip to somewhere, that did not augment the music anymore than you whooping and hollering will, or your cigarette lighter in the air with others would!

So, within a couple of months, at the same place, too, (The Santa Monica Civic - no longer there or different name ... not sure), I got to see three bands there and all of them had lights.

Nektar was probably more impressive with its four wall setup ... three huge screens behind and at 45% angles on each side ... and one other screen connected to these on top ... something like that ... and there were visuals on them the whole time. At the very least that I can remember, the lighting for "A Tab in the Ocean" was very definitive and designed properly. I do not recall the lighting details for the side 2 of that album. For "Remember the Future", it was also "on theme" but already the quality of the lights were not on par with the emotional status that Roye was putting into it. I am not sure that the lighting setup was designed well enough to be a part of the show, and that it could properly light up the emotional story being told. It probably would have required more film, than the colors it got ... to help illustrate the story, is my thought as a director.

Still, a beautiful show all around ... and very special in its own way, and worth the memory ... but for me, as a theater technical person, the lighting was nice, but not as complete as it should have been.

2. Hawkwind. Space Ritual Tour Santa Monica Civic. From the start the stage was set in dark moods almost exclusively, and it helped illustrate many things. It stayed away, completely, from the stuff that 2001 and other TV shows were not working on as an imaginative idea of space and its vehicles, and instead gave us an "internal" mind/view of the whole thing, and if you ever take a look at the fold out of the original double LP, I would almost say, that is exactly what you saw ... not exactly "space" but more of an idea of "inner space" and its thinking. I thought the show brought out that part of it really nicely, though I will feel guilty in telling you that by "master of the Universe", the lights were tiring, and the music was way too loud to be enjoyed ... but the show was impressive, and even though you might not have seen a whole lot, there was a ghost of some sort dancing around that looked like it got nude somewhere in the middle of the show ... but for such a dark stage, you and I will joke that it was an apparition!

Very nice show all around. Already breaking apart in its entirety from the generic light crap that has befallen the majority of music shows in America ... the lighting is so bad, and even does not know when there is a solo, and it should be there, and it is not!

3. Tangerine Dream. Santa Monica Civic ... Stratosfear Tour. The main feature here in lighting was that Lazarium was with them by that time, and they were sending those lazers everywhere, including your eyes ... and halfway through the show, you wanted to go shove those lights in the eyes of the a****le that thought that up! Once or twice is fine, but 174 times is out of line and ridiculous, regardless of them being different colors.

I always thought that TD would have been the easiest thing to light up ... it's music was already a "movie" for me, and it already had its story, and it should have been easy enough to film something and put together visuals for it ... but nope ... it became a shine on for the lasers and they got boring after a while. The rest of the light show? Not special much, though it was very colorful, but with 3 stone hieroglyphs on the stage, the thought that some moody lighting would help one piece or two, Or the loving atmosphere for side one of Phaedra, and its very obvious ascension to a physical climax ... should have been lit with a film, and soft lighting over it, simply suggesting the whole thing ... instead of having lasers look for the climax, to blow your eyes out for 10 minutes.

Later, and you can see the picture of this on the America Live double LP, at the Greek Theater, the lazers were used better (Lazerium was housed above the theater at the Observatory), by making it look like the trees were on fire, but here, the band could not create something that made that even better and stronger ... it was just an effect ... with no soul behind it. The rest of the show, outdoors, did not have any better lighting design or ideas than the previous show that I could tell, but at the very least, the music was phenomenal, while the lights were crap.

Lighting shows are a problem. How do you interpret the music? Musicians are not very good at this, since they tend to concentrate on their notes and chords, in order to be able to stick with the visuals,  and this is where Pink Floyd became a monster ... DSOTM, then computerized it so the lights went with the music all the way, and it showed, and I hoped, would improve light shows in general ... but that's like saying that Metallica has meaningful work like Pink Floyd ... and they will use the money they make to create something special ... oh yeah, right ... the worst light show I have ever seen ... and cheap, too! PF improved things for The Wall, where the lighting is defined by the film/action on stage and that made it really special and defined in such a way, that 99.9% of all the bands out there will never EVER do, or even think about. You remember the music well, but I doubt that any of us that saw the original shows, ever forgot the insane beauty of the whole thing ... and how well defined and staged it was. Later, when Roger did his own version (review here on PA elsewhere comparing both shows BTW!), the lighting was now about ... just in front of you with the sound, instead of all around you, and the effect was dead ... it was now just entertainment for me ... even though it was an outstanding production and such, in the end, the "totality" of the original ... was missing. I kinda thought that Roger had lost some of it, or maybe the rest of the band was the difference in not wanting to do somethings or adding others that Roger this time did not have to listen to!

I have more on lighting, and can compare film to stage to music shows ... if requested or desired, but this is a section that could add to the "progressive" discussion since most straight rock bands, never had a good light show to begin with despite some folks getting famous for them, in the end, even they did not know the music and its details. 

Worst light shows ever? Metallica, Black Sabbath, Roxy Music, Deep Purple, are just a few.

Exquisite light show, that needs another discussion ... Tales from Topographic Oceans, that was very well lit and designed around its set ... although some moments were used for the solos and they took away from the grandiose side of the music, in favor of individual moments, and that broke the completeness and togetherness of what I have always felt was one of the best concerts I have ever seen in my life, and I remember having tears coming out ... I knew that I would never see another show, where the music and composition work, was far and away one of the best designed and thought of for my mind.

I did not consider this with this write up because the rest of the show was all generic and worthless lighting ... typical for any rock band! And some 40 plus years later, with a different lead singer, the lighting was all about the two monster stars and forget the music!