No Video, No pyro, No gags just musicians and lights
Composer, Producer, Noiseworks and Electric Hippies’ founding member, Steve Balbi, returned to the Sydney Opera House for one night only. Featuring an all-star band and special guest Abby Dobson, the show was lit by Sean ‘Motley’ Hackett using the in-house rig.
It was an important show for Motley, headspace-wise, after 16 years of KISS because he explained that world was not normal. His question to himself was ‘Can I still do this?’.
Motley received no brief from the artist, he simply said ‘You know what you’re doing so just do it’.
“Steve and I have been friends and worked together with Noiseworks as well as the Electric Hippies,” explained Motley. “Noiseworks was the first band with a budget I was LD for back when the par can ruled the RSL clubs of Australia. So it was more an enjoyable labour of love instead of a day at work.”
The SOH gig was for the release Steve’s new solo album Breakdown. Steve had played all the instruments on the recordings so he assembled an all-star band of his friends who all had a limited time to learn the 17 songs and let it rip. Motley says that it was tight but, at the same time, loose as Steve gave them a lot of room to play.
After 16 years of lighting KISS with huge LX rigs of various shapes, Motley wanted to see if he could make a house rig look cool for over 90 minutes and 17 songs.
“I wanted to make looks that added to the music and, at times, use the less is more theory instead of more is more,” he said. “So the design was not about some cool shaped rig or a set full of lights, it was about creating a mood or look for each song.”
Steve and the band played some of the new songs, some older solo songs, two reworked Noiseworks songs and an Electric Hippies tune thrown in for a bit of psychedelia.
Motley says his biggest challenge was time to achieve all of the looks that he wanted as he had very ambitious ideas to make every song look different.
“I only had six hours to make sure everything was working properly, balance the colours to the 250 colour wheel, focus the LED Lekos, LED Pars and the moving lights, then run through the songs I had done in pre-vis only to realise that certain things I did just didn’t work with the room,” he added. “I spent a lot of time at home breaking it all down and writing down what I wanted to do with the songs. It was a fun exercise in music lighting design.”
Motley utilised The Studio’s house rig comprising Martin MAC250 Wash, MAC250 Spot, ETC LED SourceIV Lekos and some LED Pars above the stage. Out in the audience, there were seven MAC Viper Performance and LED Lekos around the catwalks.
“The MAC250s were probably the brightest I have seen in 20 years, in fact probably the only ones I had used in 20 years,” he commented. “They have not been beaten around in the truck and full of pyro smeg. They were a pleasant surprise and I thought ‘That’s what they looked like when they were new’. People forget that the Vari*lite VL2 was only 250w and looked great in an arena in 1987.”
The SOH supplied Motley with an MA Lighting grandMA2 light which enabled him to pre-program on a laptop at home. He adds ‘Those theatre consoles are a mystery to me’.
“However, a week or two from the show, they reconfigured the lighting rig so that threw a curve ball with my patch and some of the programming,” continued Motley. “It’s always fun when they use the console to turn on the power before the fixture works with a non-dim profile with 100% as the default.”
Motley adds that there were a couple of typos in the plot patch they sent him but the house guys had discovered it the day before so a few quick re-patch and he was off and running.
“They upgraded the lights to MAC Viper Performance which worked wonders on the rear black drape for a few songs as I would only use one song per gobo,” said Motley. “The Vipers gave a nice effect lighting the band with the animation wheel. It would have been nice to have the time to use the shutters, maybe next year.”
The house lights are LED RGBA so Motley could make the room any colour he wanted which he found useful for a few songs adding that they were a ‘bit wishy-washy’ but still they gave a few songs a different feel.
Motley began the programming at home with MaPC and MA3D to get the foundation of looks and cues organised. He says it was fun building an MA3D environment and getting it all to look cool without time constraints.
“I was at a band rehearsal in a rehearsal space the day before where the band went through each song and then ran the set once,” he explained. “I set up in the corner and had my MApc/3d setup and off I went. So I at least I had my cues and basic ideas/colour schemes all worked out …. until I ran through all the looks at the venue and realised some of it sucked! So it was time to re-program some bits.
“The Vipers looked a lot better than I thought they would so they got me out of trouble for a few songs with gobo effects. I wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel on this one, if anything, get back to my roots 20 years ago. Some songs were cue list and others laid out across faders, old school style ready for a band jam.
“The last cue of the night in the last part of the last song started with some lights on Steve DSC and one on the keyboards, then, over 45 seconds, the whole rig faded up in blue followed by the house lights in blue and then slowly it all turned white. The end had no encore just everyone in the same light which also meant no house lights to be called. I had always wanted to do that and walk away from the console.”
In a room like this with a house rig and limited time you are never going to create lighting greatness. I explained to the young house guy tonight, for me is not about being great tonight, it’s about not being SHIT. There were some spontaneous ad-lib moments by the band that I got to play along with and I loved it, as did the audience.
So it worked out well and the audience had a great evening. Steve, the band and the music were fantastic and I wasn’t SHIT so I think I will call that a successful show.
Photos: Audrey de Groot, Tim Bradshaw
