So here we are again then. After what probably seems like months of me doing nothing i figured it was time to update this old blog of mine. I've been keeping pretty busy for the last little while since the Killers thing ended in December. At the moment i am on tour with Alicia Keys for the foreseeable future. It all started about 5 weeks ago when i flew to London to start production rehearsals at Elstree Film Studios. Imagine my delight when i discovered that we would be rehearsing for 3 weeks in the George Lucas stage, the very same room that the original 3 Star Wars films were shot.
The build and rehearsal time was pretty intensive as this is a quite a big show. We have 10 trucks and 6 buses to transport all the equipment and over 80 people on the tour around. I did however manage to nip out and blag my way into the prop department across the street where i was able to see some fantastic pieces of props and items from the original films as well as getting to talk to the people who originally built and designed them including
The original R2D2 and C3PO
An early model of Yoda!!
Everyones favourite Ewok, Wicket!!
As well as some of the original lightsabers from the first movies
And we got our hands on a few of them as well
The eternal struggle between lighting and video continues....
After that it was down to the serious work at hand of making sure the lights were right for the start of the tour which would result in me and the LD Nick working from around 2pm until 7am every day for 2 weeks while everyone else came in and spent the day repairing whatever we had managed to break
Of course these nights were long and hard but were for the most part a lot of fun. We did get some random photos when people would get tired and need distraction late in the night
of course sometimes we came back in early to find our crew not doing very much such as one particular sat when everyone was sat around at FOH
But impressively enough they had managed to rig up our giant screen to show the rugby
Towards the end of rehearsals we took delivery of possibly the biggest flightcase in the world. We did get 2 confirmation phone calls from the company who supplied it before they would build it. Basically we had these pieces of set which are big 3M balls with lights inside them and they fold flat like tents so we had to transport them somehow and why not build a case that is 2 feet wide, 7 feet tall and 11 feet 6 inches long i thought!!
Yes, that is 8 of us lying inside a flightcase, what you cant see is the 2 other people that arent in the shot!!
Just as it came time to load out and travel to Glasgow for the first show came the bad news that Alicia had lost her voice due to a nasty case of laryngitis and we would be cancelling the first 2 shows and staying in London a few days more. I think we were starting to believe this tour was cursed as we had already lost half the lighting crew by this point due to 2 deaths in theyre seperate families.
Anyway, off to Birmingham we went a few days later for the first show at the NIA and after a very long day we had a great show and were up and rolling.
You can see the big balls in this photo
After a great show at Londons O2 Arena we were off to a long drive to Lyon for a show at the Tony Garnier Hall which looks like it was built from off cuts of the Eiffel Tower
they really love Alicia in France and we are visiting there 4 times on this tour alone and probably more when we return during the summer, her solo piano section goes over especially well
Next day it was off to Frankfurt for a show at the Festhalle before heading north to Copenhagen for what was a small club date with a very stipped back production. The show in Frankfurt was kind of strange as the Festhalle was apparently a well known place where Hitler made more address during his time as Furher. It was bizarre that the place where possibly the most evil man in history stood is still closed off to the public
Its right there on the balcony underneath the Festhalle sign. This was as close as i could get before being asked to move on by an older security guard who didnt seem keen to explain why i wasnt allowed in there.
its always strange to stand in place of history and realise that it wasnt all that long ago that it happened, but hopefully thats all that sort of thing....history!!!
