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I hope you enjoy these drawings as much
as I do. They’re just light fun for a lightman, the
bands, the crew and—most importantly—the audience,
without whom nothing would have been possible.
There are bands who believe that they are
the beginning, the center and the end of everything, but there
are others who openly acknowledge the audience’s and
crew’s contribution to the success of every truly great
performance. (Not to mention the paycheck.)
Somewhere along the way, I decided to
design and direct lighting without meeting the bands, much the
same way as an album illustrator designs a record jacket before
the recording session has been completed. For me, that makes
for less friction and more spontaneity in the creative
interaction between the lighting and the band, which means more
potential for magic all around.
Also—Jerry Garcia and Warren Zevon
come quickly to mind—I might have accidentally seered a
retina or awakened a dark memory with lighting or a special
effect and suffered consequences that not only were undeserved,
but could easily have been avoided with distance and time. I
may pass along some of those stories as we go along.
Some bands you just don’t want to
know, and their roadies tend to look and act much like them. We
often ran across opening acts crews who were absolutely
intolerable in their expression of egocentricity. We all bit
our tongues and did our jobs but, as the stage crew so
eloquently expressed itself, “What goes up must come
down” and the load-out can somehow get much harder on the
way down. —Moyssi
