CherryPopper

The start of 2006 kicked off with me hanging around the Thirsty Merc guys at the New Year on the Waterfront gig. The end of 2006 was even better!!!

Follow up:

This year I was down at the Falls Festival doing the lighting down there. I started on the Wednesday before new year doing prep at the factory then headed down on Thursday morning to Falls. Early start to what was going to be a long day. After getting there and waiting for the tent to be completed we started constructing the stage and getting the rigging up for the lighting. The lighting rig took a little longer to get setup due to the pissy lifter we had which could only hold 120kg... so me and 1 moving light at a time. We finally got it all up there and powered and it was time for some testing. A few issues popped up but it all worked ok after dinner.

Then came time to program, what I mean by that is on the lighting desk setup movements, color changes, gobo changes (gobo's are the shapes in the lights) and a heap of other scenes to make the most out of the setup we had. So by the time I was happy with what I had done it was 4am!!! But lucky for me the first day of falls for us was just a movie night in the tent, so no work for me and i could still program

The best part of it was no so much the cool rig i had to play with, 14 moving lights, 8x 40cm disco balls, 80cm disco ball, 16 cans, 4 mojo's & 2 strobes plus a smoke machine but having the backstage pass to be able to see what goes on behind the scenes at a big name festival like falls.

With the pass I was able to check out the acts from onstage, in front of stage and also the front of house tent, not to mention be able to have a beer or 2 with them in the VIP tent. It was quite surreal chilling out knocking down a beer and having Wolfmother on one side, Eskimo Joe and John Butler on the other. Most of the bands were quite approachable and were happy to have a quick chat. I was wrapped to be able to chat to John Butler as i looooove his music and his just an awesome guy. Got him to sign my production pass too

Over all it was just an amazing experience and being able to see the crowd as the performers do really does send chills down your spine... its just magic.

But while meeting the performers was a massive buzz that wasn't the highlight of falls for me, it was the people. They were just funny most of the time. Seeing a nude guy rock into my tent and start dancing on a wheely bin or the 3 people stacked on each others shoulders only to be quickly outdone by a 4 people stack!!! but best of all was seeing a guy wearing just a nappy telling the security guard watching the backstage gate that he had lost his pass. Got to give him 10 points for trying

Enjoy the pics....