Rock gets wired

Back - Index - Submissions - - What is RSS? Date: Dec 19, 2000 Source: Reuters / Yahoo! News Submitted By: Aprille [This article contains a little reference to BSB. You can jump to it by clicking here] By Susan Karlin LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - ``Whatever you do, turn your cell phones off near the video equipment!'' The order thundered from Michael Blum, producer of the video staging of rock band Bon Jovi's North American ``Crush'' tour, on the final night at Los Angeles' Great Western Forum arena. ``You know the feedback you get when your cell phone is near a radio? Well, imagine it near enough power to drive a 15- by 42-foot screen,'' Blum shouted over the din of 18,000 screaming fans as he led reporters downstairs, past security guards checking passes and into a labyrinth of cinderblock corridors. Behind the stage was the Starship Enterprise: a huge $1 million wall of computers, monitors, editing decks, switchers and cables that becomes even more impressive when you realize it is schlepped nightly from city to city for each gig. Anthony Bongiovi, younger brother of the group's lead singer Jon Bon Jovi, was manning mission control, switching eight video cameras and nine pretaped music videos in time to the music and barking cues while bouncing to the beat in his seat. ``Everything is happening at the same time, between moving between screens, running the videos, shooting what's going on live and playing it back at the same time, in time to the music,'' said Bongiovi, who also directed the videos through his TBJ Entertainment, housed at Interlock Studios in Hollywood. ``There are so many variables that might happen in a show. Jon might change the set in the middle of the show and not tell anybody. So we're constantly adapting,'' he explained. This was not your parents' rock concert. Since the '70s, when Genesis funded the development of computerized arena lighting, through the pyrotechnics of the heavy metal era and into the digital age, when equipment became smaller, more transportable and cheaper, rock concerts have experimented with feats of mechanical engineering to push the hi-tech envelope. ``Audiences expect it now as an addition to the experience and reflection of the rise in ticket costs,'' said film director Rick Schmidlin, a former lighting designer for punk band ``X.'' Technology Almost Overrides The Show ``The technological elements of rock concerts have changed more dramatically than any other art form, to where it almost outrides everything else in the stage show,'' Schmidlin said. Broadway director Robert Roth, who directed Alice Cooper's Brutal Planet world tour this year, envisions next a fine-tuning of rock's techno-revolution. ``Technology in rock shows has been the norm for the past 10 to 15 years, but designers are always trying to find ways to refine existing elements,'' he said. ``The granddaddy of rock shows is Pink Floyd. Its 1994, The Division Bell tour had more lighting than I've ever seen. It had movie projections, quadraphonic sound, state-of-the-art visual displays and short films commissioned from artists. The entire industry acknowledges that they win,'' Roth said. ``But the Rolling Stones' Bridges to Babylon tour had a bridge that jetted out from the stage over the audience without suspension wires. It was a technological marvel. I have no idea how it stayed there,'' he added. ``The Backstreet Boys will probably come up with something big for their Black and Blue tour, which starts in January. Last year they had a stage-in-the-round that used the entire arena for lighting. It was the first time I'd seen that. They flew in on skateboards over the audience.'' Bon Jovi upped the ante on its tour with a projection screen so wide that Bongiovi had to shoot the footage in a special extra-wide format, then seamlessly project it in two halves to create an image that filled the entire screen. He intercut live footage with that from nine concert music videos and montages that he and Blum shot in digital video, 16mm, 35mm time-lapse and Hi-Definition Video, edited on the new AVID Symphony 3.0 during the course of a sleepless six weeks. ``We own stock in Starbucks at this point,'' Blum said, laughing. Bon Jovi plans to keep the spirit of envelope-pushing in an international stadium tour to start in Australia on March 28. At that time -- digital gods and sponsors willing -- Bongiovi hopes to set up live streaming on Web site http://www.bonjovi.com. Rather than being a one-time event, it will stream songs live from each concert through a camera offering a 360-degree view of the stadium, plus live backstage footage and daily downloadable clips of the band -- an extension of the ``Crush'' recording sessions that Bongiovi streamed on the site this year under the heading of ``Bon Jovi TV.'' ``A lot of other bands are getting into similar types of technology, but the way we've been able to integrate all these different types of media is unusual,'' Blum said. ``The technology can get so exciting it's easy to forget that it's really about the music too.'' Reuters/Variety REUTERS Comment on this item. Recent Comments Submitted by: David Submitted by: Ann Submitted by: Michael Pollitt Submitted by: Ann Elisabeth Submitted by: Halz Submitted by: Michael Pollitt Comment on this item. Next Item: Out With Bush, In With BSB, Woo! Prev Item: Teen pop in crisis