As far as I know, Paramount (San Antonio, TX) still produces the entire show, including the lasers. This has been an ongoing, touring show for 35+ years.
Greg
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Thanks Greg. I just found that it is the Paramount Organization, Inc. of San Antonio, TX. Their venues always seem to be at Paramount Theatres in various cities as well. Over these many years, sometimes the Laser Spectacular is with live bands, sometimes not. I was just debating whether it was worth the price of admission.
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Hmm… maybe some cities, but the show for Houston is at a different named venue, seats 3000. Yes, not inexpensive, but downtown venues of the size being used aren’t cheap. I think tickets are $40-$50 each, parking is $20 if you park at the venue garage. I’ve probably seen this show 10-12 times across various cities that I’ve lived in over the years. Lights, video, lasers, atmospherics and inflatables - I’ve never seen this show with any live performance, as it has always be done to recorded music to the best of my knowledge. I think it’s a nice show and have never regretted going to any of them. I have seen people mention Groupon and TravelZoo for discounted tickets now that the show is a few days away here.
Too many unknowns in life - go listen to some Pink Floyd and see some lasers! 50 years of DSOTM is worth celebrating, IMO…
Greg
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Hi Alden, sorry to come to this conversation so late - I started this show, with Steve Monistere back in 1986. I had been doing a lot of planetarium shows up until then, and wanted to get into doing theaters with beam effects added, so I started doing "Midnight Laser Concerts" in Austin, TX movie theaters that year, based on Dark Side of the Moon + more Pink Floyd songs.
When I went looking for a theater in San Antonio, I found the Woodland Theater, and Steve was booking jazz acts there, I talked him into booking my laser show. Well, it was a great success, and he talked me into letting him book my show after that as "Tim Walsh's Original Laser Spectacular". We did a bunch of shows all over the country for a couple of years, but the position was not tenable for me, my wife did not have good feelings about Monistere; when he decided that he wanted to stay at home to just book the shows, and let Helen manage the show on the road, it was soon over, for some reason it was not making much money, and not fun for me anymore. Steve found Walt Meador and started doing the shows with him as "Paramount's Original Laser Spectacular", and when Walt quit, he eventually bought his own equipment and has kept the show going all these years.
I did play live sax on "Comfortably Numb", harmonizing with the sax solo and then taking over, which was a big hit. Monistere hired a sax player to play in the show but it did not go over as well, and dropped it after a few years.
I have worked on the show several times over the years, but not this current incarnation. I saw it a few years ago and it sucked, they had just changed to Beyond and had a lot of problems... it's probably better now.
- Tim
You actually had a hand in the beginnings of this show - as I bought a rack of your "Lasermaster" scan amps and a bunch of road cases from you that we used to get the show on the road in a full color RGB version!
1st Place Laser Jockey ILDA 2013-15, working for the ultimate fusion of lasers and music
Hi Tim, I hope you and Helen are doing well and I am sure glad you joined in on this thread. What a great, historical retrospective on the beginning, middle and current state of this laser show series produced out of Texas! Now I recall your mentioning "going on the road" in conjunction with a promoter you had found back in '86 or so, when you bought the bulk of my laser stuff. That infusion of cash is what enabled me to make a production run for 20 of my Apple IIe LaserMaster co-processor, 4-layer quad DAC boards. So, in complement you played a big part in that as well and it worked out well for both of us! All this was taking place just a few months prior to the 1st big meet-up in Lake Tahoe of the ILDA founding members, which you encouraged me to be part of, but I couldn't.
After reading your reply I saw where Monistere's "laser spectacles" had a number of similar yet variant names over the decades.
Best regards,
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