First off, you said "house" again. House? AVB, Tiesto, and PVD and Oakenfold, for that matter, are all trance DJs. They've made other tracks, but they are primarily trance producers/DJs, unless I'm grossly misinformed. Is this one of those football/soccer-type terminology variations? I fully realize the similarity as far as the beat structure of both genres.. maybe we're more picky over here in the US.
Anyway, I think there were somewhere between 1200 and 1500 that night. It was a Sunday in Portland (Oregon), so that was impressive for numbers. I bet "big" means something more like 8,000+ where you're at. The largest rave-type events I see are in Seattle where they can have somewhere around 10,000 people sometimes. Here in Portland, we max out at ~2000 since there aren't any affordable large venues and there aren't people willing to risk attempting to throw anything bigger.
-Jonathan
Wuahaha i bet you did :-)
Gi's almost alway get a warm reception over here.
I did get to know some Gi's when i was more active in the honda dragrace scene.
I went to RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany a couple of times to see the dragraces.
The where stationed on RAMSTEIN. (verry impressive base.. driving on that base almost feels like a different world)
Those guys drive some serious import cars.
And talk funny? wehehehe.. i must sound like arabic to you :-)
@ platinum
Big is 20.000 to 40.000 people over here :-)
Trance, Techno, Progressive, hardhouse, Harcore, Jumpstyle, hardstyle, minimal, Club, Hardtrance, etc. We all call this House music.
The biggest party here in the Netherlands was Dancevalley, with more than 90.000 people. But the roads didn't alloud this huge ammount of people and became a big mess. So the folowing year the event was limited to 50.000 people. (We had to walk for 4 hours to get home )
Nothing like the rave scene in Europe. A *big* show for Tiesto over here is 5000 people. In Amsterdam it would be 10 times that many.
Also, there's no money in it over here. Too many laser hacks working out of their garrage with no variance for their equipment. Case in point: I helped a professional laser show company do a show for Tiesto a few years ago. This was a 2600 person venue, and it was sold out. (The Tabernacle in Downtown Atlanta, Georgia, for those of you that know the city.)
The laser company showed up with a Coherent I-90 Kr/Ar whitelight laser with an 8 channel PCAOM, plus a pair of 1 watt green projectors. They also brought a pair of Lexel-95's just in case the I-90 or one of the solid-state green projectors developed any problems. They had a spare computer and controller in addition to the two we used for the show. They had bounce mirrors to hang, a large scaffold to assemble (that's what the I-90 sat on), plus a bunch of cables and hoses to run to feed the PSU for the I-90. Setup time was around 5 hours in total. They also had a pair of DF-50 hazers present.
The show lasted 6 hours. Then we had to tear everything down and pack it up. That took another 3 hours or so. So we're talking about 14 total hours of work, plus travel time. Here's the kicker: The gig only payed about a grand total. My son and I worked for free that night (just to have the fun of seeing the lasers), but the company had to split the money among the three people that worked the gig. That's not a lot of money when you split it 3 ways...
Why so cheap? Simple. There was another guy in Atlanta that was willing to do a 2-projector show (green-only) for the same price, and the promoter didn't want to spend any more money than that. "Take it or leave it", basically. Since the guys that I was working with *really* wanted to see Tiesto, they agreed to do the show for the low price so they could get in. They also hoped to impress the promoter with the full-color show and thus bring in more business. They have done more shows at the Tabernacle since then, but I don't think they're getting any more money for the shows yet...
I suppose they did OK since they got like 8 complimentary tickets for their friends and such, but even so I thought it was a pitifully small amount of money considering the work and equipment involved. I had a blast, since for me it was a real treat just to work with the guys and the equipment. But if it was my primary source of income, I would be looking for a new job for sure! Still, that's the reality of laser shows in this country - at least when you're talking about the nightclub and rave scene. You gotta love what you are doing, because there's no real money in it. (For the record, the guys that did the show all have day jobs that don't involve lasers.)
Corporate gigs pay much better, of course, and so do large shows for big, headliner bands. But that's not the sort of show that you can even bid on unless you've got the big guns to back it up. (Thus the expression, go big or go home.) Saddly though, even in that market, the big guys are being undercut by hacks that don't go have the proper paperwork and don't bring enough equipment to get the job done.
Adam
Hi Randy!
I'm fine - thanks for asking. Back is not giving me any pain at all. No pain in the leg either! Some lingering numbness from the calf down, but the doc said that will pass in time.
I'm actually back to work today. (First day back, and only light duty of course...) But things are otherwise just like normal. Guess I got lucky with my surgery - most people have a lot more pain. (Color me fortunate, I guess.)
So yeah, I'm back! Got a lot of catching up to do though...
Adam