My 50th Blog Entry!

As I have already noted I worked on several concerts and went to several others, both on and off campus while at UB.
During my years in Buffalo I got to see The Who, The Grateful Dead (twice), Jerry Garcia Band, Genesis, Jesse Colin Young among a few others.
Genesis is one of the first bands to use Lasers in their show, and in a time before Vari-Lites or any other kind of motion lights and it all seemed pretty cool at the time.
I also got to work on concerts for Jean Luc Pony, Patti Smith, Spyro Gyra, The Breaker Brothers Band, Stan Getz and a few others I have forgotten.

Saturday Night Fever came out late in 1977, my last year in Buffalo, and there was a surge in Disco which had been on the decline.

I always found it funny that so many people loved the movie and disco after seeing the film but they never seem to remember that at the end Tony rejects the Disco scene as shallow and goes off to the big city to follow his dream, and the girl.

I was also “Lucky” enough to do the lighting for a Disco night concert with some local DJ.
I set up the all the lights and sent them to the dimmers through a special little electronic box that we had rented.
The special little box had both lighting and sound input and would “Bounce” the light levels to the music.
After some awful droning song that went on forever the DJ said: “Hey, you all loved that song so much I’m going to play it again!”
I switched the special boxed on and let the lights run themselves and thought it was a good time for a break.
In a recent conversation I found out that the Magic Disco Light Controller came from the lighting supply shop I now use here in the Rochester area.
Applied Audio: http://www.theatresupply.com/

There were a few miss haps along the way.
During the set up for one concert I was working behind the stage running lighting cables when I kicked an electrical cord out of the wall outlet.
No thinking about it I just plugged it right back in.
It was the main power feed to the sound system and the surge cause a very loud BANG and blew out one of the speakers.
Ooops, my bad.

Another time I nearly got electrocuted when there was bad wiring in both of the stand lamps that we were using in for one play.
I picked up both at the same time, got a big jolt and could not let go of them, I was shaking and things started to go grey.
My heart pounded and I felt a bit “Fried” for a while after that experience.
For those of us who worked with lights it is a normal part of the job to be “Bit” by electricity from time to time, but this was bad and hurt like hell.
A while later, after I let go, someone touched the two lights together and they both lit up, a nice example of a short circuit.

There were also great speakers who came to the college when I was at UB.
Some of the people I got to hear included Moe Howard (soon before his death), Noel Neill (Lois Lane from the old TV show), Jerry Rubin, Jimmy Carter, Vincent Price (very cool), Chris Miller (the guy who wrote Animal House) and my favorite R. Buckminster Fuller who I got to meet after his talk.
There were always too many good things to do and see when I was in College and Grad School, but I tried to get to as many as I could.

During breaks when I went home to Long Island I would also go in to NYC and buy tickets at TKTS in Times Square.
I would do this several times a year and got to see many great shows.
Coming in by train I would get there early enough that I was often the first or second person on line and had my choice of any of the plays that were running.
Several times I ran into this couple who were fellow Theatre Majors from UB.
Among the many shows I saw, often with the original cast, were: 42nd Street, Chorus Line, Chicago and Sweeney Todd, all of which  have had recent revivals and/or  have been made into movies.

I do not go back to Long Island as often as I did when I was younger and sometimes miss the energy of the City.