Ahhh, it's done and it went very well.

Thanks to all of you who showed up at the Utah Arts Festival to see the Sons Of Nothing FloydShow Pink Floyd tribute Saturday night. I saw a few faces I recognized but, unfortunately, wasn't able to socialize much.

The road to Saturday night's performance was a fairly long one. We pitched a proposal to the UAF several months ago, in January or February I think, to do the show. That proposal included lasers, pyrotechnics, two high-output fog machines, a flying airplane crashing into the stage, as well as a generous lighting package with several moving intelligent lighting instruments. The UAF signed off on just about everything but the lasers.

Pyrotechnics were a controversial issue and eventually, despite the fact it was originally approved, the explosion effect to accompany the plane flying into the stage -- a staple of many of Pink Floyd's live shows -- was crossed off and we dropped the airplane as well since it would be a little anticlimactic without the explosion.

We decided from the get-go that I would handle the lighting of the show if UAF's designated provider of lighting equipment (Oasis Stage Werks) provided me with the necessary training on the DMX console for the show.

The stage itself presented us with some challenges for lighting. There were no overhead battens for lighting; All general stage illumination would be from the sides or the back. Since we had a projector screen behind the band, we would not want any lighting from the back. Everything had to be from the sides, and that's fine.

We wanted the moving heads to be mostly for effect lighting and wanted them placed on vertical towers on either side of the screen. In the end, we got two more moving heads and placed them on the floor of the stage near the front.

Oasis obliged by providing two large 4-post truss towers affixed to heavy plates for the moving heads.

To organize the event, we met in person with UAF coordinators and I set up an Internet e-mail list for everyone involved. On that list, we discussed schedules, contingencies, and other issues. Without that list, this event would not have come together anywhere near as well as it did.

Friday night, the night before the show, we converged on the arts festival around 8:00 p.m. with all our gear. The Utah Symphony and Opera Company were on the schedule to perform on the stage from 8:30 to 9:30 and as soon as they were finished and their stuff was off the stage, we would begin setting up our show as if were playing that night. Once everything was set up, we'd spike the locations of all the equipment and move it all off-stage.

Friday night went frustratingly slow. Nobody figured the US&OC would have so much stuff to clear off and maybe they didn't realize we were waiting for them to get the hell off the stage, but it took a while. The first thing we did was set up the screen and the projector. The stage crew was still working on taking the risers they had used for the symphony and either disassembling them or modifying them into rolling risers for our drum kit and "keyboard world."

Adam, my brother-in-law, employee, and good-buddy, came up to help and ran a long line of category-5 cable from stage right to the sound booth about 150 feet in front of the stage. That was so we could control Lumen -- the Linux system which runs all the projections and sound effects -- with a laptop or laptops.

Originally, we had planned to get everything set up and maybe run through a sound check on Friday night, but that didn't happen. We got all the PAR cans on each side of the stage gelled and focused by about 2:00 a.m. and then I was given 30 minutes to program the lighting console. I was hoping to spend as long as necessary to get all my lighting cues put into the board, but 30 minutes wasn't enough, especially with my limited knowledge of the console.

On Saturday, we again showed up around 8:00 p.m. The Woodbury Dance Company was performing on the stage until 9:00 and so we had to stay out of the way of dancers backstage stretching. Daryn had his kit all ready to go and when 9:00 came around, the stage crew and the band immediately moved the risers into their predesignated places, moved the screen in, and put the lighting towers (towers of power) into their respective places.

Meanwhile, I was tasked with getting Lumen up and running and running an audio signal to the sound board so we could get effects leveles through the on-stage monitors tested as soon as possible. This presented me with my first problem. I went over to power up Lumen and discovered someone had removed the cable we had used to power it the night before. I had someone chase down a cable for Lumen and get it powered on.

I went out to the sound board and set up my laptop. When I plugged in the ethernet cable, I didn't get a link. I called Stephen, another employee/buddy of mine who had come to help, and asked him to check on Lumen. He said Lumen was powered up and the network cable was connected. I started to panic a little at this point. The cable was running across the grass where people had been sitting all day to the stage. What if someone thought it would be fun to cut it? Or what if it had been bent to the point one of the pairs in the cable had been impaired?

Then, I surmised that maybe Adam hadn't run a crossover cable but, instead, ran a straight-through cable. THat would make sense since we had the cable plugged into a mini-switch Friday night and everything was working fine then. So, I pulled out my mini-switch and got a link light. All was good with the network.

I logged into Lumen and started up X. Nothing was appearing on the screen- there was no video signal going from Lumen to the projector. Before I could alert someone to this problem so they could investigate on-stage, I lost my connection to Lumen. Also during the time, the stage crew brought out a big crate to put the lighting console on. I explained I needed something like a folding table so we could have the lighting console and a couple laptops on it. They came back with a large folding table from backstage.

Stephen or Adam reported back to me that Lumen had been accidentally unplugged from power and was back up. I confirmed that I again had a connection to Lumen, but when I tried to get some video to display on the projector screen, I was still getting nothing.

Before I could alert anyone on-stage to this problem so they could pursue an investigation, the Oasis folks informed me they didn't have enough DMX cable to make the run from the stage clear out to the sound board where the DMX lighting console was. We had to move the table closer to the stage.

This, of course, was inconvenient because Reese was planning on having me there to cue him from time to time for sound effects mixing. Nevertheless, we moved, telling people to make way for our 10-foot table as we moved about 20-30 feet closer to the stage.

Now the lighting console was connected to the DMX cable, but I still had no control of the on-stage lights. The time was about 9:30. We should have started the show by now.

I had also been running a looping audio signal on lumen so the sound levels on stage could be checked. When I had last seen Lumen, no one had connected the direct-input (DI) boxes into the audio snake backstage, so I told John Reese -- our sound engineer -- about that. Eventually, they got that straightened out. Still no signal. Eventually, I discovered the audio was muted on Lumen and fixed that.

Once we got everything moved and settled at the new location, the band was ready to start playing. Suddenly, I had control of the lights. I brought up a low level of blue lights to wash the stage. The first song was Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which we generally accompany with lots of fog. The stage was virtually fog-free. I was then told the fog machine (only one, not two like we had specified) was on a timer and not remotely controllable.

Adam started the Shine On video from his laptop after Matt and Flanders started the song. It was then I was abruptly reminded that we hadn't gotten a video signal through to the projector yet. I sent Adam and Stephen backstage to investigate and resolve. I was worried the video cable from Lumen to the projector might have gotten damaged or crushed under something since the night before and, in that case, we'd be sorely out of luck.

Two times, Stephen and Adam came back and told me they could find nothing wrong. Adam asked me if the problem could be Lumen. I told him no, I had checked Lumen and it was operating fine. Finally, they got it working. After the show, I found Lumen wrapped in black gaff tape to keep the power and video cables attached.

Good job, guys.

So, the Shine On video didn't get projected at all. Disappointing, but not a tragedy. We had video ready to go for the next song: In The Flesh. The song was a big energy change from Shine On and it got people on their feet.

The rest of the show went smoothly for us. At one point, my brother Tom, who had come to help as well, directed my attention to the large crowds of people standing near the perimiters of the grassy areas. He said they were packed back there - several people deep. We had drawn a huge crowd!

In the end, it was a tremendous success. Sure, there were things that could have gone better, but on the whole, it went pretty good.