On Sept. 4 and 5, 2010, Laser Spectacles went back to Apache Pass, TX, to have fun with a big green laser in the sky. The event delivered as promised – it was huge, lots of people, and first class staging and event production. The weather was fantastic, and four stages provided music by artists from around the world. There were fantastic art exhibits sprinkled around the venue like the “Fleeble Flobber”!
I took the opportunity to walk around a little the day before Nocturnal opened, and snapped some photos of everything going up and being delivered. This event used the entire grounds of Apache Pass, and it was green from the recent rains and ready to go. In fact, the skies opened up on Thursday night (Nocturnal did not open until Sat.) and dumped a lot of rain on the grounds, leading to hurried covering of expensive lighting instruments, and a lot of ruts as vehicles had to drive through the muddy grounds. But everything was dry the next day, and setup proceeded unimpeded.
There were four stages, each of a different design, created by Hyacinth Belcher and her crew from OnStage Productions out of Dallas. The first was sort of a standard box or Thomas truss stage; the second was a pyramid trussing structure with the DJ booth high up inside the pyramid; the third was a complex arrangement of trussing set between two huge old trees; and the fourth was the existing stage at Apache Pass, with a small creek running between the audience and the stage. At this stage, speaker scaffolds were actually built in the creek below, in order to get the sound to the audience more efficiently.
I could not resist taking some panoramic shots as the place was too big to take in all at once.
The big suspension walkway bridge was pretty much off limits this party, and had a long color changing LED light attached to the rail.
I thought that we were at the coolest stage – Stage 3 the Upside Down Room. This stage was what it was all about – surrounded by ancient Texas bottomland trees, cool and green – this would certainly be where the nocturnal creatures would appear.
We saw a lot of neat stuff being set up – butterfly bicycles, the Fleeble Flobbler, a big white geodesic dome, and the Scooby Doo Crew had an encampment off to the side with some big speakers, and several ridable noise making vehicles. The big white dome turned out to be a Camel cigarettes advertising piece, you could go in there and if you swore that you were a smoker, they took your driver’s license and did things in front of a camera with cute models (I am not making this up).
I had noticed the Fleeble Flobbler, but did not know what it was – it kind of looked like a giant “Mr. Peanut” in the distance. Up close, I could see that it was going to burn – they had cords of firewood stacked around it ready to go. Interesting!
The Lasers
We had a big YAG Q-switched laser set up on a scaffolding just inside the entrance. It was fun to hear the comments of people entering – they could see the lasers for miles as they approached the show.
We also had a couple of full color lasers at Stage 3 – Upside Down Room. While OnStage had set up a ton of super bright lights, the lasers in and amongst the trees added just the right touch to make this stage the dark nocturnal wonderland that we all hoped that we would find at this show.
