It was...Bedlam

The nights are closing in and all the students are back from a busy summer of...studentism. That must mean that the Bedlam bus is coming into town!
Yet again it was a relentless night of drum and bass, dubstep and a spot of grimey beatey type things with some wum-wum-wum-woh-woh-woh bass and I got to oversee the whole night. Me vs. two rooms of constantly changing MCs and DJs, equipment that would break when i leave the room and fix itself before I arrive and a promotor who got given a radio he couldn't hear because it was he was in loud rooms!

A list of broken equipment started forming before the clock even struck midnight, which included a sound engineer who broke his glasses by face-planting the stage! There was a welcome intermission around 2-3am when somehow amongst the smoke, haze, tobacco smoke, weed and general sweat fumes, smoke detector set off the fire alarms, causing a few thousand ravers to have to evacuate into the night air for a few minutes.

After 13 hours of Bedlam, I fell into bed and spent the next day walking as little as possible on my swollen feet and trying to surround myself in vibration-free silent things.

People were walking around with DSLRs in cinema rigs so hopefully a tasty-looking video will appear soon, you can't see much in the photos this year so i can't boast about it too much. Roll on Hospitality!

Life of the Rich and Famous

I got a call the other day from Rich in Media Sales (or something like that) at the students union, he needed a photographer to cover the Student Media Awards at the Cardiff Hilton and would I be interested?

Being the curious cat that I am i said of course, since I wanted to see inside the hilton, that i have walked past hundreds of times but never dared go inside for fear of being whisked off my feet by my collar and thrown out the door by a burly bouncer.

Greg James from Radio 1 (one of my favourites for live DJing, he's really very good) presented most of the awards. It all looked very pretty indeed with Peanut's fruity lighting colours and lots of white drape and frippery. On top of champers and other fine details that make an awards ceremony so glitzy, I have to say that the Hilton make a mean lasagne. I could have done with 4 pieces of garlic bread instead of 2 though, get it sorted!

Flashy Flashy

As a technician, and especially a lighting technician, its not often that i get recognition from artists or in the press (aka blogosphere), but the last two weeks I've worked on two events where the feedback has been positive and has made me feel like my contributions have been appreciated.

The other week I worked a drum and bass night in the SU's Great Hall, called Hospitality. Hospitality is generally seen as the little cousin of the larger BEDLAM nights that happen at the union, but this last event was the best yet and hopefully will set the calibre of acts higher for next time.


Alongside the regular local and regional DJs and MCs, I had the privilege of lighting a set by Mr David Rodigan, the reggae equivalent of Tim Westwood. Rodigan (blue t-shirt) played some great tunes, was a fantastic MC and all round good fun.

After a big night of bass and "revelry" it was time for a week of tent-based christian music and worship in the form of IgniteHope 2010. 

IgniteHope is the sequel to the national Hope '08 initiative in which many thousands of young christian people did good deeds in their community to show the love of God through their actions, and Hope Local in 2009, which sought to let the churches have a go at organising their own social action, rather than having it centrally controlled by Ignite.

This years event production was provided by PG Sound and was a grand entry into the world of medium scale outdoor events for the company, only a year after its inception. 

The event was held in Sophia Gardens in Cardiff City Centre, (as far as I know we had no noise complaints!) and the site was used as a mustering point for hundreds of young people for the mornings and evenings, and was open to the public during the day.

Pictures From the event will hopefully arrive soon on the internet, I couldn't tell you where because there were so many people with cameras, but when I find some good photos I'll post them here

Lighting was provided by MJ Lighting, Video by Genero, Sound and crew by PG Sound and Staging from Stage Lighting Services.