#249 Michael Keeling

0:00 First of all, I will tell you that it was a very fun episode and I hope you enjoy it because I certainly enjoyed recording it. And Michael's a long time friend. We've been friends for, I believe, over 30 years. And sorry, I got a bit of a cold. So I'm talking funny. And so I'm talking about Michael Keeling, of course. And so anyways, I met him when he was at Obi's and he did a couple tours and used stuff that I was repping at Martin and we became good friends. And I've known him for many years. And so we talked about a lot of the stuff that he's working on today, but we talked a little bit about his past as well. Very interesting guy.

0:42 He's done a lot of really cool things. He's done a few of the most epic music videos from a lighting standpoint ever. And if you asked me right now to name what I thought was like the number one music video as far as lighting or creativity with lighting or, you know, innovation with lighting, I would probably really near the top of the list would be Coldplay speed of sound. And Michael did that. Today's podcast is brought to you by Elation. Those familiar with Elation know that the company embodies a relentless drive to innovate, to break new ground and elevate industry standards through new development. Two prime examples of this commitment are True Tone and Color Tune, new lighting technologies that offer designers the ability to tailor lighting to meet their exact needs.

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2:21 To learn more about True Tone and Color Tune, visit elationlighting.com. This episode is also brought to you by Main Light, a national dry hire rental provider specializing in the latest lighting and staging equipment technology. Their extensive rental inventory includes moving lights, trust solutions, control consoles, LE DS and an array of weather resistant IP65 fixtures. Perfect for outdoor venues, weather for theater productions, outdoor stadium events or TV film broadcasts. Main Light is the partner you trust with the gear you want. Committed to quality and reliability, Main Light also provides a robust selection of used sales options to their clients. Each item is meticulously maintained, owned by Main Light and comes with a 60 day depot warranty providing you with confidence in your purchase.

3:18 Strategically located across the US, their four key locations include Teterboro, New Jersey, Wilmington, DE, Nashville, TN, and Las Vegas, NV. They combine the vast resources of a national company with the attentive, personalized service of a local provider. Discover how Main Light can equip your next event by visiting Main light.com today to get a direct quote through their comprehensive online ordering platform. So yeah, couple of things to talk about today. So first, as you probably know by now, if you're in our industry, our friend Craig Burrows passed away. I talked about him in the previous episode, so I'm not going to go too far into that.

4:38 I did travel last week, which is 2 weeks ago by the time you hear this, but I did travel last week to Austin for his funeral and the celebration later, which was a very cool party actually, with the Swinging Johnsons, the industry band playing, which is Robert Mokri and Tommy Hall and Scott Church. Just, you know, good guys that everybody knows. Bruce Jordal, good band. And so they played. There was a huge screen up just going through images with Craig, and that was super sad watching that all night. And then his stepson Chase's band played as well.

5:21 Very good band, by the way. And of course, I got to give a couple big hugs to Kat, Craig's wife, and to his family. And so, yeah, it was a cool event, but it was a really cool event from a standpoint of just being able to see so many people that I haven't seen in a while. Richard Bellevue and Lowell Fowler, two of the founding members of High End systems. MOKRI. I got to hang with a bit and Bruce and just so many people, a bunch of other people from high end that I hadn't seen in years, Karen Bowler and Melissa and just Billy, Katie and lots of people that were just really great to hug and say hello to. And I always say, I mean, great party, horrible reason. You know, I, I, I'll miss Craig a lot and I know a lot of people will.

6:12 So I'm not trying to take your Thunder by saying that. Of course, moving on to AI now. So I'm working on an episode with Bob Boniel, who I'm sure you all know, and he's become a big AI guy. And especially as it relates to our industry. And he actually, I just saw yesterday, I haven't read it yet, so I can't comment on it, but I just saw that he put out an article about it. So we're talking about we're booking a date. I'm not sure when it is. It might even be booked by now. I'll have to ask Sarah. But Bob will be coming on and doing a very AI focused podcast with me.

6:56 And so a few highlights this week or the last couple of weeks, Apple intelligence, I'm sure you've seen this by now. If you're an iPhone guy, you know, it's, it's controversial already in a sense. On on one hand, you know, Apple's stock has hit a new highest ever, But on another hand, you know, they're saying it's hugely safe. But you've got Elon Musk saying that if it's baked into iOS, it's not safe. And you know, they're they're bluffing you by saying it's safe. And he's banning Apple devices from all Tesla space XX companies or facilities. So, yeah, I mean, it's it's complicated. I guess.

7:44 You know, the market is really happy that Apple is doing this. The market being the stock market, I think many regular people who don't understand technology really well, this is going to give them access to AI in their daily lives. And so I guess some of the key functionalities in this Apple intelligence, which I believe really is just ChatGPT, but some of the key functionalities include managing notifications, summarizing and rewriting text across apps, generating images, transcribing phone calls, which is one that I will definitely use a lot. Safari highlights, math notes, Gen. Moji, which I don't even know what the hell that is, but I'm sure every kid does.

8:34 Image playground and enhanced Siri capabilities, which I'm looking forward to because Google people, Google phone people are always telling me how you know, I'm such a loser with an iPhone and their Siri is better than my Siri. ChatGPT 4 exhibits deceptive behaviors in simple test scenarios. Experiments have showed that ChatGPT 4 demonstrated deceptive behavior 99.16% of the time. So what does that mean? I don't really know yet, but I don't think it's going to help generate trust or at least make trust automatic. I think people are going to question it for sure if it's giving deceptive responses or or showing deceptive behavior. Here's a weird one.

9:26 Generative AI models are competing in the first Miss AI pageant this month. So it's basically AI generated women. And you know, you're picking the prettiest one. So I think it's a bit creepy. I'm sure it's going to get some people wound up, especially women probably are going to think this is terrible for women. You know, how can you take our pageants away from us? Prizes include 5000 cash and a bunch of other sort of side prizes like mentorship programs and different things. And I think we can all expect this to move into social media where we're going to start seeing influencers that are fully AI generated and they're probably already there. So not the best use of AI in my opinion. And here's one that I read that I really don't like. AI can easily replace CEOs saving money and improving decision making with data-driven decisions. Hmm, that's interesting.

10:30 So you know, people are complaining about losing their jobs. I've just been replaced by AI. Michael Keeling is a production designer, creative show designer, director, and producer for live concert festivals, content, artist production, media campaigns and creative productions. Michael has worked with incredible artists including Lenny Kravitz, Coldplay, Justin Timberlake, Aerosmith, No Doubt, Incubus, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa to name a few. Michael is the CEO of Project X which he started nearly 30 years ago. You can visit Project X Collective dot live and learn more. Michael has many industry accolades including MTV 2 VMA award for the Bravery, Honest Mistake, which we did speak about and he'll tell you a little bit about it. Best music video and MTVVMA award for Lenny Kravitz, Are You going to Go My Way, which we also spoke about on this podcast.

11:29 Michael's motto is dream design, deliver. Today. Michael is the productions and creative producer for S2 BN Entertainment. We had the pleasure of talking with Michael back in 2020. You can check that out, episode number one O 6 on Spotify or geeseofgear.com. So please, let's welcome Michael Keeling back to the show and remember to like and subscribe. Thanks Michael Keeling. How are you mate? I'm doing good, Marcel. How about yourself, buddy? I'm a little bit sick. 6060 hit me on Saturday and kicked me in the balls with some kind of a flu, COVID, cold, dwarfed together mess of bugs. Well. 6063 hit me last Friday.

12:18 Oh, did. I yeah, I keep forgetting we're a day apart. Yeah, man. Forgetting about it. It blew me away when I saw this. I saw so many different birthdays happening right around this time that that just showed that all of our parents were getting it on back in in October of the previous year. Seems like a good time. Like I grew up in in Canada, so you know when it starts getting cold, you got nothing else to do. There you go. Hey, listen, so I really wanted to try to start this off and first of all, I appreciate you having me back on, but I really wanted to give some empathy and condolences to a lot of friends and associates. I just had a cousin of mine, Danny Lindley, die yesterday. That hits really close to home.

13:00 You know, I wanted to basically run down the people that aren't forgotten in our industry like Stan Green. Yeah, Stan, these are people that I've worked with personally and have a ton of respect for. So I don't want, you know, please forgive me if I miss anybody. No, you know, obviously Newt Bloomberg, you know, Andy Figueroa, an amazing under, you know, I'm just over achiever in his own right. I worked with him on a major project about five years ago. Then a year after that I found out that he had issues and he was a clear, you know, dear friend to a lot of us, extremely creative programmer. I've been very fortunate to work with, you know, some amazing programmers brought my ideas to life, right?

13:46 I think when I first, when I first met you, you were, weren't you working with Arnold Surami or something? I don't know. Well, like, you know, that's a whole another story. So Arnold began. Basically, I was the executive vice president of sales for Obi's, and I had taken my wife, I had taken my wife down to the Strand, which was about three blocks from our office. And I went to see a show there one night and I saw this kid behind the console, and it was Arnold Surami. And he was bounded at busking. You know, basically I hit him up and I said, hey, kid, you want to basically, you know, learn how to do this on a professional level. And, you know, that's when I was recruiting talent for the Telescan market and so on. And then we brought Arnold, then trained him on the Telescan, and ultimately he flourished into Arnold. Ceramic, I didn't know that.

14:32 I didn't know that that's how his his career kind of got started because I mean, he went on really quickly to be on like Michael Jackson and like Massive. Because we put him shows. Yeah, well, we put him there, right. So ultimately I've been very fortunate. At that time, I was the Booker basically for obese. Yeah, right. And was managing 7085% of the sales of the concert touring market. So yeah, when we had the Telescans, that was my baby, you know? And yeah, we had Michael Jackson. We had all these. We had to recruit talent and get him in the programming mode quickly. And Arnold overachieved. And then ultimately he became our trainer of these people. This is where I also, you know, met Luke La Fortune for the 1st. Yeah, right.

15:18 Yeah. And then I asked Luke once again. I saw him down at the pier in Santa Monica and met with him and I was just blown away by the show. First of all, one of one of the most talented individuals to control color. You know, and and and the deep. Love what show was it? That was either Saltim Banco or Mesterre, so probably Saltim Banco was the first one that was a residency down there. So I met him and then asked him to come in and then we put him on Gypsy Kings. So when he wasn't touring that 'cause he wanted to get in in the touring market. So there became the friendship with Luke La Fortune, which again back in when I left Obi's and we parted ways, partnered with Brickman for a year. Then I partnered with, I would excuse me, with Luke for about four and a half, five years and we designed and that's where I was.

16:10 Is Luke still working? He, you know, he's been on a hiatus for quite some time, but he just redid Mistaire, right? So did he. If you haven't done it, yeah, there's a lot of, there's gonna be a lot of things coming down with Cirque on in the Vegas Strip, but Mistaire is one that is timeless. So they decided to redesign it and they brought Luke back in, which was smart of them to from the origin and and they were, you know, they were smart to do that. But at the same time, gave Luke another life to actually get back in the game and to show his true talents. Because, you know, once you see an artist like that, yeah, you you always want to see more from him. And unfortunately, he, you know, he had a rough time after Cirque and then parted.

16:58 And I don't want to speak for him, but at the end of the day, he's like a brother to me. Yeah. So once in a great while, we get a chat together and and catch up. But I, I. Haven't seen him in forever. Like, I didn't know if he left the business or what, but not that I'm, you know, at the cutting edge of where everybody's working or what they're doing, but. Yeah. And again, I don't want to speak for too many people, but I speak, you know, Luke has he spent some time in Japan after the, you know, the, the move away from Sir. Then he spent a lot of time with Franco Degron and he did all the Franco stuff in Macau and so on because that's split between Guy and Franco, you know, was not very amicable. Yeah. So ultimately, you know, Luke got after I think it was O or after Kaw.

17:45 There was definitely some time that that Luke needed off because those shows back-to-back to back will drive a person crazy, let alone that time frame, let alone French Canadian. OK, so at the end of the day be. Careful there, son. Yeah. You know, hey listen, my bosses are the same. So at the end of. The day are they? Yeah, You know, I don't, I don't call myself one though, because I live in South Florida and they hate French Canadians in South Florida. So I'm, I'm like, no, I just have a funny name. Yeah. So we're not, we're getting off a little bit off. Oh, yeah, yeah, You, you. You were sorry about that. We got off. The pageant, you know, we want to go so Andy big time friend lost him three years ago, I think it was. And Gandalf, Eric Pierce, you know, he was instrumental so hard because I would literally just talking to Eric a week before the hot weather project and every time I had called, he would basically say, oh, it's the eccentric one. Yeah.

18:42 Because all of my very little left to center, I always challenged. I mean, he helped me on so many different things, whether it was flying cars over Aerosmith in 2007 for a NASCAR commercial that I was doing. And I was a show director for the band and then the Goo Goo Dolls, you know, I mean, I had a multiple grand opening on winch drum systems and all this shit and moving trusses that were just phenomenal. And I always went back to him because literally in I think it was 87, Obi put me in touch with Zappa. And that was my first design tour. And on that tour, I used the Strand Par scanner, right Eric show lights, which was like a mile and a half from our office, the only one that knew him at the time and he had something to do with him.

19:36 So I had a training session with him and those things were the worst freaking things I ever had a chance to work with. But that was my relationship that started with him. And there was always this little animosity between Show Lights and Obi's because they you were either an Obi's crew and so on. And you had Opie and you had all these guys and Bob Hughes and all these people over at Show Lights. And then we had our crew and there was always my stuff. So I had to go into their house and get trained. But Eric was always a gentleman and to me, a freaking genius, right, that we lost. I was talking. To somebody recently about the people that went through Obi's, like, I mean just an insane list of names. Arnold Salami was one of them. Look where he is.

20:18 Arnold again, I always look at it this way and go. I was very fortunate to be a lot of the Booker at that time. Then Paul George became the Booker and I ended up doing just sales of talent, right. But I was lucky to be instrumental in that early days where we found it. And like the Blake Elkins, which was a a, you know, greedy touring guy. Now he's like an amazing guy and, and you know, in Manhattan and I love him to death. And you got the Kenny Ackerman's that I had a chance to to meet put in on as a telescan tech on Genesis or something like that when I was the GC on that one. So many different other talent that is out there. Kevin Tyler, Kevin Tyler loads of people was my my second electrician in 85 through 87 on Chicago and now he's a stage manager.

21:05 So they all just go on like like I have. I've always been this convenient. That has changed changed. But let me just blast through here again. One of the gentlemen that I don't want to forget too, Charlie Mailings. We lost him about 5. Years. I already forgot, you know, like, I mean, here's the problem. As we're getting older, it's not just, you know, that more people are dying, but you start forgetting and you're like, God, is he still alive? I can't remember, you know, and I it's terrible. I just don't. Forget, you know, at the end of the day, I, I look at it, you know, I've got a couple more. I got Randy Mayer who is really close. Yeah. Randy spent, I spent a ton of time with Randy in the early days when he was still at high end. Yeah.

21:50 And then he started working for O'Brien and he was my go to guy there for a video for a a long time, especially in the music video in the commercial world. Yeah, you know, anytime I had a commercial property basically that had video and I was I was kind of the go to guy in that industry for 95 through 2010. Anything that came to me, it was like, Randy, I need you to do it, I need to do it for this and let's get it done. And he was that kind of guy that would just go perfect, you know, and he was my video contact then the guy that really started it for me that nobody even knows a gentleman by the name of Anthony Gregorio. Anthony was basically part of the El Mani mafia that I call it.

22:31 And El Mani was where we grew up and our net core of people. Anthony started working for ACDC Equipment Company, came out of Vietnam, went to ACDC, somehow got involved there. His brother Mike Gregorio got me started there. His brother John Gregorio's my cousin. So it's a little bit incestual, but that family. Anthony got killed on a motorcycle about six years ago. And he started the whole game for me. I mean, literally it again, 15 1/2 years old. I was working on the you know, I was working on the Oscars, the billboards, all these shows that were blew me away. So he's that guy. And most recently, you know, our loss of Craig Burroughs. You know, you were fortunate enough and I and I thank you for obviously going to the funeral last week. I couldn't make it.

23:23 His lovely wife, everybody. Craig was just I have so much respect for his class that he brought to the game and his genuine just friendship. Yeah, yeah, it's like it was it was never. It was like, Michael, what do you need? Yeah, he helped me last time. He really helped me out was a commercial that I did with Justin Timberlake, which was my fourth campaign with Justin. And I wanted the spiky. Yeah, He he came up with like 80 of them for me, right. And there was nothing else that I wanted other than that because it it had a look. And if you ever see this video, we'll show it.

24:03 It's like I made lights feel like they were alive. Yeah. And I always like to take a look at that. So you know he. Craig. We missed. You know what, he one of the things I was thinking about this because he was kind of a guy that was like a sales manager's nightmare, but a customer's dream. And not because he gave gear away, yeah, but because he didn't want to try to sell people like he, he he just wanted to hang out and be a fun dude and and, you know, just network and shake lots of hands and give lots of hugs and go to lots of shows and stuff. And he was really great in that role. You know, he really did a great job in that role. You remind me.

24:44 I went to South by South one year and he brought me out. You know, he's like, came pick me up. We hung out for a night or two together and then ultimately I was with him and his family watching his son played a band at a big BBQ. Oh, that's cool. And it was good. And it was like totally removed. I had a band there and I was managing at the time. And then I was doing this or that and and I was there meeting with another manager and Craig's like, hey man, let's just go left and let me take you someplace. I like that. And that's what I loved about him. We'll always. Like to talk to him, he said. He was genuine. And to me, I think I made this very clear, he was just like you. You made Martin to me right back in the day, Martin was that wiggly light based on its go world. And then we were buying lights.

25:31 The only reason why we got into them was my relationship with you. And you really spreaded that for me, that then I ended up selling it to other designers and realized that same thing with Craig. Craig was the voice and the person in front of Roby. Yeah. And I didn't believe it because, Yeah. Well, yeah, right. Same thing. Sure, actually. So then there was creds there, right. I didn't know him really from high end, but I knew him from, you know, the the Roby days. And then he introduced me to a lot of product. And then it was like, sure, absolutely. I'm sold. I love. That so I went to the funeral, but American Airlines had other ideas. And so my, my girlfriend and I, because we were on our way up here to Canada and I had to, I paid $900 in change fees to get us through Austin. And so, you know, they, they got us there like the funeral started at 11.

26:25 We were supposed to arrive at 10. We arrived at like 12, ran as fast as we could, got the rental car and we're on our way to the funeral and we get a text saying it was a beautiful service, I'm sorry you couldn't make it. And I'm like, get out of here. And so, but we got to go to the celebration that night and it was so awesome. It was gut wrenching, but beautiful to be there. Just such a great group of people, many of whom I hadn't seen in forever. You know, Lowell Fowler up singing with with the band and stuff was really fun. And you know you. Just saw Craig.

27:07 Yeah. You just saw Craig a couple weeks earlier at the race, right, Which blew me away. And I was so happy that you guys were there and was like, man, if I wish I would have known. I would have loved to gone because I'm a huge race fan, period, right? Yeah, yeah. You can see in the back that's Kenny Roger, Kenny Roberts right there. Then I've got Air Town Center in the back. I'm just a huge fan, right? Yeah, I just have pictures of my son spending all of my money in race cars. But. There you go. But now it was amazing. Not because of the race. To be honest, I'd rather watch the race on television because I really wanna know what's going on and stuff, right? You can't do that in person. But I spent the day with Craig and yeah, I'm so grateful that I got to do it because we spent hours talking about business, talking about people in the business, talking about our families, talking about my kids racing, talking about, you know, we talked about Roby a lot and where he saw it going. And, and then I'm grateful I got to sit down with Joseph, the owner of Roby at the at the celebration. And I said hey.

28:13 And I said, hey, you know, I just want to share with you what Craig told me he felt the direction of Roby should be going forward, 'cause I don't know if he ever shared it with you. And he goes please. And, you know, so we just, we sat and talked about the stuff that, that he had said to me. And one of the things which really surprised me was that Craig said there's no way Joseph Will will ever sell the company 'cause I said it's got to be getting to a a point now where it's like, you know, pretty exciting to, to go out and sell it, you know, and we don't know that the industry is going to keep growing at the rate it is right now. And he said he'll never sell. And I said why? And he said because he's, he's young and still really enjoys it.

28:57 He's passionate about the industry and, and the company still. And secondly, his family, his, his kids are in it and, and they love it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. It's a culture building such a yeah, yeah, yeah, you're, you're in rain did too, right? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's a bummer, man. It's it's a real bummer that that Craig's gone and. I mean Craig, Charlie and Charlie, all of them, all of them. It's like I'm like every day I get up, man. These days. I've been very fortunate. I have lost another 25 lbs. I've been on a very homeopathic life these days. Yes, I don't stress much. I'm working with an amazing company in S2 BN Entertainment, the name Michael Cole, that is like his son.

29:43 I'm working for, for under his son's division of exhibitions, Jacob Cole. I get chilled just thinking about it because I, you know, first time I met Michael, I was one of the main contractors on Floyd in 94, which I also my wife at that time that I didn't even know until 95, right. So it's like when people ask me what I'm doing, I go, you know, I'm very, very fortunate. I'm, I'm retained by the company. I've been working with them for three years, almost three years now as a senior producer. I come with a creative background and a business background. You know, my background book management. So I, I know how to do business plans and these, these days I really, I'm asked to it a lot of times to do all the pitch decks. So I've it's a lot of pitch decks. Sometimes I do the full concept, sometimes I just take the slate or what we call a slate, which is a prop property. And then I build the idea based on what they give me. Yeah.

30:43 So if I'm moving forward or you want to President press, you know, put this together at all anyway on me. Why don't you tell us who who they are? Because I don't know that everybody knows who they are. Well, S2 VN Entertainment is abbreviation for soon to be named Yeah, or, which is what Michael's company and or Michael came up with and I don't know 100% of it, but I'm still in the. Early people who don't know who Michael is. Michael Cole, come on, He's the promoter. He's. Not everyone knows well he's the guy there. You know, was a promoter of all the David Bowie tours. He was, you know, Pink Floyd, Genesis, anything with Tony Smith and the bands across the pond.

31:26 I mean, you know, huge Canadian promoter of the time that I mean, I, I sit there and I, when I chat with him, I, I listen, right. You're in, you're, you're in the midst of a professional. It's like, you know, he doesn't say much, but when he says it, boy, he speaks loudly with a very soft tone. You know, you're in a room and you're being, you know, mentored and tutored at the same time. And you even at my age, it's like, listen, my whole is you know you. He was one of what was he one of the original CE OS or board members of Live Nation and then separated and started soon to be named.

32:10 So they're heavy into, you know, theater production. So he does a lot of stuff from Broadway. He was the one of the main promoters, brought the YouTube package together for Spider Man. We do just a ton of different things in the theater world. Working on a few projects in the theater stuff right now, which again, they'll send me, you know, pretty much all the content and then I'll create it, produce the decks for him. Yeah. And then do some. I I don't do a lot of the copy edit. I definitely do a bunch of it, but at the same time I leave that to the pros. And then there's sometimes where I just get concepts from it. So he's got theater division, he's got the live division. So he's still promoting live, very boutique style live promoter these days versus the big, you know, big players.

32:56 Very quality. Yeah. Everything we do is quality. And then we have the exhibition side. So exhibitions again. The president of the company is Jacob Cole, Michael's son. Great. I mean, smart young man when I say young, anybody under 50 is young to me these days, OK, very intelligent. And him and I get along to, you know, just amazingly, we, we, we work off of each other. He asked for support in other areas. And I'm that kind of that utility guy that, hey, if it needs somebody to go out and do this, then I'll go out and do it. Or find a creative team, which what we'll do is we'll look at packages like a Hot Wheels idea, or we'll look at this idea for Floyd or this idea for that.

33:39 And then I'll look at teams to put concepts together to see who, who fits that role best. So these days I, I pretty much put together, like I said, good creative teams. So I'm, I'm at that age these days where I know where my place is and I see it where it is. There's so much great young talent out there. I'm I'm too tired to design anymore like these, these ideas. I I spent a ton of years and a pretty sizable body of work that I was very creative and to these days I still have a lot of that, just like a Mark Brickman and just like a Jim Lenahan that are extreme talents.

34:21 They're, you know, we all get to this point, though, where it's like it gets tiring to continue to come up with these ideas. I don't know if you follow Jim at all these days. No, but Jim's in this AI world where every day he's putting a new AI concept out on the world. Yeah, he's retired. Oh yeah. Just follow him. You look at his work. You want to interview somebody, interview Jim Lenahan. I've. Been dying to interview Jim Lenahan but I don't have any contact information for. Him anymore? Happy to put you in touch please. Connect. Us, you know, I especially AI. Because if if you've heard any of my last probably 20 podcasts, the intro half the intro is is on AII follow AI so closely and I'm really deeply into it. But I'm so that's another subject. Like I'm so afraid of AI too.

35:10 Yeah. It's just like, listen, Napster took my business away from me when it was music videos. It stripped out it. It's literally stripped budgets out from what I was doing. And I was doing that mega music videos, yeah, where they were all $1,000,000 music videos. I was doing the top three directors, all their music videos, all the big lighting gigs. They were coming to me. Napster came out, stripped all that money out from the record markets. That's true. YouTube came out and every kid with a camera and everybody with a freaking microphone is either a producer and a director and it took the quality out of it as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, it's progress. It's progress my ass. The end of the day goes 35mm.

35:53 Then there's HTHDI. Would prefer to see a 35mm cinema scope Mute movie and I would a high end HD movie. That's all video volume. OK, I said this. I've been very vocal about this back in the mid, you know, 2010 that I hated wiggly lights. Why? Because everybody just puts it on an effects button and they wiggle like shit. Yeah, the end of the day, that's not busking. That's that's a cheap way out. That's not you know that there's there's a designer and then there's a programmer and then there's, you know, there's the other right. And I like when I'm working with a Michael Cole team, that's the same thing. There's a quality within that these days within all the market that we're seeing. And we're I'm kind of getting away from AI because that's a subject.

36:40 There's just a litter of new talent coming up that you you got to rise to the top. And then, you know, there's a level up here and then there's a level down there and it's an A movie or a a production or AB movie and AB production. And there's just so much of that that all this progress has polluted the market and the there's a lot of people that have to fight their way to get through and then the cream will rise to the top, right. And you see that in some very talented. It's, it's getting worse and worse and worse too. You know it. It's like. But but AI is blindfolded us to that. Yeah. It's like, it's like it's a cheap way out. And and I'm I'm concerned with it that it's like that.

37:23 It's there's goodness to it and there's a lot of progress. It's going to be amazing to it, but then it's going to take a lot of jobs away. Well, I'm not as worried about the jobs because I think that all just works itself out. You know it just because half the people are going to become more productive by it and the other half of the people are going to become, you know, not necessary. But you know, I I had a really good conversation with Glenn Rogeman, who's the CEO and founder of AEDI don't know if you know who they. Are in Europe. Yeah. And so, yeah, well, and he bought a a movie studio like years ago and, and it's quite large now in Belgium. And so we talked about AI and what it's doing to movies and the fact that, you know, who is it? Tyler Perry cancelled like a billion dollar studio that he was building because of AI.

38:16 Like you just said, the future's gone, you know, for movie making. And but Glenn said, here's the problem with AI in movies. He said everything is going to get to this level and then it's going to just sit solid. Every movie is going to be exactly this good. Yeah, but you know, you've you've seen it already, though, if you look at it on the the streaming platforms because of the pandemic and so on, a lot of this stuff went there. I mean, take a look at Netflix right now. Yeah, it it's like. That end it's a recipe. It's yeah, but it's just like all the movies are just recycled BS and yeah. No, it's a recipe. It's like the same movie with different actors in a different storyline. But same, although my girlfriend and I watched Hitman last night and it wasn't bad it it was actually kind of. Interesting.

39:05 You know, Fallout's cool, there's some cool stuff there, but the big, you know. Most of it's. Garbage most of it is just that low budget stuff now seller earlier days and yeah it's all seller appreciate it but without that independency so that's independent market right Yeah, we wouldn't have Conan the Barbarian, we wouldn't have all that's. Totally true, right? But that was so far back. You look at that 40 years ago, right? So there, there's so much to be said for it. I'm just concerned on the integrity that it's going to take out from the true artistry, Yeah. Well, yeah, but also, you know, people make big movies because they are incentivized to do it. It's not just ego, You know, like the people putting the money up and stuff, they're incentivized.

39:48 They're going to get a return on it. As that return diminishes, you know, you, you stop doing it. And so I think things are going to become a little bit watered down perhaps. Very familiar, you know, lots of very familiar movies, you know, things become very similar and we'll see. You know, so far I love AI because it makes my life easier. It's become my best employee probably. But I, I completely get all of the arguments saying that it's going to take away artistry and it's going to destroy jobs. I completely understand and I agree with many of those arguments. Well, you know, video volume studios and so on are great.

40:30 My son, luckily is. You know, I got two amazing boys. You know, one, just one, went the path of second generation Michael Keeling. Yeah. And literally he is the senior engineer at Nat Studios for systems. Yeah. So he's like on another planet is where it's where I used to be, that man, I started out master electrician, right? And literally got into it and did all of that work. Well, he he became my master electrician about 12 years ago on a few projects. Then he was my production coordinator behind the office on a lot of my stuff for me too. And then I kicked him out and said go get on your own. And he basically just flourished. Then my other son Luke Lucas just blows me away. I I don't know if you guys anybody knows. My ex-wife killed herself six years ago and I left my son. Yeah, I left my sons without a mother and. I didn't know that, yeah.

41:33 Yeah, it was rough. I. Don't think you've ever told me that. Yeah, this is terrible. My first wife, Candace, which God bless her soul, she was very, it was alcohol, man. Alcohol, you know, killed my life too. Yeah and everything since I've been fortunate five and a half, five, 5.9 months now to be alcohol free and my life's changed. So Lucas both of my sons has survived that mentality of all the bullshit that mom and dad put her them through when I was touring, I missed nine of my son's birthdays touring. Yeah. So through that collective and then the break up in this this just pollution that we put to these kids in reference to what they had to deal with. I'm so fortunate that both of them have survived mentally, physically.

42:21 Lucas, 18, joins the Army does his stretch comes out puts seven years into getting his master's program just got his master's at CSUN, got two offers Purdue and AL Arizona University of Arizona and as a he's going for his PhD in English and literally accepted University of Arizona absolutely blows me away. Yeah, that these two young men are where they are and it just shows you the tenacity that you can do so Lucas just wanted to go full right of what dad's business was, wants to be a writer and an educator. And I'm just so freaking proud of them both on. I tracked what you've got going on with your son and his passion of racing blows me away.

43:15 And I I've always told them be a man of character. Own if it's your fault, own it. And at the end of the day, treat people how you want to be treated. Grab your passion. This is what a lot of the young people ask me these days. How did you get into it? Into it, man, I got lucky, but I put a lot of hard. Work your ass off. Yeah, luck just opened the. Door I didn't graduate high school at 15 1/2. I was smoking pot with a good friend of mine getting high and he goes, you want to go to work tomorrow. And I basically said sure because I hate school and at the end of day, you know, I just, I walked on a set with Bob Hope the next day and I just went like boom, there you go. 3 weeks later, my best friend, I get him a job there, Carlos Sandoval at ACDC equipment company. I know he's still working at ACDC company 48 years later that.

44:08 Is. Wild. OK. Crazy. So nuts. That's a whole. Yeah, we've talked about that earlier on, but yeah, family is everything, right? And Craig's family, I don't know what his son's doing and so on, but I hope that, you know, he's been able to pave the way for that family and, and they can carry his name on. And your son. I'm I'm looking forward to seeing him give Sebastian a kick in the ass at some point. We'll see. That's such a money driven business. It's, you know, I don't have the money that most of the competitors do out there and, and unfortunately that will keep him from the top. Yeah, but hopefully the driving speaks for itself too. Yeah, Kyle, you look at Kyle Larson and so on, who started in dirt.

44:49 Tracking though, there's so few for every for every 10 billionaire family drivers that are out there, there's 1/2 of a a real driver. So yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not bitter about it or anything. It's just, it's hard when you've invested, you know, 14 years and however much money of your life into something and you start going, wait a SEC, there's a real ceiling here unless you got like, listen. I've got because. People are going into IndyCar with, with, you know, 10,000,012 million for two seasons, you know. I mean, I've got the same thing that goes on in the this industry, you know, because of my relationships in this industry, I've got other relationships with young talent that are singers and family and so on that want and they've asked me to manage them and so on and before And I've managed multi my life and I've done that.

45:39 And I go these days, I don't even want to get into it to break an artist cause I've been there and I've failed, you know, three times with artists trying to break them and it's like I've signed them to deals and so on. And it's still a struggle. I've got a major talent in Nashville, which is one of the reasons why I was there. His name is Troy Doherty. You ever? Get listen to his stuff, you send me some links. His locals are amazing, the persona is there, but it's being at the right place on the right time. You know, getting the viral TikTok video, he's all over or whatever. Plus, I mean, he, he's a little prankster too. Started Broadway da da da da. He was an actor, moved into it, amazing young talent. But these guys just they, it's, you know, I basically say, hey, if you've got $1,000,000, we can break it because at the end of the day, you got to buy on.

46:28 Right, you got to buy. On these packages, because either that or you can try to do it organically and when they try to do it organically, five years go by, you're no longer at that age that, you know, you're really being sought after and all that kind of stuff, but. I remember back in the 80s when pay to play meant like, you're selling tickets for the Troubadour or whiskey or whatever for your gig, Right, Yeah. Yeah, I had to buy the 1st 30 tickets every time I did the Viper Room or the Run or Drive with a band still standing. It's like I would just buy the bar, right. OK. The bar, I just buy the bar up to a .500 bucks. It cost me that and then I would still have to pay for the the house. Yeah, because the bands weren't as big as you thought. And you did that circuit.

47:13 I did that circuit with three bands and it's like, whatever. Yeah, no, I, I did it myself. I, I was in bands where, you know, you had to go and sell tickets to make it work. Because if you didn't sell tickets, you know you were, it was actually literally going to cost you a couple grand to pay the to play the gig. So it was crazy. So. Good conversation. What's going on? We were talking about, we were talking about and I can never remember the four letters S. To the NS, to the N entertain. Right, right. Of course. And so the the thing that I worked with you on the exhibit thing that I helped you get rid of some stuff from, what was that?

47:55 Well, it, it's, I mean, again, it's something I really can't talk about as well. One of the packages that you, you know, it's a risk reward industry. Yeah. Sometimes they hit, sometimes they don't. These investors go a long way on these packages. Imagine Van Gogh was one of ours. Van Gogh was another one. So then we, you know, the company that you produced, you know, imagine, man, go imagine Picasso and imagine Frida. Then you know, then they've got part of some of the Marvel stuff and some of the cool stuff coming up, some other very big stuff coming up that the contracts aren't 100%. What we've, what we've been looking at over the last few years is really trying to find locations.

48:37 One in New York, I just produced a front end of a big show last year called Balloon Museum, and we went to Basketball City and at the last minute we pulled out of it because, you know, it would just some dealings weren't happening and and it just wasn't the right thing. So eight months on that project got them their TPA, you know, permit of occupancy insurance and all that stuff. And at the last minute we pulled out. So these things happen. Yeah, and then goes tell. Me though, like these are different than regular tours, right? Like you're not going venue to venue to. Venue no yeah, location based entertainment, right LBE location based entertainment and that that buzzword immersive right right. So we you know the the company has a few of the Harry Potter Forbidden Forest Co promoters.

49:25 You know, we're we're we're a company that Co promotes or promotes and then produces, right. So there's different entities. You're either a promoter on one or you're the promoter producer. When they end up doing the producing side of it, then they bring in talent like myself as project managers. Me, I'm the senior producer. So and that's more because of my age and and the of the of the resume that I have. Yeah. So at the end of the day, you know, that relationship between myself and Jacob, there's a lot of times he pulls on me and he goes, hey, I need a production manager or I need this, or I need a design team, or I need you to do the whole, you know, I need you to give me ideas of design teams for this or that, you know. And then, then we have a concept like, you know, Hot Wheels wants to go out and they want to do a touring exhibition of Hot Wheels, the history of and we put that idea together. That's one that didn't hit, you know, but we just got a slate of projects we look at every year and what's coming up. Then we target them and we look at what is tracking, you know, when we do concepts, you know, we competed with like Stranger Things a couple years ago on how hot that hit. And then you try to grab on something like that as a promoter that is gonna sell tickets. Yeah.

50:39 Yeah. Well, we try to. We try to develop our own IP at times, you know, And Jacob, you know, I don't want to speak for him, but he's a documentarian from way back. I mean he travelled with his dad on many, many plane rides and did every show on the Bowie tour that you can imagine at The Age. Of the cool upbringing that'd be. I mean, listen, Pink Floyd, he was not, you know, he may have been 1215 years old and all that stuff. To be in that same room and to be a family on the wall would have been amazing. Yeah. But again, I just, I, I look at Jacob, who wasn't, he was trained by his father and he obviously went and he was schooled.

51:21 He's French Canadian as well. And extremely, you know, smart young man that just knows marketing, ticket sales and everything. You can hear in his voice and see it on paper what he has absorbed from his father's tutoring over a a plethora of years. Right, that's in his DNA. It's it's DNA at that point. And I just sit there and I go, wow. And I'm always wowed when we get together, when we talk. And it's just so super casual. And I love the fact that there's no egos there. Yeah. You know, it's just like, hey, let's get what can we do? Is it a sensible ROI? What's the investment?

52:03 Where's the capital? What's it gonna take to produce? And these days, you know, trying to get produced these projects, they're the after post pandemic cost of, of producing these projects are just crazy. What what we projected early out of the pandemic to produce a show in New York was plus, you know, plus 3540%, right, everybody, the cost of a technical director that used to be $800 is $1500 a day. And we kind of giggle at it, right? Yeah. Just go, dude, if you know Michael Keeling, you know, we're not paying that. So at the end of the day, you know, I'll get around it and I'll go technical produce it myself if I have to, right, To get a project off the ground. Yeah.

52:48 So if not, we'll find some extremely talented people for that area of talent. Now that's not saying that they're not worth it because of the cost of living has gone up and so on, but we just can't pay those kind of prices and still be profitable in this. Business, I mean the economy of the of the job can't afford it. It's just look at the Otani factor at Dodger Stadium now, right? The cost has to go up. I I can't even like I used to go to 10 games a year and I'm I'm the biggest Otani fan there is Dodgers. Hey go, you know, in the day. The fact that you get people like him, Freddie, Mookie and so on on a team, the cost of a ticket goes up.

53:28 The cost of a beer is $16.00 for a beer. I don't drink beer anymore so. In Miami, when we got messy, the tickets for Inter Miami went from $40 to 400. Insane, right? So the same thing happened on the other side when it comes to these packages, right? So every time we do it, it's like, all right, what do you do with these packages? You know, is it a, is it, will it sustain a union market or will it sustain and is it an independent market? So there's a lot of factors and you want to give the Union brothers their love at the end of the day. As a producer, sometimes you got to go in with brass knuckles and and you got to bust some deals up and you know me. So the end of the day I've got no problems with cracking a few eggs.

54:11 No, I think you're, I think you're well suited to the role, put it that way. Been been lucky and but then again, you got to walk with delicacy. You know, there's times where I've been accused of not doing that and there's times where it's like you got to be the adult in the room. You got to be able to take chances and I mean. Diplomacy only goes so far. You know that when the Italians last year, I took the room twice and diplomacy only went so far. Yeah, it's like you so can you can only teach people how? You can only consult the people and try to teach them how to do things in America. Yeah, one way. And if they're not gonna do it and it costs more money, then you have to evaluate it. And yeah, then you gotta, you know, figure out what.

54:52 You know the project. So you're basically captive by these guys now, right? Like you, you're not doing 20 other jobs or anything. I'm always juggling, bro. It's like I'm on a, I'm on a retained period with them and I'm very fortunate. But I'm, I'm pretty much, you know, I was full time for two years and then my, the slates cleaned up a little bit. We've got a couple big projects that we're on. So now I've basically gone to a 50% time framework now that they're my first right of refusal on anything. And you know, that's a good thing to have. But then I've got IPS that I'm developing, a concept called Country Strong.

55:32 I've got, you know, another Bowie concept that's I've been working on. I'm partnering with another gentleman that I'll have some news out in probably about three weeks that ultimately he's a strong technical and creative in his own right. And I may come back into the creative market a little bit because, you know, I, I want to manicure what it is that we do. Although I, you know, my ideas have always been a bit grandiose and I like big scale. If you see the lighting jobs that I've done, Coldplay, speed of sound that started out. We're not the director, Mike. We're not going to do this like Lenny Kravitz because he was the director on Lenny. Yeah. And he goes, I don't want this to be another Lenny of all lights. And then I go, great, Mark, let me just show you this cool product.

56:18 Boom. And that was, that was like 6 months before the Versatube even came to the market. He said here's this product. And he goes, oh shit. And then he goes, wow, this is cool. Next thing you know, he shows it to the band. He goes, OK, I want you to do a we're taking the biggest stage in Sony. They they, they did it on Wizard. They shot Wizard of Oz there. And I want you to do this giant cyclorama of these lights. Well, I ended up purchasing because the band wouldn't buy them the first LED at that time, creative LED that was ever on the entertainment market. I bought and brought it to the United States and put it on film. I had used it on one music video prior to that with Audioslave where I think I had 36 tubes and I made some picture frames.

57:04 The Coldplay ended up being right at about 1000 tubes that I ended up purchasing. I forgot. You did that like that. That was that was such an iconic video. You know, it was just so cool. That was duh, duh, duh, duh. Duh, duh. Speed of sound bro. Speed of sound, Yeah. Speed of sound, right? Very lucky. So when we say that, you know, when I look at, you know, 1993 Lenny Kravitz, you're gonna go my way. I was right on the cuss. Another iconic video. Yeah, I was right on. The Cuss. But this is when I was, I was pretty tight with Mark Brickman and we had just started him Another Gentleman. They started Propaganda Live. So Propaganda films.

57:47 I had worked with Propaganda Films prior to that on multiple campaigns, Coca-Cola commercials, where I first met Michael Keller, I think way back in the day doing some kids, New Kids on the Block stuff. Well, we had started a vision called Propaganda Live from Propaganda Films because they needed a company that could do these big concerts within the film industry. At that point they didn't have that. So Marks worked on the side there. I ended up getting a call to the left of that from one of the producers and said, and this is when I was AVP of sales at Obi's and said we want you to design.

58:27 And it's weird because I was actually in New York on a Michael Bolton. Michael Bolton was our one of our biggest clients at the time. I was at his birthday party and I get this call and then they FedEx me a a cassette and I still have the cassette. I want you to listen to this song because we want you to design this thing for Lenny Kravitz. And I went, love the artist, put the song in first 30 seconds. I basically had the vision. I went, Oh my God, this song is like on fire. I've got it because it was a predecessor. It was predecessor to me. Hey, we want you to basically we want to do something like you're pulling up in a foyer of a Las Vegas canopy of lights and I went boom, get it, got the idea.

59:10 Took me 3 weeks to find a nine inch refrigerator light bulb that was incandescent. So when when I actually did zero to 10 on the console, it gave it that love and intensity. So I can paint different pictures of light wood. And people didn't know me for that. Yeah, they just knew me as a sales guy at that point. But they didn't know prior to that that I was like, I designed Zappa in 87 and then I did these other things. But then I came into the office, so I went from. That that so that video was refrigerator bulbs. Yeah, it was refrigerator light bulbs that I found. Yep, 9 How many of them? That was probably like 940, you know. And then at that time I I started this out with trying to do it as cheap as possible.

59:56 I did it with Alderham dimmers and then, and I mean, that's a whole nother story. And I found this is when I was I was trying to find a console that could actually operate. That many channels, Yeah, because there were only 40 Watt bulbs and I had to put them on 2.4 dimmers, so I had to have 900 plus dimmers there. Oh Jesus. So advance forward to 2000. I did. You needed to control every one of them. Oh yeah, dude, that was me. Come on. Yeah, everything like. Did you really need individual control over everyone? We, I think we ended up putting them two bulbs on one circuit so they would mirror each other. Okay. And so I found, I found somebody introduced me to this young lad that had this console called the Whole Hog. Yeah.

1:00:42 And the guy behind it was Nils Thornton. A weird little Scandinavian day. Real, real weird. Cat, right. So I mean, I was like, all right, and back in the day, come on, I was a roadie and that was pretty rough. And it was pretty straightforward. It's like, just fucking get it done. That that's what's so weird about Nils is he's comes walking into our industry and he's this goofy little Scandinavian dude, greatest guy in the world. I love Nils but he he comes from a very different background. Different world, man, but very different world. The two biggest music videos I ever did. Lenny Kravitz, you gonna go on my way? Coldplay, Speed of sound, Common denominator. Nils Thornton. OK, Element Labs.

1:01:24 The big part of that. Yeah. So Nils. Nils is pretty solid. I mean, Nils, was he and Bill Logical were my programmers on that? It's a funny thing. It's like this big apparatus is on the ground with these 900 bulbs and I'm basically have a napkin and I showed them how I want these these these patterns to look. And I go, I want this like blade of light turning around. Then I want to do this very origami type of stuff, but look at it now. Boom. And then I program it. They spent all day, all night programming the thing. We raise the thing up in the air and I say turn it on. And the first few that I had, I said, OK, now show me the special guitar solo. I want the fan blade coming on. It was all backwards.

1:02:06 They had program everything backwards because they looked at it this way and I said, OK, I'm going to walk away for three hours and you guys are going to fix it. Boom. Yeah. Literally walked away, came back, looked up, turn the turn the lights on, started working with the programming and I just sit there and I went wow, this is something special and then. That's probably when Nils created the world's first effects engine. He could. He could reverse this thing, spinning it. I don't know how he didn't have to. Reprogram. It they had to go back in and repatch everything, Yeah. And it was like. It was a ton. Of stress on that job because all the dimmers blew out. We had to get all brand new, ETC. Dimmer racks in that night. You know, I worked all night long.

1:02:46 I kicked everybody out of the building. They gave me my palette of macros to work with and then we kicked everybody out of the building at 11:00. I worked all night long. 7:00 AM my producer wakes me up in the car and I had a 10 minute nap. We come in, she goes are we OK? And I said we'll be fine. We go in cued 1 show one song up or 11 sequence up and I busked that entire thing out. I let Bill do the first, first take on it and I said move over, dude, sorry. And then basically that was all me just pushing all those buttons and I absolutely adored it. And as the day came, went along, continuity was out the window other than I had structure going on. But as they went along, I kept overlaying stuff and seeing things happen, come to life that just don't happen anymore, hardly.

1:03:37 Then you Fast forward, you Fast forward to 2000 and I did Public Enemy 2000 with P Diddy. I did that was 3000 light bulbs 2004 I jumped to rock your body 10,000 light bulbs in a room which then was 32 dimmer racks. OK, that that was insane It. Kind of became your thing, huh? Like lots of little tiny light sources. Let's get healing. It was it and that was that was it because that that got me campaigns for Sunday Night Football, ABC Monday Night Football I ended up doing. Well, yeah, the Sunday Night Football, that's that look, right? That's that same look. Yeah, Yeah.

1:04:18 But did you ever ask Nils how many Element Labs Versa tubes you sold for his company? Right, this is. How many people tried so many different ways to copy that look, you know, I mean. Bro, still do so you know, that's that's when, if I would have had to do it. This is what I told my agent at the time. And luckily I had an agent that was booking a lot of these things for me. And it's like, OK, I'm, I'm in this project. How do I get an attorney and figure out how I copyright this? Because it's going to get copied, copied when it was the light bulbs, my attorney basically said Edison has the patent on the light bulb.

1:04:59 You can't copy it. And I said no, but I can copy the sequencing of it. So all this video content and so on that does a lot of that replication of the looks that I've done. At this point, all I can do is be flattered by it. I wish I had a nickel for every time I saw it done because that when I did, I did CBS, Mondo campaigns and a big part of all of this. And I can't, I can't go without. It's not just me as like I always say, I've got the teams behind me. Donald, the Belly. Martin Phillips was a big part of that. Once again. Martin Phillips, a great designer in his own right, started out as a board programmer. Yeah, so he was. He was my guy on Rock Your Body. We literally were the first time we broke ground.

1:05:42 We had five walls of lights, which needed five whole hog PCU units that talk to each other to do the programming behind that. Unfortunately, we went very overtime on the budget side of it because of some lingo and so on. But Martin pulled that together for me and then on. I used Martin on at that point on Coldplay Speed of Sound, he and Velo Verkhaus. I had Velo came to me as an animator and I did real time animation on set while I was programming and we did split Sims audio stuff. So you when you see that video, you'll see Chris singing the the harmonies in the choruses and that's actual live activation of his vocals picking up there. So he did that and that was a challenge by Mark, Mark Romanik, the director, and asked me if I can pull that off. And I went, dude, anything's possible, just give me more money.

1:06:42 We did, we did that shit within 48 hours, we were on set shooting that stuff, right? And that was, that was just one of those projects. So when I did Lenny, I realized that was special. When I did Rock Your Body, I realized how special that was when I did. That's another cool. Video play. I realized how special that was, and then I've just been very, very fortunate with the. Yeah, you had a really good run there. Those those, you know, I mean, those are big videos. Really big. Yeah, I mean, I've been, I've been, I don't know, I've probably done 60 to 80 to 100 music videos, ton of them. I forgot a lot of them. You know, there's some.

1:07:24 Then I started getting bored. You know, it's like lighting. And basically I was working with great set designers that were taking credit for my work, right. And at the end day, that's when ego got in the way. And literally I started production designing music videos and then literally every, I wouldn't take a job unless I was production designing it. I wouldn't take a job in touring unless I was a show director or production designing it. And there was that period of time where everybody wanted it. You know, that Lenny Kravitz look, Mark and Luke and I did the Dixie Chicks in 2000. What do they want? Lenny Kravitz canopy, right? So it was like, oh really? How many times can I see that happen, right? I'm freaking bored so. Well, that's like Brickman putting the, you know, the circle of VLVL, whatever those were. Yep, fours, weren't they?

1:08:14 Were they fours? Oh gosh, I can't even remember what they were at that time. I think there were twos. I think they were two. They might have been twos. Yeah, actually, they might have been. Two ones for sure. I think there were twos at that time, yeah. VL fives. Weren't they the fives? No, no they weren't. I don't think they were fives. I thought they were Fives and Brickman. Correctly of all time. What the VL five Oh my God, so good, so good. And there's, you know, there's some nice new little, like, have you seen the Mac one? That thing is so cool. I mean, it looks a little VL 5:00-ish. Not not even close really. But it weighs like, I don't know, 10 or 11 lbs and is pretty bright and is fast and tiny.

1:08:55 Like it's this big, you know, it's tiny. I'm. Still, listen, I'm still a traditionalist. I like the effect of sustainability and that's a whole other thing we can talk about because I'm a sustainability freak. I love the idea of LED in on a wall. I don't like looking at non hegemonized LED. Yeah, I hate it. I think it's tacky. Once again, I'm a traditional. You don't like dots. You don't like the dots and. If you, if you know me, I, I work from sketches to, you know, to renderings. I started out that way. I, I work in capture. I work in all these programs these days.

1:09:36 But I, I, I'm a traditionalist and I start, I, I've got that, you know, I worked with Brickman on sketches. I've worked with a lot of artists on sketches. I worked with, I've seen the Jeremy Railton massive looks that are real talent drawings. Yeah. And so I'm a very big traditional on art and my relationship with Luke. When I see an LED, I see the functionality of it, but it still does not give me the love that an incandescent does. Doesn't give you that warmth. It doesn't give you that emotion that an LED does in color and or in dim ratios. But there's an effective use to it. And unfortunately these days, it's it's just obliteration of light.

1:10:17 It's like, yeah, it really is. And there's a lot of talent out there. I see, you know, I see a lot of my friends out there. And it's just like obliteration of lights in your eyes. And I go. How many fixtures can we fit I. You know, you know, that is one of my biggest complaints from Aerosmith 2007. I had 16 Truck Tour and there weren't enough lights. Yeah. And when I left the tour, they added another truck of lights and it's like, OK, who? Yeah. Who chose this? Well, the wives. It's like, all right. Whatever, that's funny. That's funny, you know, but like when you think back because when I started working with you, I know you were really big on telescans and that was like the Mack daddy of of lights like. Analog mirror, bro.

1:11:08 Analog mirror. Beast of lights. But The thing is when you look at how relatively dim it is now compared to LED fixtures that are out there, you know, like the elation Proteus, I don't even know what their brightest ones are called anymore, Atlas or Brutus or they're they're. Just whatever their their in them are phenomenal. Crazy bright, crazy bright. How? How bright can do you need it to be you know well. This is a this is a question right? And this. Camera. Yeah, for camera, you don't need it that bright. There's there's been a whole different thinking on the camera back in the day when we were, you know, when we were shooting you could you have to your DP told you this is what it needed to be. Yeah.

1:11:54 And anything over that blew out the the the iris is this one these days, people are liking that effect now, right? Yeah. And you, you, everything looks like an 80s video tube camera. Yeah. And it's just overblown and over contrasted or there's just lack of education in the true cinematography behind. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. I, I had that conversation, though, as far as like, does everything need to be that bright? I had that conversation with Robert Roth one time on the podcast and he said, you know, everybody thinks that every light needs to be 50 bazillion lumens and it doesn't. Like how about a nice, you know, a replacement to the old like 700 Watt lamps or whatever, like the mid size moving light.

1:12:39 And now I think there's a lot more of that stuff. Like all of the companies sort of have a much fuller range now where you've got the littler ones, you've got the medium ones and you've got the big tough guys, right? Well, that market's the, that market's the theater and the opera and the Broadway market, right? Which, yeah, that that's whole nother talent, you know, the and Natasha Katz, the Jules Fishers and those people, they again, they they swim that path to me of design that is just a beauty in its own right. When you get a chance to see some of their work and how isolated, you know, a spot can be. Because to me, the you know, somebody asked me what were my favorite colors were and I said black and white. Yeah, those are my favorite colors for designer. That's what you work with.

1:13:24 After that, you know, you have black void, you create white light. The best look is Sinatra spotlight or a Michael Jackson spotlight. You know, I look at it and I see in my mind right now, Michael hat tilted down, silhouette bang. See you. Right. That's one of the most poignant looks there is. He's the king of that Mister Peter Morris. Hello. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. You know, I, I was reading over a bunch of notes when I was getting ready to do this and I forgot so many of the things that you did, like Don Kirschner and Soul Train and, you know, I just crazy stuff from like back in the really early days of all of this stuff. Blows me away man how lucky I was. So again early start at 15 I met 15 1/2. At that time, I drove a 5 ton truck to Vegas for Circus of the Stars.

1:14:19 Yeah. Didn't even have my driver's license. Oh my God, My boss says go Carlos and I Carlos had a license. him and I went to Vegas. One of the first travel shows we did, I ended up doing spotlights at that 'cause we had, we had ACDC equipment company pretty much had the monopoly on CBSNBC and so on. The only competition after that was Olsen's. Yeah. Right. Yeah, well. We had the biggest line of spotlights. So I think I had 16 Super Troopers, trooper rats, colored trans, all these spots that I became quickly by chance, literally I think the first day on the job, I walked in front of the camera between Bob Hope and take and literally it was like cut and my boss looked at me and this was of course not that I was stoned the night before. So and literally grabs me by the year. And he said, kid, you see that thing up in there and that that floating bed up there and he goes get your ass up there and fix that.

1:15:15 Don't come down until I tell you. And it happened to be a spotlight and I went up there and it was a carbon arc super. And I literally got my head, wrapped my head around it and ended up working on all those. And at that time we had all the follow spots for the Greek, every KTLA show, KTTV boom. So I was became the spotlight manager. Yeah. So literally, I would do all the spots, and I became a juicer. So I did Soul Train for three to five seasons and one of our biggest clients at the time was Academy Lighting. Yeah. Which was Carl Gibson, Jeff Ingle, Bobby Dickinson and so on.

1:15:58 Yeah. So we, that was at a time where hell I was. I gaffed like three or four jobs for Bobby by the time I was 818 years old. Yeah, I think I did Igloo Commercial and I did a tabletop thing. Then I was juicing for him on a bunch of things. He left Academy Lighting. I ended up working on Soul Train for probably five seasons as a juicer spotlight operator. Then Jeff Engle, at the time, him and Carl Gibson were the flip 2LED LDS on that show. Also worked on Don Christian's rock concert and we did that show and dude, I mean I was when the police first came out, they were showcased there. Pat Benatar, Molly Hatchet, Men with yellow hats, Devo. I saw all of them.

1:16:44 And I was in. Front of the. Greatest Bands? I'm just going like what? I get chills thinking about it. I get paid to do this. Did this really happen right? And so through that, I also had a friend that came to a lot of shows, and he was one of the youngest bands I ever managed was his name is Marty Fredrickson, and Marty is a major producer these days. Owens, a major studio in Nashville, Co, wrote the song. Jaded, produced. Pump, produced about four other records with Aerosmith, introduced me to Aerosmith. So that's how my relationship with Aerosmith happened. Then Marty's multi platinum award winner, he's he's worked with every artist you can imagine.

1:17:26 He's done multiple records of Buckcherry, Mötley Crüe, Da da da Da Marty. Back in that day, I was managing his band called Rd. Crew. And we were just, we were brothers. Yeah. And he, I brought him to those shows and that inspired him to really write music. And then I was in the production side. And today we look at each other and go, wow, where was that life those years ago? But yeah, Don Kirschner's was just an amazing time frame. I ended up working. So from that spotlights, I ended up putting them on Midnight Special. I was working on them there. And then Xenons came out and we had the first Xenon Super Troopers in America. They got shipped to us to the West Coast, and I built those and put those on any Terrio show or did Solid Gold is what that was.

1:18:20 Yeah. Then I saw just multiple bands through that, you know, working on those 'cause I, you were breaking down and I have to go fix them and, and yadda, yadda. So meanwhile, all that was happening, we were also getting calls to go to Phoenix and the West Coast through Beaver Productions, which was a concert promoter. And I would pack up six spotlights and I'd run out for the weekend on a Thursday night, Friday, Saturday shows, that Saddle Dome and, and all that stuff. And I met so many different talented people. That's where we did kiss. First time I ever saw kiss, I was like 18 years old and so on. And one time I went and I did rush. Yeah. And I'm sitting in the bathroom. Next to me is Howard Unger, Lighter. Yeah, and here I am, just a young kid. Hopefully, hopefully you're in separate stalls. We were totally sad.

1:19:08 All right, You know, it was just a general conversation and he's like, hey, kid, what are you doing? Right? I go, well, I'm here with the follow spots. Boom. Next thing you know, he's like, I'm in LA this week. You want to come on out and so on. And there became another brotherly love, right? And I mean, I think I was 17 years old when I met Howard and I had run into some problems with DU is back in the early area of my life. And I had talked with Howard many times about trying to get me involved with C Factor 'cause I wanted to go concert touring. Yeah, 'cause I got the bug from spotlights being at these live shows and seeing part and all these bands and and so on. And he's like, dude, you'll never end up touring in this business.

1:19:55 Why he goes because you're DU is you'll never be able to get into Canada. You won't be able to get across the board and so on. So I don't know. It was about 20 years ago. I said look at me now brother. That's funny. That's funny. I love. How you put your passion to it and you basically go, I'm going to get it done one way or another. One thing led to another, those spotlights. I became the manager of the shop and then we started again. I'm doing massive power jobs that I did massive generator distribution and transformer distribution for every major show that you can have in town. And then we were doing mix Mickey Thompson, Super Bowl of motocross. All of that stuff benounced to me. We we ended up doing a show with a company called Obi's. And then I met I did another show called a movie called the Rose.

1:20:49 And the designer of that was Chipmunk. Chipmunk. If nobody knows Chipmunk. He was the original lighting director for Woodstock, Hello Little show. And he was the road original Rd. manager for the Stones. Chip took me out to lunch one time and they basically stole me from ACDC, introduced me to O VS because they didn't have somebody at that time that did sizable Power Distribution. So I got thrown right into Coca-Cola in 88. And I think prior to that, I ended up doing a Toyota National Convention and relationship went along. I ended up doing a bunch of shows with Chip for a few years, Beach Boys after show baseball game. So he mentored me a lot in the early days, just showed me structure and so on.

1:21:43 And I, I appreciate it. Just absorbed everything I possibly could, you know, and then, you know, then I ended up touring for many, many years broke. Yeah, you had you had some good mentors growing up in the business, it sounds. Like super lucky, man, super lucky. I mean, I met some amazing people, a lot met a lot of young promoters at the time. Scott DeVos out of San Diego became our GM Adobe's after a period of time. A lot of ton, tons of great relationships. Greg Harriman at San Diego. I used to do a bunch of stuff at San Diego too. It's, it's such a cool industry for that, you know, I mean, just the relationships that you have in this industry and how nice those people are and how you know, their life, their life relationships. I don't know that those happen in every industry. No, they don't.

1:22:29 You know, it's like Wiseman and I don't talk a lot these days, but we spent so much time developing, you know, a touring compact Truss system for the very lights. That was a competition with the Morpheus unit. That was the big thing in my game after developing the Telescan, and the Z scan being a big part of that, which was an idea of Peter Morris and I on a napkin at one point. Hey, what if you put a mirror on a xenon and we sketched it out? Boom. Next thing you know, I was patting it, right. Yeah. Then it was like. Didn't it start with an air? Something about an airport. Remember Peter explaining it to me? Not not sure to be honest with you, how really I think Peter and I were I think Peter and I were at dinner in Tahoe working on some God off a movie that we were doing. But it it was an amazing movie, but it was just didn't get a credit that it it was showgirls.

1:23:27 And then I was out the dinner with him one night and he's like, have you ever thought about putting that mirror on a xenon? So of course I went, hmm, I put it to the engineers, we looked at it and then we built it for Pink Floyd as the front house spotlights all operated manual one operator for six follow spots there. And we ended up putting on Yumi Matsutoya. Mark Brickman was a catalyst to that. And you know, then it had its own life. It wasn't as it wasn't as infamous as the Telescan one and two, right, Because that again was an analog motor on the mirror versus a cyber scam, which was a digital and it had that it it gracefully sweeped in and it had a 1200 Watt HMI, which I was a front fan of at the time.

1:24:14 Yeah. And versus the Telespot and those other things which were a lower end vibe to it, but they had their own market. Those things were like a game changer or something that sort of separated Obi from the rest, I guess in some sense, yeah. No, I mean definitely, but that landed them a lot of the big, big shows, you know, the the Michael Jacksons and Pink Floyds. And all of these we didn't have the major contract behind that behind the total thing, but that allowed us to get in the conversation right, right, because then I was a packaging. So on Pink Floyd, we were ended up, you know, we ended up doing all the North American stuff because Chameleon did the relationship with Mark overseas. But I ended up being awarded the contract for all the telescans, all the projectors.

1:25:01 We ended up doing lasers and a couple other things that I ended up being the contractor on, which then rolled over into Genesis. I ended up was a GC on Genesis in 92 that we can't dance to her. That then just dominoed into many other things, right. But we we had sprinkles. I mean, we were putting packages of 6 to 18 units out just telescans on whether it was the stones this or that. So that put us in the conversation on a lot of things to general contract packages too. Yeah, yeah, It's really interesting. I mean, I just, I, one of the cool things about being old is, is that we've seen so many different things, you know, and especially when you think about moving light technology, you know, you've been there for the entirety of it and I've been there for almost the entirety of it. And it's cool, you know, because a lot of people coming up through lighting right now think that everything's just amazingly well built and really reliable and super fast and cheap and all of these things, right?

1:26:04 No, not so much. I mean, we dealt with some broken shit back then, you know? I mean, I'm sure it was a lot of work to keep telescans working too, you know? Well, they, they, you know, they were the, the Fiat on the road, the Fiar Ferrari Fiat. So it broke down you, you had to have a mechanic there, right? So, yeah. But then when they worked, they were precise, they were beautiful. Stunning. Well, I mean, just that big fat beam was so cool, you know? Yeah. And then then it just zeroed out the iris again. I was huge fan of the irises, yes, because of the Super Trooper and the iris on that. And yeah, it's just the, the, the beauty of it. I'm a huge fan. I've been very fortunate to work cross-platform between Rock'n'roll Theater, working with Peggy Eisenhower out of Jules Fisher's office and seeing her design for Fishbone and then seeing her design, you know, for an opera or an operatic show and being part of that education and seeing her work on CSN. Yeah.

1:27:05 And then seeing the talent crossover between there and absorb that in the brain and utilize that and pull that when you. Need, right, yeah. So what do you think of where the industry's at today? Like do you have any thoughts of, you know, especially from a technology standpoint, like are are you pretty happy with where we're at or you think we're? I'm, I'm blown away. It's like, you know, again, I'm blown away on the the overturn of technology. Yeah, we used to be, we used to see a three to three-year cycle of technology other than the part can and the motor and and so on. We saw the generation of gel strings and shit like that happen. You know, I'm blown away on how fast things are just turning over.

1:27:55 Yeah. And and more so LED where it has gone already in the last so many years since I had a chance to work with it and so on. So I don't think it's I don't think it's stopping anytime soon. I think that there's always going to be a you know, I'm hoping that the drone life has more life for it other than just taking over fireworks. I mean, I like the fact that, you know, you have a source to take over combustibles for the sustainability of Mother Nature and that stuff. I still am a traditional fan of liking fireworks, but I just don't like what it does to the Earth, right? Just like I don't like what generator fuels do to our planet anymore. I'm a big proponent of sustainability. So LED and technology.

1:28:43 The more it grows, the better the engines become, the less juice it sucks up, the more it gives back to the Earth. And it doesn't cost to to make it. It's like it's, you know, I'm, I'm. Are you seeing these battery companies now doing the? Festivals, yeah, I'm just looking into that. I hate Tesla. I hate electric vehicles. I love them, but I hate them. But when you look at them, I'm a huge fan. I've got, I own 2 fire trucks, 1960 fire trucks. I own 274 vans. You know, I've got a Harley. I've got all this stuff. I don't have an electric vehicle, but what I do use, I sustain what has been built before and I use it properly to do what it is I want to do. I will not buy an electric vehicle that that same battery has cost lives to build from, you know, fracking in Asia and or Africa and, and all of the pollutions that come with that battery.

1:29:40 When you weigh the two together, it's like that fossil fuel is there. It costs a certain amount that combustible goes up in the air. I'm still like I haven't bought into well. I don't think the net, I don't think the net gain is what they're trying to sell you. You know what I mean? Like they they sell you on this, Oh my God, we're saving the planet if you buy this Tesla. It's bullshit. You know. But what I was talking about is the the battery power systems for for shows like a lot of festivals and stuff are starting to go instead of generators, they're going to these battery. It's just they're not, they're not bulky enough for it, right? So you can do it. I mean, here's here's what I always look at whenever I'm producing a show these days.

1:30:24 And I talked with my T DS and so on. It's like first thing you look at is grid power. OK, the most sustainable source you're going to get is grid power. Take a look at what you can negotiate or tell me where there's 480 power where I can drop a transformer. OK #1 #2 Let's get into the conversation of why we need fuels. At the end of the day, if we're going into a four wall venue, there's a certain amount of power there. We're gonna convert that. Then whatever we build the show based on that and we try to contain it, which LED allows us to get there right. But then you you got to bring up that word of power generators. I had the same thing at it but for Balloon Museum last year. And, you know, I went to CES, which is what, you know, Steve Jackson Hatchet was my brother at Obi's forever. Why?

1:31:18 You know, I And if you ever talk to Steve, he's straightforward. Yeah. He's like, it's diesel fuel, bro. If you want to see the planet, go somewhere else. Yeah. The day when we talk about it, they are doing things, you know them, Tristar, all these other people are trying to go to biofuels and they're trying to do these power generator plants and or storage cells. And I just haven't seen. Anything. Well, there's the one company out of California, I can't remember what they're called, but I was, I did a podcast with Richard Kadena and he had just used them on on Willie Nelson's festival in Austin and they brought big diesel generators as backup just in case 'cause they were, they were a little sketchy on it all, but they never had a problem. It was great.

1:32:12 But a solar farm built out in a field not too far away, and that's. What we're doing, so at the end of the day, I've got another package that I'm working out that just got postponed till next year, that it's a holiday seasonal thing and we're going to end up doing our own solar farm. So ultimately they they ask me, you know, it's it's at a mall. And they asked me what would you do? And I said I would solar farm the rooftops of each one of these things. Yeah. So that's that's it. Because at the end of the day, I don't want a biofuels and I don't want a diesel fuel if I don't have to. Now the cost of doing business is increased by X Factor, right. But in the long run, if you're doing a three to five year business plan, the returns would be greater for you there and greater returns for the planet, right.

1:32:54 But that makes sense that that's not only power. We look at total production across the board. Yeah. And you know, then I, I bring up the name 3 Square, which is Jamie Knacks company. And she is a she's a company that basically consults on all things sustainable. She's Al Gore's vocal and voice when it comes to sustainability. She is an amazing person. I met her in 2027 or excuse me, 2017 on Equilibrium up in Tahoe, which was produced by a good brother of mine, Anthony Randall, who I do a lot of productions with. And Anthony introduced me to her and he, he has a company called Equilibrium and he morphed it into Planet Home where we ended up producing up at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco as well. Introduced me to Jamie.

1:33:45 And then Jamie basically was our sustainable police. Yeah. And when I was producing the Sprint sessions or the six camera shoot of talent that we would bring in and we would interview collectives of scientists and sports people and talk about impact in action. You know what, what's the impact and what's the action we can do to respond to that? Things that we can do. This was a cliche world back in 17 where everybody was talking about it. Amy's one that actually does it. So she put me on a path on you know, when you need pallets, let's reuse old pallets. Let's not buy new pallets.

1:34:26 Let's when you you know, when you use different fluids, let's find a sustainable fluids. It's better for Mother Earth when it gets recycled. When you're looking at adhesives, let's look at adhesives this way. So she gave me a Bible to this, to this day, which is, I think it's United Nations 21 to one formula they use. So we, we follow, try to follow that, but we take it further. We, we're taking actions where we see a lot of this happening with the live nations and so on. Say that they're going to do it. But then it, it doesn't end up really be doing it to a certain degree. And I, and I can't say for it 100% 'cause I'm sure their efforts are in good faith.

1:35:08 And I think it's only going to get better just as technology changes. So it's, it's going to change, but at the end of the day, we're doing things a little different that ultimately we'll be able to talk about in about another six months. Well. The thing is, as you know, Michael, the again, it's all incentive based and you can't just the, the only incentive can't be to make somebody feel better about themselves or whatever, right? That's just not going to work up and down the line financially. And so as costs come down, because I used to go through this, I had an LED company and, and when we were, you know, approaching a large company to change out all their lighting to LED or whatever, you know, the incentive had to be there. And, and fortunately, as time went on, the incentive became very good because, you know, the stuff was paying for itself in less than a year and and then produced all kinds of savings over time.

1:36:06 So you show them a five year model or whatever and they go, wow, you know, so I agree. I mean, the incentive has to be there. And if there's incentive, I think you can get people to do almost anything. So just like everything else, once it's on the market for a while, things you know, there's going to be more competition, there's going to be better, better property, better product and so on. And they're going to get the actually tooling of it down to a reasonable cost. Same things happening, you know, with the generators, they're getting the cells down better than the actual output is going to be better. I mean, I did this last 10 years ago. I did a Band Of Horses at the top of the Hollywood sign and we couldn't take generators up there and we had to shoot the band live and I had to do battery cells. And it was all done through the cinema market, which only had these little suitcase battery packs that then I was using. You know, I went to ACDC equipment company, my brother Carlos, and I said, what's out there? What are the light sources?

1:37:06 I need keynotes for that up light. But everything else around it, I want LED and oh, by the way, I've got a sound console that we're recording live sound. I need to power it all. We ended up, we're successful on that. So if you ever have a chance to take a look at that, that was Band Of Horses live at the Hollywood Sign. That was all the cool batteries. Yeah. And was pretty, pretty kick ass band. So young director there, Brantley Gutierrez, who I worked on a bunch of Incubus projects with, asked me to do that. And you know, again, I was the production designer and art director. So I did the entire setting on it and I ended up having to do the technical side of the background of it. Then that just came back from there. I had my son work on it, everybody else.

1:37:48 And that was the first time that I literally went, you know what? There's an alternative to a generator. Yeah, yeah. And again, you're talking to an old a generator operator. Too, Yes. No. But again, you know, as long as the price gets down and the the ability to deliver enough power within a reasonable size comes down, you know. We've looked at it so many ways. I've looked at 40 foot containers with the top of them being solars or a 40 foot container that had so many. We've done so many of these festivals where we've looked at it. The plans are there. The cost factor ends up being the major part, right? And I don't want to do it just to do it. I want to do it so we can actually help this carbon footprint, the CO2 E man, it's just killing us. Like you said earlier though, you do have to remember that you know there are little kids without shoes on their feet digging this shit out of mines in Africa, and you'd have to remember that stuff.

1:38:47 So in the trash again somewhere, all right, so all of these solar panels and everything that we're doing now is still it's like the scientists, you know, again, I'm working with some people at MIT and so on on this stuff through Anthony Randall and the organizational plan at home. And so we constantly talk about this and we talked to individuals, we're gonna be offering up consultation to this stuff And, and we're doing educational stuff too. I don't know if, you know, I do things for in kind of, or for kids of foundations as well, foster systems and so on, where I produce shows. So huge proponent of trying to find and, or educate youth to throw in your can in the recyclable and, or when you're using power, do it. But dude, I, I go out there and I as I because I try to preach some of this stuff today and I don't like being a pre preacher. I still see the common waste that goes every day and it makes me sick.

1:39:45 Yeah. The problem is though, most cities don't have the infrastructure, so even though they give you a blue bin and a green bin and a whatever bin, it all goes to the same freaking landfill. Most of the time, you know, we do have. I mean, half the cities just don't have the infrastructure for all of the recycling or, or the OR the cost is so high that it's just illogical, like it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, so. We, you know, we here at our house, we separate and then we take our cans and, and we, we separate the plastics and so on. Try to make it as easy as possible. Yeah.

1:40:25 But in the end, you know, we're still wasteful. We still try to do our best, right? But. Well, here where I'm at right now in, in Alberta, I still don't understand it cuz they have so many different colors of bins and stuff and you know, they have God I, what do they call it? The buy not bio products but basically like your your banana peels and stuff like that. Yeah, it's compost. That's your. Yeah, I mean, that's your green bin. Yeah, I mean, they've got that They've got, but they don't pick it up. So you literally have to go drive it to a facility and I'm like, how does that make sense? Well, then you. Get your own composting bin if you're well you're you're only there on vacation though. For how long are you in Alberta?

1:41:08 No, I'm here for months. Oh, there you go. That's right, I'm here for months. Yeah, we we stay here for the whole summer now, so. Awesome. Well, yeah, compost. So I take all my, all my banana peels and so on, go right out to the compost. They go to the garden. And then I, you know, I try to have a green thumb. I'm a huge fan of bonsais. Yeah. Oh wow, you and Tommy Lee. Yeah, I'm just like a total nut for bonsais. I try to bonsai everything and then I've been, I failed on many of them. But at the end of the day, it helps me Zen a bit 'cause I don't, you know, it's like people go, how do you deal with stress? And I said I just don't let it in, man. Yeah, yeah. It's like. Yeah, I don't. I don't, I don't get the bonsai thing at all.

1:41:50 You know, it just I don't have that gene in me that just says let's slow this right down and just sit here and trim this little Bush. It just doesn't. It's like something. Grow. And that comes from the green thumb of my mom, and that's cool. I'm not 100% successful with it, but I like, I love a challenge. Yeah, I've spent a lot of money on some damn good bonsais and I've lost them. Like screw them up. Yeah. So what did I do for my birthday last week? I went and found a bougainvillea for 12 bucks that I'm gonna bonsai. Yeah, that's bougainvilleas that are I just like ornate. Weird, So the bonsai isn't I. This is how stupid I am. So the bonsai isn't the the tree type, correct? It's the cutting type.

1:42:35 It's the style, it's the, it's the potting, it's the culture, right. And I'm not a professor by any means. Yeah, yeah, there are spruces. There are just tons of different. How you know that? Do I didn't know that. The bowl, it's like what will grow within that, you know, it's like, it's like a bougainvillea. It won't grow in a shallow bowl, but I acknowledge it too. And I keep pressing it and trying to figure it out, right, with like, nutrients and so on. And then I like Crimson Maples. Yeah, I've got one that, like, I've killed a few of them over the years. And I've got one that has regrown this year. And it's just like, blows me away. And I'm like, yeah. So how do you kill them? You just like over trim. Or whatever, water them and you're underwater them and then you're either scorch them with the sun or they're not in the right shade, right.

1:43:21 So there's so many different things and that's just amongst all the other challenges that I have between budgets. Yeah, ideas and concepts and decks. Then I've got all my plants outside. Yeah, you got these trees trying to trying to die as you're trying to make them survive. I got. Two fire trucks that I'm renovating and I've got two vans that I'm renovating. Oh my God, you know, those fire trucks are those are usually for really rich guys. Like I know, I know a few rich guys that collect fire trucks and tractors, farm tractors or another one that that rich guys like to collect. You know, Speaking of rich guys, Don Caron is into fire trucks. Really. Yeah, well, I was wealthy one time, then I went through two divorces, lost three houses, and then I went through the pandemic after with everything literally moving everything to Nashville.

1:44:11 Almost went bankrupt to come back to LA, Then fortunate enough to land a position again with S2 BN Entertainment and insult for them and to work for them and to let a senior like me still try to stay fresh. No, good for you. It sounds like you found a a perfect situation with really, really amazing people and you're obviously very happy there. You're much happier than last time I spoke to you on the podcast. I was, yeah, last time I was in. Between it all. Well, I was dealing with the theater that I was renovating, Yeah. And then I had another job back in LA that I had designed and I had just left the OB company for my second time.

1:44:51 And it was, you know, it was a whole different move and, and I had just been diagnosed with fatty liver and so on. And luckily I've ran, you know, gotten all of that. And I was £230 back then. But when you saw me, I had lost 40 lbs in three months and I went cold Turkey. People ask me how you did it. And I quit smoking and drinking at the same time. I did it because I was told that I had hardening of the liver and my ex-wife had just killed herself. So I didn't want my kids to be orphans. And I say, if you're going to do this, you're going to do it. And then again, I, you know, good for you. And at my age, you know, I, I go once 1/4 and I try to stay healthy now.

1:45:33 So it's like I, I try to stay as young as possible, get out, exercise. And I want to live, man. I've got too many friends every day. Above above dirt is a good day. But it makes you almost want to get off social media because as much as I love seeing my friends on social media, and it's why I have it. Yeah. I hate seeing dead people, you know, I just hate the announcements that you get, you know? Yeah. It's it's just so sad. I I can't stand it. But you know, The funny thing about health, and I had this conversation just the other day with Robert Roth. I was talking to him about something, probably Craig. I think he called me about Craig. Yeah. And. And he said, you know, and this is how I look at it too.

1:46:16 He said, you know, if I knew it was this simple a long time ago, I probably would have had a much healthier lifestyle. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, apparently diet, exercise, sleep and lack of putting bad shit into your body, like alcohol and drugs and everything else, apparently there's something there. And I said, yeah, you're right. There's something there. Well, that's, you know, Robert's probably one of those that went through all the debauchery like me and those days. Of course he did. Robert went hard. We went hard. Yeah, we all. He, he's been, he's been sober for a year and a few days now, like when I spoke to him, it was a year a couple days ago, so. Another, you know, another, another professional in the industry that I truly respect him. And I went head to head on a bunch of contracts way back in the day at Obi's.

1:47:05 Didn't have a lot of respect for each other back then. But today I've got a ton of respect. You know, I'm, I'm old enough and wise enough to, to look at the pros in the business and have appreciation for them. And then there's a lot of names that I don't know that people try to reach out to me. And if you know me, I'm, I'm not 100% sociable. Yeah, at the end of the day, I've got a niche core, but I try to get out there these days more often to say hi to folks and to. Well, that's another thing that's important as we get older. I mean, one of the biggest causes of dementia is lack of a good solid social life. Yeah, whack. You know, sleep. You said sleep, man.

1:47:46 These days I'm sleep's important. A lot. Sleep's important these days. Yeah. This week has been rough for me because it's like, I'll sleep for, you know, 26 hours and then I can't sleep for two days or whatever. But yeah, Well, Michael, I appreciate you very much taking the time to do this with me, and it's always nice to catch up with you, of course. Appreciate it. We should do it more often. Listen, I wanna end with saying some thank you to some folks. Yeah, OK, you go for it. Well, you started with, you know, saying sorry for all the dead people and now you're now you're thanking people. So that's. I wanna you know you're. Ending positive. Yeah. And and if you know me, I'm a storyteller. I've written and and I've done a lot of treatments and I've been very, very fortunate in this business and in this world to meet people like yourself. You and I go back I think 3839 years now. Long friggin time, yeah.

1:48:35 So it's like, you know, with my relationship with you, I want to thank you very much for that team that you just helped me with. Yeah, your team was amazing to help me, you know, liquidate some of the properties that we just had on a package that didn't go 100% and, you know, we needed to get rid of it. It took a while, but it got done. And your team was pro about it. So I thank you for that. Yeah. You know, there's people like Steve Jackson want to thank him big time. Yeah, Steve. He, when I first came to OB's, he was a shop manager back then and he was so instrumental on a lot of people's lives at producing some amazing product going out of that office. You know, Paul George, if people don't know, AKA Ringo, Paul George, amazing talent. He's his own creative producer in his own right left Obi's many years ago.

1:49:22 He's got a company called Gorilla Production out of Franklin, TN Good buddy of mine. I and these are people I spent time on the road with. So, you know, rigor, obviously, Carlos Sandoval, one of my best friends out there. The Santana crew, you know, designed Santana back in 2000. And that was, you know, Santana. And Clint came to me through Michael Kiefer and Dale Doucet. Michael Kiefer, AKA Haas, if you don't know him, an amazing cat. Yeah, Dale, very talented. Dale. I would love to see you interview him at some point in time. Yeah. Dale. Dale has a great thing that he he's got going on at, you know, up in his neck of the woods. Steve Lemon.

1:50:05 Yeah. Lemon Amazing. I've known forever. Steve has been a tour director on multiple shows that I've been on Aerosmith and then him and I've worked on many things. Marty Fredrickson, the producer I mentioned to you again, known him forever. If you guys don't know Marty Fredrickson, just look him up and what the work he's done with Aerosmith and many other bands. Morse Wright, Jay Daltman, Robert Altman's grandson. Jade and Morris both were our directors for me on multiple accounts. Mark Romanek. You know, Mark Romanek is one of the directors that helped make my career. Yeah, Mark is like one of the top two directors in the world. I look at him and I look at Francis Lawrence that I've had a chance to work with on multiple campaigns. You know, Mark is like, I look at him and I look at Stanley Kubrick style directing and has done some of the biggest products in the world and he brought me in on Coldplay and I've worked with him like five times. You got Brantley Gutierrez, another amazing director, Anthony Randall, Wiseman, Brickman. Yeah.

1:51:08 David Agar, Everybody at All Access want to thank you guys there. Joe Gallagher, Joey Gallagher. Again, all these people have produced product for me, you know, Jose Cantun and the accurate Arthur Mayo, Scott Javins, Brian Longmire, the Gregorio family, the Lenny Kravitz team. Like I said, Bill Latsko, Donald Giacobelli and others in the program. His new album is pretty good, by the way. You know, I've been listening to it. Yeah, that's been a weird relationship after I did this. I've been very fortunate, like I said, with having, you know, the same year I did Coldplay, Speed of Sound. I also, I was nominated for an MTV on that one, and then I also did MTV two. What was the band that I did?

1:51:53 Oh, Jesus. I can't remember it, but they won the video of the year that I ended up directing that package with too. So programmers Martin Phillips, Ben Richards, you know, Benoit, if you don't know Benoit, of course, an amazing talent. Michelle Surratt. Yeah, Michelle Surratt. Very talented. Michelle worked on my last big production, which was See You Live at Coachella. Bravery was the band. Bravery was the. Band, I just looked it up in your. Notes yeah. So that was like that was a flip side. If you look, if anybody wants to do anything, look at Coldplay, speed of sound, then take a look at my crazy brain where I did all of the production design and art direction on the bravery and threw that together in like 48 hours.

1:52:38 Cat W was the last one that I wanted to say. And then my amazing son, Lucas and Shane. Wow, that's a big list. And my yeah, and and my significant other right now, Jordi Katon, yeah. So for her to put up with me and us in this business, they're all. Special ladies putting up with us that's. For sure. Yeah, You've been through it. I have. Michelle, thank you very much. No, thank you, and let's stay in touch. Yeah, buddy, you take care of yourself. Thanks for the time.

1:53:39 None.