#252 - Dizzy Gosnell

0:00 I just finished with Dizzy Gosnell and great time, great chat. Dizzy, for those of you who don't know, has been a VP at Bandit for 40 years I think, Or wait a second, I think he started in 85, somewhere around 40 years. Very rare guy who's had two jobs in like 45 or 46 years, two jobs and so just incredible, very talented. He's one of the guys who can take bits and piece them together better than almost anybody. Like send him a real problem situation where a rig won't fit into a building or whatever and he'll have it figured out and and re engineered and drawn out in a few days. And we talked a lot about AI.

0:47 He's very anti AI and you'll hear that on this episode. So I really hope you enjoy it and share it and like and subscribe and thanks again for watching. Welcome to Geysers of Gear episode #252 Today's podcast is brought to you by Elation Professional. Elation offered the latest innovation in strobe effects, the Pulse series. This new series of powerful strobe and creative design effects includes multifunctional panel or bar lights that can function as a high impact strobe, bright blinder, high output wash light or creative eye candy effect. In one.

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4:08 Welcome back. I'm here. So I'm up in Canada. It's a little bit cold. I'm in the mountains and it's not sunny today. It's kind of rainy and cold and miserable. It looks like it's even snowing up higher than my house up in the mountains. And so yeah, it's a nice day to sit inside with a fire going and just get a lot of work done and not be distracted by the beauty of the outdoors and and the availability of lots of cool things to do. Oh, welcome. Yesterday episode #251 was a great one with Ola Melzig. If you haven't listened to it already, stop now. Go back and listen to 2:51 and then come back here again. Today's going to be good as well. But Ola was Ola was fantastic.

4:53 If you know Ola, he's a character, he's fun, he's interesting. But he did just come off of the most recent Eurovision Song Contest, of course, which is one of the biggest shows on Earth. It's just a massive display of movie lights and LED screens and audio and stuff, just all the latest, coolest technology at once. And so, yeah, we had a great discussion. Went on about 2 1/2 hours. So go back and check it out at episode #251. I'm not going to talk about AI today. So there you go. I'm saving you from the evil empire of AI. And so I'm hearing a deal is imminent with four wall.

5:35 Hearing that through lots of different sources and I know they've been working on a deal for a little more than a year. You know, this is the way it goes When you are a private equity owned company, typically there are these tiers of private equity. So there's these guys down here that may go from 50 million to 250 million and then there's one that goes from 2:50 to 500 million. And then there's one that's really their sweet spot is 500 to 7:50 or to a billion. And So what typically happens is when you first get an investment from a private equity company, they specialize in, in smaller entities or whatever, wherever you're at at that point. And then typically their move, their play isn't to buy and keep these companies.

6:23 Usually what they're going to want to do is buy the company, grow it and then sell it to that next tier of private equity group. So if you're in the, if you're in the 100 to 250 range, they're going to want to sell you to the guys who are really good at 2:50 to 500. So they're going to want a three to five X their money and then go to the next level to the next tier. And so that's really all that's happening here. It's not that all of a sudden 4 wall is a lousy toxic company or something. They're a great company. Companies at that size and companies who are private equity backed usually are very capital intensive and they need new sources of capital, larger sources of capital that are more suited to the size of their Business Today than they are suited to the size of their business five years ago or whatever. So when Mike Cannon sold this company to what are they called Genesis back several years ago, you know, they were the perfect size.

7:20 It was a right size match. Now there's probably larger needs and a larger private equity group wanting to buy the company and the smaller private equity group wanting to get out and, and reinvest that capital into other smaller companies that they can then grow to the next level. So this is just how the system works. Anything more than that is just drama. You know, I've heard all kinds of different versions of why it's being sold and it none of that's true. It's really just going to the next level, going to the next level. And you'll probably see that as soon as they announce their new owners, nothing's going to change. It's probably good for the industry because I'm sure there's been a lot of things being held back because of this process that they're going through. And so it'll be good for the industry, it'll be good for the suppliers, it'll be good for their customers, it'll be good for their staff who have all been basically in a holding pattern for a year.

8:12 And so I think it's a good thing. I think you're probably going to see a lot of acquisitions that happen right after the deal is announced because I think there's probably some acquisitions being held back as well. And so, yeah, no panic. This is a good thing. When large companies do deals like this, it's generally just to find better access or cheaper access to capital. It's got everything to do with money and it's not that somebody'd cashing out and taking millions of dollars off the table. So another thing, there's a lot of gear freeing up right now in Europe. And so if you are looking for gear, I would not suggest that you just go hunting for small companies in Europe that are Smalling, Yep, Smalling selling gear because it's probably not the safest or or most comfortable thing for you to do if you're based in the US or you're based in Asia or wherever you are.

9:03 We specialize my company and this is very self-serving, little announcement here, but Gearsource specialize in cross-border global transactions where you're buying $1,000,000 sound systems from Europe and you're in Canada, which is a deal we recently did. So you know, come to us and just say, hey, we're looking for 100 X fixtures, whatever they are. Do you have something available and maybe you even have something in Europe and don't be afraid because it's coming from Europe. We can help with the logistics, we can help with certainly we handle the transaction as far as currency and taxes and all of those things.

9:46 So we make it easy and the only thing is it takes a little longer and costs a little more in freight. But generally if you buy and sell right, you can take advantage of currency exchange rates or currency just fluctuations or things like that timing. And you know, you can usually buy really well by buying from another country. And also from a supply and demand standpoint, there are especially European manufacturers who sometimes you can buy stuff used a lot cheaper in in Europe than you can in the US And same with US manufacturers. A lot of times European companies will buy it cheaper in the US then they can buy it in Europe. And that's typically because of distribution agreements. So for example, if I manufacture a product in Italy and it's €1000 and I sell it into the US, I'm going to discount that €1000 to a distributor.

10:41 So let's say I sell it for €700, that distributor needs to import it, they need to put it in stock, they need to market it, they need to do all kinds of things. So they eat up all of that margin and they need to go over that €1000 price. So they're going to sell it for maybe, you know, €1200 or €1300, which would be $1500 or whatever in the US to their dealers and still make the same margin or whatever. So, you know, it's, it's something that I could go into much more detail with if anybody wants to have a conversation. But the reality is that there are a lot of benefits to buying from other countries and there are a lot of hazards involved in doing so.

11:24 And we can certainly help you maneuver that. But the point wasn't to try and sell you something. The point was that we're seeing a lot more movement on used gear, not just in the United States. US is very busy right now with a lot of summer tours and stuff, but there's a lot of stuff opening up and certainly in Europe in a big way right now. So lots going on. And what else do I want to talk to you about? Yeah, So our podcast, please. You've been doing such a great job, people. Every time I say this, I think people go, OK, I'll do it. Like and subscribe to our podcast. It really does help to grow the audience and that doesn't make me more money because believe it or not, I don't earn money from this podcast.

12:10 Certainly we have sponsors, but that pays the bills and that helps us to market the podcast and and grow the podcast. Maybe someday I'll make a buck or two, but don't count on me getting rich from doing Geezers of Gear. But by liking and subscribing, you're helping us grow the audience, you're helping us get better sponsors, more sponsors, you're helping us to provide more listeners for our guests. And it's just good for everyone. And so Speaking of guests, we're always looking out for a good story. I love a good story. And Ola had a couple good ones yesterday. So again, be sure to go back and listen to 251. But if you have a great story, your life story, your career story, just a couple of stories about some tours that you did or whatever and you'd like to share, just reach out to us.producer@geezersofgear.com.

13:03 You can send an e-mail and that will go to Sarah, our producer. Sarah will then engage you in a e-mail loop that will get you scheduled to record. And we actually have a couple of openings in July. So by the time you hear this, we're going to be in July and we have a couple of openings that have come about whether people have canceled because they're out on tour or whatever it is. But you know, so even we could probably even get you in in the next few weeks if if you want to jump on the podcast. And it doesn't have to be 2 1/2 hours like it was yesterday for Ola. It could be one hour, it could be 45 minutes. I don't care. You know, if you've got a great story, let's talk about it. So today's guest on episode #252 is Dizzy Gosnell. Dizzy has been on before and is has a great story to tell. Talking about great stories, Dizzy is AVP at Bandit Lights. I think he's VP of production there. He's been a part of the Bandit family since 1993. So quick math in my head, that's 31 years. That's a long time.

14:10 And he first met Mike Strickland from Bandit, the CEO and founder of Bandit, 40 years ago when Michael was the production manager for Blackfoot and Dizzy was on the lighting crew with Meteor Lights for Iron Maiden and Meteor Lights. I don't even think they are. They've been around for a long time now. Dizzy began his lighting career in England in the late 70s, touring with dozens of bands including Phil Collins, Iron Maiden, ACDC, Paul Simon, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, lots of others. Dizzy has an incredible portfolio that you can now view online. We're going to talk about this and Sarah is also going to share the link to this portfolio in the show notes because it actually is really, really interesting. And this includes drawings of some of the shows he's toured in the 80s that had no 3D drawings or renderings done at all. And so since that time, he's gone out and created drawings for them.

15:07 We first had Dizzy on the podcast back in January 2020. Again, we had no idea what was about to hit us at that time, so we'll talk about that too. That was episode #71 So please join me and welcome Dizzy Gosnell back to the podcast today. Hello, Dizzy. Hi. Marcel. Are you still a left coaster? Yep, absolutely. So it's it's still morning, so I can say good morning, Dizzy. Yep, absolutely. It's only 10:00, so yeah, some people call specific time. I'm at my place up in Canada, so I'm on Mountain Time right now. OK, 11:15 for me.

15:48 But yeah, so I appreciate you coming back on and doing this. It's funny, 'cause I was looking back, I, I knew that we had recorded once before, but I look back at it was in January 2020, sort of, you know, before she had hit the fan, I guess. And I was, I was listening to it to see if there were any clues or hints or anything that we were about to go into this wacky moment and there wasn't. So it's, it's crazy, you know, to. Hear yourself wide eyed and wide eyed and clueless from here. Yeah, just another year, you know? Yeah, and but it it's funny when you listen back to yourself talking in January 2020 and it's like nothing's coming, you know, it's a regular time, regular year, everything's good. And yeah.

16:37 And then God knows what what we went. Through everyone up. Didn't it? Jesus, stupid. It was stupid. But you know, and I, I remember I had some fairly notorious memorable talks with people where we talked about I created this thing that I called day 91. I said, this is going to be a 90 day problem. And on day 91, what do you want to come out looking like? Like, you want to come out better, You want to learn some new skills or clean up your shop or whatever, you know, just really dumb shit that that in the end just made me look stupid because it became like day 391 or 691 or whatever it was, right?

17:19 Yeah, it's like then coming out was just being gay, isn't it? Still still coming. It's like, yeah, I mean, when's it going to go back to normal? But this is normal now. Like this is just the new normal. It's because, you know, it's funny, COVID created so many opportunities. Out of death and destruction came new life, you know, and it so in our industry, I think so many artists created these massive or at least expanded these massive social media followings during COVID. And so they came out like they were shot out of a cannon when COVID ended because there was just this pent up demand, but also there was just a bigger demand based on the fact that they now had 10 million followers and stuff, right?

18:07 Yeah, and you see, like Dave Matthews doing his Friday thing in his living room or something like that, all those kind of little things, which I thought was cool and and it it made it more 1 to one. It cut out all the middle men from the artist to fan. Yeah, I. Agree, all of the middle men, record companies, promoters, book and agents. I mean, God bless them, but I mean it just cut them out. Of the I. Agree. And there was no intermediaries and people felt more connected. And I think, well, looking at the sort of Taylor Swift thing that we got now, which is a complete absolute phenomenon, yeah, I think that's a a big part of that as well as her savvy business management in her camp. Yeah.

18:49 About sort of doing things and not sort of bowing down to anybody else's things. It's not radical. I mean, what she's doing, it's not radical. It's pretty normal. Like, OK with Scooter wants to like, take her to the cleaners for the publishing rights. Yeah, I'll just do them again. Next. Isn't that incredible? I love that. I love that issue. I mean, it's really clean and easy. Yeah, no, I, I am, I am the furthest thing from a Taylor Swift fan. But I'm certainly a fan of her, her business acumen, the. Fact. The model, her business model is do it. That's how to do it. It's, in my opinion, a a fairly average talent.

19:30 You know, who has just created a massive product from that talent, And I'm not saying she's not talented, obviously there's some talent there and, and somebody's writing some songs that are catchy and stuff, but it's the business behind it that that has created that phenomenon. And the mentality of of doing it and doing it for the right reasons. Agreed. Yeah. And also utilizing what is available now. I mean, there's a host of things I'm talking to later, but I don't think Taylor Swift could be doing three nights or eight nights total in Wembley. With any degree of certainty that it's not going to rain there at Wembley and one of those shows, ordinarily a show designed like that 10 years ago, would be cancelled.

20:15 Yeah. Because you could never put all the video on the floor and all the lights out way down the length of the stadium. Yeah, and everything else out there and the sound different now. But no, if it just rains. I mean, I've seen like Taylor Swift singing the rain and Rammstein just playing, crunching it and crunching it in Germany. Yeah. In bucketing rain in Dusseldorf, it's like yeah, we're just getting wet. So what? Yeah, But I love that attitude. It's just let's get it done. But in the old days, you would have had to put bags on everything and just. I know I. Think that's been one of the, it's been one of sort of the underspoken or under celebrated technology changes over the past 10 or 15.

20:56 Years the IP stuff. Yeah, I mean, and to be honest, giving them full credit, Elation was one of the very first pioneers of it too. You know, like certainly I think SGM as far as that larger company, they were the first one to really come out with some some IP rated fixtures, Elation said. Hey, we're going full on into this. We're going deep and everyone ridiculed them saying you're making fixtures heavier and more expensive and there's so many screws to open them and stuff. But you know, they were ahead of the game and and it was a smart move. You look at the metallic as the Taylor Swift, the Ram stars, the ACD season, all those big outdoor summer stadium shows, especially in Europe where it's it doesn't stop raining in summer in Europe.

21:43 I mean it it thumbs down. So are you going to have a rain date or are you going to design it? You're going to cover the whole stage and the runway. Yeah. Well, how many, how many more millions of dollars in trucks is that going to cost? If you want to build a tank the length of Wembley Stadium just as a runway, it changes the. Entire economics of a, of a European stadium tour, right? Yep. The fact that now it's rain or shine, like unless there's lightning hitting the stadium or something. But yeah, yeah. But that's that's radical in extreme. I mean, England, it's like it rains in the most a lot of America too. It's the same kind of deal. And the IP rated stuff is really made it better. Obviously we're never going to get IP rated desks, I don't think in my lifetime.

22:25 But you can tent them up and everything and, and racks and everything. But it's the lights themselves, the, the business end. And it's been one of my, my things for, I don't know, probably the last 10 years is one of the best inventions for lighting. There's been the liner rate PA. Why is that? Because in the 80s we used to have this wall of PA cabinets about 28 foot off the ground on all sorts of metal shows that I was involved in and others, you know, Rainbow and all the other big metal with the 1st generation of of all in one cabinets and big walls of them. And they couldn't, you know, there was no steering. So the higher you had it, you're just firing at the back wall if you had it too high, but it would completely mask anything that was going on 28 feet and above with this 12 foot wall of plywood.

23:20 The prism, I mean, the, the prism system with Shoko was the first step into that. But now the line arrays at how small they are and how much they can cover. And you can just put them on a stick in the in the field, you know a 70 foot tower on the field. Completely new lines of sight. And we're probably also saving a lot of people's ears because like the stacked systems of the 80s and 90s and stuff, when you had a bigger venue, you just turned them up louder, you know? And so the poor people in the 1st 20 or 30 rows were just completely deafened, you know, like just. The site restriction thing you put, you'd have to lay towers halfway up the field, get down some festivals and Donningtons and that kind of stuff with delayed towers, massive piles of more scaffolding in the mud with PA stacked up, base bins, middles and horns stacked in a just horrible. Just stuff.

24:18 Now is the line away, I think is probably one of the biggest advances in the look of a show that we've had. Yeah, I wonder when they. I wonder. I wonder when they just start handing out air pods at the, you know, at the door when you walk in and everybody just. We've done Bonnaroo and they had, Yeah, well, Bonnaroo with a silent disco and stuff. They've had that silent disco tent for years. Really. Yeah. They've it's been, it's one of the smaller tents, but it's just called the Silent Disco for years. And it was basically just a closed system. You put headphones on. Oh, that's cool. If you don't have the headphones on, all we hear is like punters squeaking in their Birkenstocks on the dance. Floor.

24:58 That's funny. They're just like grooving with the, you know, overbite and everything, getting it all down. Yeah. So I mean, the sign of disco stuff is it works. I've I've often wondered why you just give people, especially if you have either curfews or noise limits. Yeah, yeah, no, but I mean, going back to the whole COVID thing, like you were mentioning that it was cool what what some of the artists were doing. And you know, one of the ones that I used to follow 'cause he put out so much content during that time was Tommy Shaw from Styx. And he would just, he'd sit in his living room with his dog and an acoustic guitar and he would just sing old stick songs and stuff.

25:40 And it was really entertaining 'cause I happen to think the guy's mega talented still at his age. He still sings those songs so well. And the other thing that was cool was the collaborations being done like over Internet, you know, where the drummer was in Germany and the bass player was in, you know, Canada and the singer was wherever. And they'd record a song and then piece it all together and the video would show them each in their own place and stuff. I love those collaborations as well. Some of them were really great. Some of the ones were were not actually like rock stars doing it, but some like orchestra type people, even kids and junior and youth orchestras doing an Iron Maiden song or a Rammstein song like 12 or 15 of them in 12 or 15 different cities.

26:31 Yeah, by Zoom or Skype or. Yeah, I remember some of those things where they had thousands of artists, like, didn't you two do something where they had people in Africa and people all over the world singing and yeah, yeah, I think so. But there was a lot of novel stuff I think that came out and a different way of thinking and the and the, the nimble people survived, I think. Yeah. Well, and I think our industry is one where, you know, if you make a sit down for too long, we're going to start dreaming up some pretty innovative things, you know, and I mean, you certainly have done a lot of that on your own. But I I just saw so many cool things come out of COVID. And you know, if I look back at COVID, as terrible as it was and as many people who died and lots of people lost their homes and their businesses, and it's all terrible, but I think it was a net positive in, in so many ways, I think COVID was a net positive. Plus the factors, you've been one of the very few things that was truly global.

27:32 I mean, every single country and world wars were were not world wars all over the globe, you know, in big parts of it, World War 2, but World War Two didn't hit like Peru or yeah, the land mass of Australia or anything like that. So it wasn't global. But yeah, not only every, not only every country, but every class, like rich people, poor people, famous people, nobody's you. Know. Didn't matter who you were, you were locked down in your house, you know, and, and ordering food on DoorDash or whatever, you know it, it didn't care who you were so. I think it might. I mean everybody from from like 5 year old kids who missed their friends at school for six, eight months or whatever and they really wanted to go out and play and go to really wanted to go to school. I mean, that was lower parents I speak to, they've never heard those words.

28:20 They they want a hundred ways to not go to school today, but after five and six months want to go to school. I want to record that because it's. They just wanted normalcy, some level of normalcy back, right? Yeah. But it made. Probably the parents wanted them the hell out of the house too, you know? Please go to school made everyone appreciate what what we thought was boring before they we would crave normality. Well, I craved LDI, you know, go figure, like trade show and see all my friends again and stuff. Like it was, it was just such a weird time. But yeah, I mean, again, I, I look at the positives that came out of it. I think there's a lot of net positive that came out of it. You know, certainly your friend and and owner became much more famous and became a a politician. Through the process, Yeah, yeah, very much an an unwilling politician.

29:16 But it's just like, well, I mean, I'll have a go. And that was basically it. It was my button. I'll do it. I'll do it. It was like, yeah, OK, I'll just, I'll. I think I can help. I think I can help. Same thing I did on a much smaller scale, but you know, I did the same thing I said. I think I can help here. I think I might know some people. I think I might be able to connect some dots and make some things happen. Yep, so it was good on that and simple things like no using zoom now as just a a standard thing. In the old days we'd have had to fly to Cincinnati for a site meeting or fly to this and wasted so much time and money for 1/2 hour meeting. Huge positive. Three days of flying out, the meeting that day.

30:00 You may fly home that night or you'd stay over again and fly back, you know, for a one hour site meeting in a field. And it's like, really? Yeah. And yeah, we're better than that now. And grandmas can talk to the kids now. Even grandma have figured out how to use Zoom. Yeah. So the connection was better. I think there's nothing to do with Rock'n'roll, just general connection. Well, then, you know, things other than Zoom happened too. Like if for example, one thing that happened during COVID was a lot of companies created competitors to Zoom or competitors to Slack or these other connecting online platforms, remote platforms. And I use one, it's called Rome and it's incredible.

30:41 It's like it's been game changing for my company and for my my staff and stuff. Just the way that it connects people and the way that it makes remote people feel like a real company and feel like you're connected and you're together and stuff. Yeah, I mean, just a lot of great things. And I think as as a whole, our industry is, is certainly we've fallen back into some of our really stupid pre COVID ways. But in a lot of ways we're so much better than we were before COVID. And you know, I think that that's going to continue. I think COVID changed a lot of things for our industry, mostly for the better. And so, yeah, I don't look back at it and say it was all terrible.

31:23 I I look back at it and say it was terrible, but a lot of good came out of it. And also think I mean other things, again, not rock'n'roll related, but things like video medicine became the standard thing. Yeah, video doctors, yeah, I mean, I will try to have that when my kid was younger instead of having to get every the doctors because my kid coughed. So I agree completely. We're all going to the doctor's kids more because I can't leave you here on your own, so we're all going. Yeah, yeah. But no, no. That's a big one. I never even thought of that, but that's true. Yeah, that's true. 24/7 I mean, I, I had a thing where I, I slipped on a well, my foot slipped on the edge of a curb and felt the back of my calf just got a snap like that. It just sort of went down.

32:07 Jesus. And it just swelled up. And about two days later and about 9:00 at night, and I signed up for one of the telly doc things, 15 bucks to sign on. And I think it was like 25 bucks for 20 minutes. And it was an American doctor, but he was living in France. This is 99 o'clock at no 10:00 at 9 American time. He was in France and signed up because he said English speaking preferred. And but when he was just happened to be there and he's like, well, didn't matter where he was at all. Yeah, the the connection went down near the end and we hadn't quite wrapped up. He called me back just to see if there's anything. He didn't just leave it hanging. That's awesome. This is really cool. It was. A better experience than going in, right?

32:49 Yep. Yeah. Well, think about payment, like think about how payment has changed and how even billing and, and you know, paying for utilities and all of those things, so many things that you used to have to do in person. But payments like a lot of times, especially here in Canada, I don't even carry my wallet anymore. I just have my phone and, and you can pay with your phone absolutely everywhere here. I haven't found a single place you can't pay with your phone. I found places you can't pay cash, but I haven't found any place you can't pay with your phone. And so it's like I, I barely carry my wallet when I'm up here in Canada, you know, in the USI still do just because I feel like somebody's going to break into my house and steal it if I don't have it in my pocket. So but but yeah, it's, it's, I think there's a lot of really positive things that came out of COVID and, and we have to remember that stuff.

33:45 But like you said, the fact that everybody's on Zoom like that was one of the things that was really weird for me early in COVID because I was already a remote company. I had 20 staff that had been remote for seven years or something, right? And so I knew all of the remote stuff. And so I was training people on how to use Zoom, how to use Google Drive, how to use, you know, different online platforms that cause like a lot of people pre COVID still had all of their files on servers in a building that they weren't allowed to go to, you know, so they couldn't get to any of their files. And I'm like, you have servers like what the hell you doing so? Just one and things like FedEx was, was, you know, shaken down for quite a bit as well.

34:33 The the delivery things, there was limitations on pickups and that kind of stuff too. So if you needed to get big drawings to someone, the only way to get a big drawing file across to someone was via Dropbox or better Google Drive, which I love Google Drive. I think it's excellent. My son was teaching people during COVID, teaching clarinet students privately online and he was uploading like all the, the teaching stuff, the papers and, and the notes and everything. Here's what we're going to be doing tomorrow, you know, do some practicing and we can discuss it tomorrow. And it was all remote. It wasn't ideal as far as music goes, a bit of latency and everything, but it was a whole lot later than. A problem for music?

35:17 Yeah, it's a problem. But you know, like similarly, my, my girlfriend's daughter-in-law teaches, she's Hispanic, she's from Peru, and she teaches English to people who want to move to the US or who are moving or have already moved to the US or whatever. And she moved her entire teaching system online and has created a whole system of curriculum and filing and stuff all through Google. I think Google has something called Google Classroom now. And so she she had her whole school is through that and she has tons of teachers and tons of students. And she showed me her whole platform.

35:57 I'm like, wow, this is so cool. Like, why would you go to a school? And that was the other thing. Like my son did home school because of racing, but so many people moved to home school and went, this is way better. Like this is way better than sending my kid to crazy school every day and not knowing what's going on there and stuff. And so I think that was another thing is, is. I think in Poland some people, some I got friends who really thought the home school would be a good thing and it ended up being less controllable and less advancing and definitely the social aspect the kids missed. Yeah, I thought it was a really good thing 'cause my son is like the class clown, the person who's always interrupting the teacher, as you could only imagine knowing me. But, you know, he was the obnoxious gamer, funny kid in class and stuff.

36:51 And so he was always in trouble. And so putting him in home school was actually a really good thing for the educators, but for his own education as well. And as far as the social thing, like because he was racing at almost every weekend, he was always at race tracks. He had nothing but a social life. So, you know, we didn't, we didn't lack in that regard. So it actually worked out perfectly for him. But I understand what you're saying, how it could go the other way. So one of the neat things about you, and I remember this from our previous podcast, but I think it's something like over 45 years you've had two jobs. Yep. Which blows my mind.

37:34 Like how many people can say that you know? My brother-in-law worked for the same oil company in Calgary, Canada here for 43 years for one company, but not very many people, you know what I mean? Especially. Nowadays, certainly not ex Prime Minister Liz Truss from England for 45 days. Nobody's lasting very long lately, so. But no, it's. Yeah, that's been it. I mean, there's been meteorites. It was 8079. Yeah. Start working there now we're up to 24. Oh yeah, 45 years. That is crazy. That's why two years before that, when I was on my own doing my own stuff, clubs and pubs and bars, but or two or three years before that, yeah, I was actually employers.

38:22 Yeah, that was. That's been it. Yeah, that is wild. Two companies. Just got my 30th last November was my 30th year with Bandit. Huh, that's wild. I love it. I love it and obviously no desire to go anywhere at this point. I mean, who wants to start over? Yeah. But it's, I think I'm a good place. I feel comfortable and and the business is in a good place now it's. Yeah. I don't know. There's something, I can't really put my finger on what it is now, but there seems to be more acceptance. There is. There's a lot more stuff now where a lot of venues that are providing as far as we're concerned, and probably the sound companies too, where there's three or four trusses of stuff at a certain level of show. Yeah.

39:13 Where they've got three or four trusses of stuff and it's decent stuff. It's not like a couple of parkhands and a couple of likos like it was 30 odd years ago, but they've got good stuff. It may be different, it may be elation today, maybe Martin tomorrow, maybe Ayrton the day after, but it's relatively comparable. You can put on a decent show if you've got your druthers as an LD and then just you carry your floor package, which makes a difference. And we've been really, really capitalising on on the floor packages, making them swift, quick, friendly as as far as touring labor goes, just to give some the the bands a different look on the floor and filling in the hole because so many shows now are just looking the same.

39:57 Yeah. Yeah, I mean. I know, I know, gear used to make all the difference on these shows. Like oh you know, we got to go to a high end house or we got to go to a very light house or whatever. Everything is so damn good right now. You know we're spoiled as an industry because everything is good, even even the off brand. Asian companies or whatever, you know. I think, well, I think the accountants have driven that to a greater extent because, I mean, it's, it always used to be like, well, we want Vera lights and we go, OK, well, we got Intelli beans said, oh, yeah. But the old, no, the, the, the production would say, oh, we really want to have Vera lights. And the account would say, if any of the audience can tell the difference between a very light and an Intelli bean, then fine, then, then we'll look at it. But right now they're just, and this is obviously 2530 years ago when it was in this infancy.

40:47 Yeah, Yeah. And you'd have a dozen VLS or a dozen I beans. But nobody knows the difference. The accountants, I mean, I had a couple of conversations or yeah, chats with different ones and say, well, they want very well be prepared for Intellivange because I'm telling production that if the partners can't tell the difference for what we're doing it with it at the time. Yeah, just a bit of wiggle stuff. It's not an integral part of the show. It's more of the candy at the time. But that that mentality has kind of stuck. And like you, like you say, there's a lot of good stuff. If you want a good medium range LED wash or a good medium range beam hybrid beam lamp, or of outdoor super mega spot which can throw 300 feet or something in the rain, there is that stuff and two or three different options for each. Light or the B light or whatever, because you can have alternates now like they're they're. Taking a lot of the time, yeah, they'll, they'll come out with alternates out-of-the-box rather than us asking them, could we? Is there any chance we could substitute this one for that one?

41:50 A lot of the tours will actually say I want this, this or this. Yeah, sometimes they'll expect a, a preference in one, 2-3, this one, if not that, but others, other people, and I can think of a few good designers who are really savvy, they'll just say this, this and all this. And there's differences in each lamp, minor differences in each lamp with, yeah, macros and, and just some of the little smaller features. But basically they're similar, very similar lamps. Well, I've been seeing a lot more designers who, you know, once they've selected the vendor, they'll go to the vendor and say, OK, what do you actually have sitting here? You know, let's let's like go ahead and pick some fixtures based on what you actually have sitting here and. And then you'll do.

42:36 Them some favors back, right? It's a smart way of doing it and a lot more people since COVID have done that a lot. More because. And there's there's load of options too. Well, a load of barriers. If we can get the stamps or those particular apps, we could, but the manufacturer can't supply them until September. Yeah. So we can want all we want, but it's not going to happen. The other thing it allows like you and Strickland and, and your purchasing team and whatever, it allows you to manage your business and not to just have to go out and buy stuff on a whim every single time. You know what I mean? Like, hey, we, we are partnered with this manufacturer. We have 1000 of these in stock.

43:16 Would this work for you? You know, and I just think there's a a bigger willingness now, it seems certainly the top artists, the Taylor Swift's of the world are going to get whatever the hell they want. Yeah, but but everybody. Else is, is their mass and they're they're kind of they're forward planning because I mean Taylor Swift is not all we're going out in two weeks. I mean that's planned 612 months ahead. So there's a massive amount of planning and forward planning you can do on that, whether it's budgetary for the for the vendor or whether it's manufacturing for one of the the lighting manufacturers to say, well, we're not geared up for that yet, but yeah, we can get 350 by next February. Yeah, yeah.

43:58 And that's fine. If it's like next Tuesday, it's like, yeah, well, that's not gonna happen. Yeah. How do you, how do you get on new gear now? Like do you, do you actually try to see a lot of the stuff? Like do people come and show you new stuff or you don't really care too much anymore? I'll see it online or I'll yeah, either as the demo online or the OR a show with those particular items in it. If it's not the show we're doing, there's someone else's that's got that light on it. Yeah, yeah. Mechanically. And then I mean, Jake Tickle was the main guy who's in in Nashville. I wouldn't say he's the gatekeeper, but he's the one who's got his most finger on the pulse for all the new fixtures because there are So what you know, there's so many coming out every week now, if possible to keep up, you know, I'll go oh, what about this like, Oh no, there's an XB1 of those now.

44:51 There's really, we only got the, the mark one out like 3 months ago. Yeah, yeah, the XB now. So we're not going to look at those. So, and it is very much, it's still a bit Las Vegas gambling on which lamp you're going to buy 150 of at one time or 300 of Yeah, because you don't know if if it's not going to be in favour for whatever reason. It's totally true. Yeah, it's totally true. Months time and the ones you just bought haven't been paid off for yet. Yeah, but no, you might think something. You might think something is the most beautiful product ever and and if nobody specs it or nobody accepts it as an alternate, you know, you, you end up screwed. But. And to a certain extent, it doesn't really matter what we think as the vendor. It doesn't really matter because the, the, the production's coming to us in the main.

45:41 They'll say, yeah, this is all right. Well, that's all right. But no, I've had bad problems with that lamp, you know, version C Yeah. So I'd rather we've got hundreds of them. Yeah. And it could be just that he had, you know, bad experience on the tour or he didn't like the lamp or what it can do. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Features or lack of? Yeah. But yeah, we, we try and stay alert, but it's, I mean, it used to be that pier I used to be in the old days when it was Park and Lecos I beams, colour faders and verulite who are their own thing anyway. So we nothing we could do about that. That was basically us, you know, the, the trendy new thing would be a new colour of gel from Lee or Roscoe.

46:23 Yeah. It was so much easier to worry about the sound guys because they had all their stuff, new mics, new amps, new cabinets. Oh, this is a full range cabinet. Oh glad I'm not in the sound business, but lighting is just crazy. Sound is still pretty stupid. I mean sound is like, and then they'll spec like it can't be the the KSI system. It has to be the KSL, you know, or the KSL 2. There's a new KSL 2. It's even better, you know, and it's like that's a $2,000,000 purchase or whatever, you know, it's not like. Video going on with Five. 100 moving lights, Yeah. So video was with half a Micron resolution or something? Crazy, crazy.

47:03 Yeah, Roe has cleaned up on that, that's for sure. Roe keeps. I mean, their product is amazing, but every time they make it a little more amazing, somebody's got to go spend $1,000,000 on another screen, you know, and it's incredible. I mean, it's, it's obviously it's paying because somebody's buying the stuff and somebody's renting the stuff and whatever. Yeah. So, yeah, it's, I think it's so funny when people come from outside our industry and look inside our industry at financials and stuff and they go, what the fuck is wrong with you people? Like what are you thinking? Even even down to the the the actual basics of a load in a show and a load out. They don't understand.

47:44 I mean, the average civilian doesn't understand that, no, this stuff comes down and goes in those white boxes out in the parking lot tonight and then it drives to Omaha and does the same thing at 7:00 tomorrow morning. They don't understand that. And to this day, with all the communication and all the MTV behind the scenes and the access like behind the scenes stuff, and yeah, people still don't really understand our side of the business. And I like that. I think it's great that they don't. Yeah, it is until. You're dealing with bankers and stuff. You know, when you do bankers, you know, you are nuts. We're not gonna do that. And yeah, I mean, they just don't get it. You gotta try and explain it and they don't get it. But tell, tell me about this Billy Strings tour, cuz I, I read some stuff about it and, and you know, like these pods are, are pretty incredible and, you know, certainly could have been made more easily, but they wouldn't have been perfect. And I read about the sort of specs and goals and stuff you were trying to accomplish with the pods and and and I think. Genesis started off with with Rodger Gant, the light designer and Billy Strings in Europe last year on the past, just pencil and a legal pad.

48:59 And oh, it'd be cool if we had this kind of look and this kind of look. And then Matt Laravey from Luz studios up in Canada was in on the on the mix on that stuff too, way before we got involved, before they even put it out for a, a quoting spec. And then, and then we, we got the, the spec to look at and Matt from Matt Laravey from Luz said, now, what do you, what do you think about the sizes of the, the pods? Because they're originally expected to be around about between 7:00 and 8:00, eight foot six diameter. So well, to my mind, there's a couple of things that 8 foot. Well, First off, if we don't want to have that many or any joins in the pod because the you get at least 4 inches of Dead Space where you can't hang a lamp every time you join the sections together.

49:53 And which on a small pod is that's a lot of real estate that precludes you from getting even spacing of the lamps, which kind of blows the whole gag because they wanted it even spacing. So that gives you a lot of problems. And then just shipping of it trucking, it said, how about if we shoot for around about 7 foot 6 outside diameter from the pod and make it all 111 unit. And so all just about all the lamps could travel in it in in the truck. The ones that hung on the outside, they got some Geminis just hung on the outside. They they come off every day and go in a wreck, but everything else stays inside in the truck.

50:33 It just goes on the Tyler wheels, but a curved version of the Tyler legs with the straight Tyler has. So we got Tyler involved and this is all very quick because this was around about in the middle of December and it started going into rehearsals end of January. I think it was on time to get. Stuff built too, you know. Right before Christmas and LDI just coming back from Christmas. So people were just surfacing back from LDI, the Christmas LDI thank you Formula One. So everyone just shuts down South with with LDI at that planning stage and then Christmas slash New Year. That's basically 1012 days over Christmas shot down, yeah, either for talking or actual production. So it got, yeah, it was kind of, I mean, it wasn't a massive amount of stuff.

51:23 It was 5 pods. But to get them right to and there's no R&D time, it was just like they had to be done right first. To jump right to the front of the queue, right and they have to be willing to let you do that right, especially with LDI, like you said, you know, now they've got all these new orders and everybody wants their and. Yeah, yeah, they're all going to back to Tyler. So you told me we were top of the list. And no, we're not because we found it or or you've got another thing going on. Maybe not necessarily naming us by by name, but I mean, yeah. So those pods, they, they wanted a certain look to the whole thing and and there was not much deviation from how they wanted it to look with the sort of tiered look with the centre lamp down middle.

52:07 They also wanted 22 rows of T MB LED like rope light. I can't remember what it was called now. I can't remember what the name was, sorry TMD. But so there was a small inner ring and then an outer ring underneath the bottom corner of the Truss. So that had to stay on too in the truck. So that precluded us from forklifting underneath the truck, the Truss, the lift up the pods, fork extenders, because we had this LED rope light on it. So there was a lot of a lot of weird little things we had to do. We wanted to make it so we didn't have to strip the whole thing because it would have been another one or two guys on the crew to do so.

52:51 It just had to be fast and then be able to be stacked. So they, I don't think they're stacking them on tour right now. They've actually built a loft. So they just wheel the pods on the deck and they built a loft so that the rest of the stuff straight Truss and stuff goes up above it wheels up in the truck. Yeah. And that works out really well for them. They've been getting insurance and outs done pretty quick. But yeah, they were they were interesting. But they they're good fixtures and there's just one big solid pod round pod hollow. There's nothing in the middle. There's no it's just the outer frame of Truss. They. Look really cool. I, I, I looked at the pictures and, and definitely, they look really cool.

53:32 You know, it's funny 'cause I don't really know much about Billy Strings. Like somebody sent me a song once or something and I went and listened to the album a few times on, on Apple Music and I was like, this is really cool, you know? Yeah, but it's technically isn't it like bluegrass or something? Bluegrass, but I mean he can play pretty much anything. I've seen video clips. There was one of him playing with string cheese incident and he was singing Paranoid and he was playing electric guitar and singing and it sounded as good as Aussie when he was 20. That's crazy. And he looked like Aussie when he was 22. So I mean, this is, I think it was a clip from a year or two ago. But yeah, he just got him to stretch his incident and they played Paranoid and if you shut your eyes, you wouldn't really know the difference. So I'm.

54:19 Going to have to go look that one up. He's a guitar Mitch that by that boy, I mean, he's become a guitarist, guitarist and he he jams with a lot of people all across all strokes of music, country and blue glass and rock and metal. Yeah, he seems to have really created a, a, a real sort of aura over himself, you know, and and it's very cool. But I also read about your I, I think you had a pretty solid relationship or have a solid relationship with the with the production production manager. Is it Charlie Bryson? Charlie yeah, I mean, we didn't. We hadn't worked before, so, So no, this is the first time we worked. He's, yeah.

55:01 It's just been really comfortable and solid. He's super approachable, really mellow, nice guy, good at what he does and just gets stuff done in a low drama way. But yeah, he's good fun. He's he's good to tractor. We haven't met yet still. I mean, I'm going to the on the left coast. So it's all been another weird thing. This is another weird thing post COVID right? Like you can do these deals and manage the entire relationship without ever having met. Well, I mean all the stuff I was doing with Bonnaroo for 1617 years and and hang out and Firefly and all the other festivals we're working with Lambda, I never went to any of the festivals. I mean, our design doesn't and I hadn't Hipsley twice. You know, Disney, I have staff.

55:54 I have staff who have worked for for me for 5-6 years that I've never met actually including our producer Sarah, who, who we've been together for three years I think and we've never met it. It's crazy. I feel like I know everything about her, but we've never met. So it's the new world that we live in now. Yeah, no, no, but it's fine. Going back to Billy though, he's he's really good. I mean, if he if him and his four bandmates can do same arena three nights, yeah, that's common. It's. That big? Well, it's, it's, yeah, I mean, he's doing Asheville. I think he's two nights, two nights in Worcester coming up.

56:41 Yeah, 2IN Bridgeport, two in Philly. That's intuitive. These are arenas. Yeah. Two at the Greek in Berkeley and two at the Forum. The Kia Forum in LA. That's wild. So bigger than. 90. And this is a this is his first big step up to it. He done some amphitheat, mainly amphitheatres last year and arenas maybe won sometimes 2, but it's it's gotten bigger. I'm gonna. Ask more attention I guess. And his fan base? Are they young? They're kind of all over the map really. I don't, it's not like ghosts where there's a lot of teenagers or anything like that. It's, it's all over the map.

57:24 It's very similar to a lot of the five of kind of string cheese, Widespread Panic, Warren Haynes, that kind of stuff, as well as younger kids. And so it's it's different. Yeah, interesting. I'm going to. I'm going to research some videos and stuff and pay a little bit more attention because I had no idea it was that big. Roger does a nice job lighting it too, and he's comes from from a lot of jam band stuff, but he's been with Billy for quite a while now and he does a nice job of operating and just getting the vibe right. This. And for me, lighting bluegrass, I don't know where I'd start or stop, but is it?

58:07 Is it? Pretty much like busking or or is he? No, it's it's programmed because there's a there's video behind it. So it has to sort of coordinate with the video. But there's a lot of, yeah, like 10 minute songs, but it's so there's a lot of stuff for this. Is movement going on? Not always like big dramatic beam moves and stuff, but just maybe chases with lamps going off around the pods just in a circle and that that kind of movement, not a big massive sweeps, although it does go to that when it needs it. But yeah, it's it's not boring. And that's the thing for me.

58:47 I'd just be kind of tempted just to stick a scene up and wait till the chorus and and change it. But but Roger does a really great job of of just keeping. It I'm going to check it out. I'm going to check it out. Pot boiling, Yeah. So tell me about V1. Oh, venue 1. Yeah, I, I hadn't even heard about this. I know, like, right now, rehearsal space is such a big thing and it's a huge problem, obviously in our industry. Like you can't get any. And so more and more rehearsal space is opening up, which is a great thing. Well, that that place is. That building is that was me and Strickland and Mike Golden designed that place because there was a need and every other buildings we were looking at to move into from the the previous place they were either they were not the right shape for the building for us. It's in the wrong place.

59:42 Truck access was a pig. There's something wrong with it all. It's too expensive. So just said screw it. One of these build around. It's only a square box with a big lot of fresh air inside it. And no, we'll build offices at one end. So I mean, I've got all the drawings for the stuff I did for the engineer and we gave it to a, a, a building engineer and said, you know, can you build to this? And said, yeah, so we actually built that place which has got a, it actually looks like a small theatre from the outside because it's got 25 foot, 20 foot roof in the main part of it. And then it lifts up just like you would have in the fly. In the back end.

1:00:23 But I mean that, yeah, I think it was 90 five. We opened that place. I didn't even know this. I don't know why but. And there was, we, we built it back then because rehearsal space was, was tight back then. And we built that place right then for, for the exact same reason that, you know, lots of people want to come in then we had less gear, a lot less gear, a lot less acts to deal with. So we stored the gear and then built the rig in that shop, right? And then we moved out of that as far as production and storage goes to the current, what we call the International building because it's on the International Blvd. so it's known as National.

1:01:07 And that's 130,000 square foot building, like 20 loading docks. And that's where everything gets done now. So we we emptied out any storage and stuff and that building just does rehearsals. But that's been standing there and doing rehearsals. Exactly. We haven't changed the building. And all this. Yeah, since 20. 5. Yeah, that's wild. So and I'm guessing it's booked solid these days, right or fairly? Busy, not solid. We we build it, we give it away, we do it for free so we don't charge the bands as long as they're going to be using US for the tour. It's just a service you provide. Yeah, Yep. Wow. And it's always, it's always been like that from day one.

1:01:51 That's an extensive intention to. Yeah, well, it's, it's worked out well. We've had loads of stuff in there. Yeah, no, that's, that's really cool. I I just, I don't know why I didn't know it existed, but when I started researching some notes and stuff, I went, what's this V one thing I never heard of this, but yeah. So you know, one of the big things I really want to talk about, and I'm actually going to do a screen share, which I don't do very often on the podcast, but I want to talk about your, your drawings are legendary. And I remember last time I had you on the podcast, you sent me some Iron Maiden drawings right after it. And I was blown away because, you know, I grew up an Iron Maiden fan.

1:02:31 I they, they got big right around the time that I got into heavy metal or rock music in my mid teens or whatever. So yeah, you sent me some of these early. Drawings of the renderings from the Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it just blew me away. And so, you know, I mean for me, like why, why did you start doing that? What was the motivation behind that or the the need? Well, it really kicked off with with COVID because there was not a lot of stuff. We weren't allowed to go out at nights. Even if you could go out at nights and no one was open, all the bars and restaurants were closed.

1:03:12 Just boredom. I don't have wife, girlfriend, my son sound like a country song there. My son had left me. My dog died, but no, my son was living in another house about 10 miles down the road because he was at college. So I was just on my own. So I just thought, you know what, this if only really for me, I I call it my digital tombstone really for only for me just to get back to what those rigs look like because back was not anything to speak of, not like we have now got real.

1:03:52 Yeah, the a lot of times I did the whole tours where we never took a photograph of the whole rig ever. So this is like sort of the only memorialization of the basically of the whole show. That's why. Exactly. I thought, you know, these are kind of interesting and they broke the mould. And that particular one you got the screenshot of there, the ACDC rig in 83. That was when at Meteorites we built the first Thomas Prewig Truss with James Thomas, obviously. Yeah, that was the first tour that the Thomas Prewig Truss was on. That is incredible. So I thought, you know, it's kind of interesting stuff. And yeah, we got, no, we got extra bright lights with die bees and gobo shaking and all this kind of stuff. But when it was just park hands and lots of them, a lot of aircrafts.

1:04:46 Yeah, I mean. Four guys are going up focusing for an hour in the afternoon and. Yeah, You know what's wild though is, is like, I saw this show. You know what I mean? I remember this, Rick. I I was a punter, you know, I saw it and 90. Three. That one was. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's incredible. These are what are you using to create these drawings. That was AutoCAD. AutoCAD. And accu render NXT for the rendering I just wanted to. I basically wanted to leave it just at the lights, not bother with the stage set or anything like that. The PA because. Yeah. It's not really.

1:05:27 I mean, some of the states, I can't remember what the exact dimensions were or the sets and everything, so I just wanted to leave it at the lighting systems because that's what I do. And just how we hung it. And then there's some pictures at the footnote of of what went on. But now, yeah. So basically it was just it was like a hobby just to sort of tie the ends. And some of the Maiden rigs tooth on 85 no 84 slash 85 the world. Yeah, that was one where we toured a grid. And I think, I think someone may come up and say, no, this you're wrong.

1:06:09 But Iron Maiden was one of the first on a previous tour, 1983, the Peace of Mind tour. We toured a small grid there and then we were one of the first people to tour a grid, a mother grid. Those points we could get, those points were all on. On this particular one, the World Slavery Tour for Power Slave, all those triangles were moving during the show. Yeah, and they were very tight. There's probably 6 to 9 inches brushes. Yeah, I think the one, I think the one before this had lifts. Yeah. There you go. Yep. Yeah, that was, yeah, we, we could fly on manual chain blocks if this is because we didn't have enough money or Maiden didn't have enough money for chain motors at the time, right. And we just had the Falco chain block. So if we flew it and we did it, 50% of the holes replayed that we just like zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom the manual chain box. Oh, and these are trust spots, Yeah. Yeah, that's that was the American version of the system that started around about N84 after we did about four or five months around Europe.

1:07:16 Yeah. And so for all you young kids, these things here that you're looking at on the screen are park hands and there are no moving lights in this rig. So yeah, it's pretty wild. No, the whole basically because there are no moving lights. You just said, oh, I'll move the trusses to move the lights. Yeah, exactly. And that yeah, all those lamps were were focused that top that Truss was a special Truss. It was 30 inches wide, the same width as pre rig and the same height as a type. The 20 1/2 inch Truss, all these short nosed cans in it on a gimbal frame, so it was like A-frame it, it could gimbal anyway on a double yoke. So he didn't restrict any movement on it. If you, you can see some of the close-ups of it, how the lamps moved.

1:08:06 But once they were, we focused it once in Brixton and we did tech rehearsals there and once Dave Lights, the LD was happy with the focus. We just went round after dinner one time and everyone else was at dinner. We lowered the rig down, yeah. And we very gently, we got two wrenches and we super locked both of the Binks nuts super tight. So we effectively welded the the lamps focused. Yeah. For the whole tour, the whole 18 months, we only focused to ring one. Really. You never had to focus? Wow, that saved a lot of time. Yep, and and a lot of amusement too. I mean Dickie Bella, production manager. I remember in some venues that Steward had come up to us and said so how many lunch you guys are going to want to focus this afternoon then? Yeah.

1:08:55 Think we should do the focus? I don't think we're in the mood to focus today. Yeah, yeah, just forget about it. You've got to focus on lamps, man. No, no. Sometimes you just do that. We just don't bother focusing it now. Screw it. Yeah. And the steward would walk away going. Yeah, it was. It was like you didn't like this new rig in what year was it 1986? You didn't like the 86 rig that we're looking? At anytime that was a that was a good rig. It was that one. We did a test version of that if you like in from the previous tour. I think it was, I think it was somewhere in Cornwall St. Ives. I think maybe we did with Aiden and we couldn't get anything close to the full rig up. There wasn't enough ceiling height. So we we hung the trusses in very similar configuration to to that particular rig somewhere in time rig Dave Light said, oh, that's kind of cool.

1:09:51 I like that. So yeah, keep that my back pocket. And that's kind of how the that rig worked out on the following tour after the Power Slope tour. So for people who are listening and not watching this on YouTube or on Spotify, you know, obviously we're looking at at these drawings from Dizzy's portfolio, but Sarah is going to include the link to this website in the show notes. And so you'll be able to go and look at it yourself. And Dizzy even says right on his page somewhere. I think it's at the bottom here. All renderings done by me, Diz. And by all means, download them if you like, but please credit me as the author. And so, I mean, there's some really cool stuff on here. Like there's, there's some stuff that, you know, I it's almost frame worthy where you'd frame it and hang it on your wall with an Iron Maiden logo below it or something. Just really, really cool stuff.

1:10:45 I love. The drawings I've been doing, I made those Maiden and ACDC logos in 3D as well. I made them as full three. They want copy. That's crazy. That's wild. Yeah. Like a color room and give them shading and you can see shadows in them. And the bell too. That was my was really proud of the bell. That was the Bell's beautiful birthday. Yeah. It's really pretty much bang on accurate too. So this is probably hobby sort of stuff for you, like, oh, it's just a passion for you, right? Yeah, and also get your keep your chops up with 3D stuff as well and just push, push yourself because it's it's not just like bolting Truss together. All of that stuff was created from scratch. I mean there was no off the shelf punk cans or off the shelf Truss in the three when you see.

1:11:29 When you see how young Brian Johnson is in his picture, it's crazy. Angus is as well, but yeah. It's so Angus as well. Yeah, seeing the pictures of them now is not so not so young. No, but then I think to myself, well, yeah, if you before you shout, dude, start looking in the mirror itself, man, 'cause you know it's true. I'm not a teenager anymore. So while while we're on this site, the other thing I want to look at is this, this stuff where you're going into all these shipping containers again, another really cool. Just a bunch of poppy shit that just that, yeah, did any of this. Ever turn into anything? No, not in, not manifested in, in reality. Not that I've seen from my end.

1:12:16 I mean, a lots of that kind of stuff exists out in the world, but nothing that I've doodled up has come clear. I mean, I've seen other people obviously work with container housing, you know, some of the whatever they call them, tiny houses or whatever with made out containers. You know Gumper from what the heck is his company called AG? Yeah, with the mega structures and stuff. Gumper did some hospitals during COVID. He was creating mobile hospitals out of shipping containers for a little while. But. Some of these, some of these were drawings I did 2025 years ago and then about 10-15 years ago, again, it was night time projects. If if when my son was small and me and his Thomas was living with me at the weekends and stuff. I couldn't go out Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights or even Monday nights because he was with me all the time and he was night and he's six years old and he was in bed. So I'd be sitting there just going, OK, what I'll do is nothing on TV.

1:13:21 So I'll just sit at the kitchen table with my laptop. Then on this, just doodle this stuff up at night. But the the concept for housing, was that based on a need for less expensive housing or to get rid of containers? What was it? What was the? Motivation. I mean, containers are cheap. They they're available. There's about three, I think major manufacturers in China that just crank them out like nothing. And a lot of they end up being one way. I mean, they come from China to here and then they sit here on the West Coast. There's a lot of empty ones around, but well. Especially pre COVID, there were a ton of yeah.

1:14:03 Yeah, yeah. And it was just it's an interesting unit to me, either 40 footer or 20 footer. I don't bother with the 50 threes or anything like that. But yeah, there's some ones in ground pool where the, the IT was an open for things like bulk goods like gravel and stuff and just seek the you'd line the open top container and make a pull out of it. And then underneath the low end, you'd have all the filtration and pumps and stuff in the units. But I just like with the simplicity. I've been big into prefab housing. I'm a huge prefab housing proponent and building in steel, especially living around here too with the with the fires we get building in steel is a there's another plus an earthquake.

1:14:51 Is there there's some aspect of this where I think like shipping containers can only be used so many times before they fall out of like sort of engineering spec or whatever? I'm not sure. I haven't heard all it is. I'm not sure how how long they're what they're sort of seaworthy life is. Right. But I mean this the the just the strength of them is, yeah, doesn't mean when you have them 8 high on the deck either above or below deck of a container ship, 8 high on the high seas in the Pacific, in the storm and they're still working. Yeah, yeah, the ones at the bottom are taking a serious beating. Yeah, I think the the 20 footers can have, I think it's £20,000 per container in the 20 footer.

1:15:40 So if you talk, you've got seven, 20,000 lbs on top of the bottom one. So they're built pretty well and they're termite proof. They're fire resistant. They're completely recyclable. I mean, if you don't like it, you just melt the whole container down and make a fridge out of it with car. That's hilarious. So I just like the whole concept of of them as a unit, you know, as a Lego block. Really. Yeah. Just such a cool concept. I mean, I really, I thought those drawings were incredible when I saw them. And what a hobby you have. You know, it's, it's just that kind of stuff. And one of my favorite is a bridge right now. It's like a swing bridge. Yeah, I I saw that one as well.

1:16:24 Actually. Let me pop. It looks like a suspension bridge slash cable stay bridge, but it's. Actually, yeah, I saw that one as well. Container based bridges, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, that's. Nuts. Just for somewhere like, you know, which is low grade, you wouldn't get any major shipping going underneath, right? For that, it's just yeah, but it looks like one thing. But then when it splits apart, I just like the visual kind of pun of. That thing, yeah, it's really cool. Very cool. Very industrial looking obviously. And just filled the 20 foot container at the bottom has a has a motor in it and it's just filled with like about 20 tons of ballast. Right.

1:17:04 Yeah, that's so pretty easy and cheap. Yeah, very, very cool. So yeah, like I said before, Sarah's going to include the link to this in in our show notes so that everybody can see it, because I think it's worth looking at. It's it's pretty cool. And certainly the the concert drawings, the the are really cool. The renderings that that you've done are really, really cool and worth taking a look at for people. Well. Thank you. I mean, they were, they were basically because the papers, to my knowledge, none of the drawings of any of those rigs exist anymore. So that was done from memory when I was building the rigs. That's why I stuck with stuff that I was on tour with because I can remember them even now. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

1:17:46 And looking at photographs and and the few photographs that do exist of someone and go, that's right, we did that like this. But I mean, it was just how we did things because none of it existed back then. You had in the old pioneer days of lighting. If it didn't exist, you had to invent it yourself. Well, I also read that that Steve Harris saw some of your drawings and and the bass player from Iron Iron Maiden and he loved them and said please do more. Yep, he did exactly that. That's why. Bloody hell mate, they're great. So I thought I took that as a plus. Another one that one of ones I'm working on right now is my sort of night time project is the Paul Simon Graceland Tour rig and also the Phil, the Phil Collins, but seriously too, which had a big carousel and that was the Jonathan Smeaton design. But the IT looked like carousel and it opened up and it just had VL twos and VL fours in it primarily in a few park ends. So, but that's where the one where do you? Get the information to draw these like. It's not from memory, is it?

1:18:55 Most of it is from just memory and yeah, there's hardly any paperwork kicking around on any of these rigs. So it's the odd photograph and just, yeah, I suppose it's just a kind of muscle memory built in my head here. How many was it? A5 footer on a 7 foot six. And when you're dealing with pre rig Truss, I mean, I don't, I can't remember where the lamps, what lamp type all of the lamps were. Yeah. But I mean the, the structure itself was relatively straightforward on on a lot of those rigs as as far as memory how we did it. That's really incredible. That's cool. So how long does it take like for you to go and do like that? Iron Maiden one is, are we talking about weeks or? Yeah, that the, the, that was the first big one I did was the slavery tour and I had to create a lot of the stuff from from scratch.

1:19:42 And there, that took a couple of weeks and just fine-tuned the renderings, get the angles and the lighting right in the renderings and tweaking a little bit. A lot of this kind of stuff is the old 8020 rule, 80% of the stuff takes 20% of the time and the remaining 20%, that's the detail, takes 80%. Yeah, it's true. Any drawings and renderings that holds true today? Are you engaging any AI yet to help you on these drawings? No, not at all. No interest. I've got glasses, that's about it. That's. As far into technology as you're going on. I'm not a huge AI lover.

1:20:23 I don't know, there's something I, I wouldn't say distasteful, but it's kind of close for the entertainment industry to consider AI. We're back into Milli Vanilli ground again. Lip syncing, you know, that's what are you going to do it? Yeah, sort of. Just put a big sign of created with AI if it wasn't a guy doing it with a pencil or a or a stylus on a on a Photoshop on a tablet or something. But if it's some machine, you know, putting Donald Trump's face on the front of a train or something, yeah, OK, Well, if AI did it, it's not our. Well, so, you know, I'm pretty up on AI and yesterday I had Ola Melzig. Do you know Ola?

1:21:05 He does Eurovision, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I had him on and he's, he's a trip, he's fun. And I always talk about AI in our intros. I, I, because I know how most people in our industry feel about it. So a lot of it is just confirming your feelings. And some of it is, is to say, hey, you know, how about AI doesn't replace Dizzy, but AI makes Dizzy's job a little bit easier. Not creating, you know, stuff that's creative, but the things that are tedious, you know, where you're creating a piece of trust that you need to be able to create the drawing. It can create the trust for you and make it easier, you know, speed it up by a couple of hours.

1:21:48 But anyways, so the intro or the bio that I read for Ola, our recording software that we use for this podcast, Riverside has something in it called AI Voice. And I said, OK, I'm going to try this thing and see what it does just for a, just to present to the listening audience, right. And So what I did is I copied and pasted the text from Ola's bio and then had it read it back for me. It was, it blew my mind. It used, so I have a cold right now, so my voice is raspy and shitty and it used my cold voice and read Ola's bio. And I mean, even if you know me pretty well, you'd listen to it and go, yeah, you just read his bio, but it wasn't me.

1:22:35 I just put the text in there and it read it. And so it's a bit scary how. That's what I find, yeah. That's what I find kind of distasteful about it. Yeah, it's almost. Theft. Yeah, I mean, I know that. Who was it? Scarlett Hanson. I think she had her voice taken for some movie clip or something like that and she's showing supposedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Yeah, I mean, your voice is your property, just like if you know. There was an argument as to whether or not would it was her voice, you know, so like the whole story was basically they approached her to do an ad. They wanted her to do an ad based on what was that movie called that she did not Akina, but the other one where she was an AI robot or whatever somebody.

1:23:19 But anyways, they wanted her to do the voice. It was called. She was called her I think in the movie. But anyways, they wanted her to do the voice and, and to basically insinuate that, hey, we're going to robots now or whatever. Yeah. And she turned it down. And so then they did a similar ad and she said it was using her voice and they said it wasn't. And so who knows what the real truth is? It's so easy to do, though. I mean to just get somebody on a phone call, copy their voice and call them back with their own voice, you know? It's always just record it off a movie. I mean if the AI is supposed to and you can get the sort of tonal qualities of a voice from like 5 minutes of of talking on a movie, it work out the tonality of how you would say the word cigarette or train or something and it could figure that out. That, I find, is we're on that.

1:24:15 We're on the Napster grade of rape and pillage, I think. Worse though, because it's so dangerous what you can do with it. But just to finish my story from yesterday. So I was adamant when I sent this to Sarah to to edit the podcast. I said it has to say this intro or this bio was recorded using AI and because I I didn't want to do it so that it looked like I was being lazy or something or trying to trick people. None of that like I'm not going to go, you know, I could easily have my sponsorship reading done by AI, but I'd rather sit there and record it myself because I owe at least that to them when they're sponsoring my podcast. But you're right, I mean, there's there's definitely a lot of danger to it.

1:24:59 And you know, AI is like a gun, you know, in the hands of a good person, it's going to save a lot of people and and be very bad person, it's going to kill you. I'm liking it to. I go in the more pacifist side. I say I'm liking it to a screwdriver. You can like you could build something with a screwdriver, or you can stab someone in the face with a screwdriver. It's totally true. Isn't it? I mean, it's totally true, you know, it's got good intentions to be the right thing, but it's not going to get used. The if you can't believe what you hear and see anymore, we are screwed. But I mean if you. If you got to look at the positives, you know, I'm always looking at the bright side here, Dizzy. But you look at the positives. One of the things I just read a couple of days ago was that they created a magnet using AI that removed all rare earth materials from the magnet. And prior to that, you couldn't create a magnet without using rare earth materials.

1:25:55 And so they basically took probably decades of research time and put it into like a day or a week or whatever. It's like a very short period of time. And AI did all of that research and figured out how to build this magnet without any of these rare earth materials. So if you take that kind of thing and you now look at Cancer Research, for example, or Alzheimer's Research, some of these diseases that we've had for a long time and we're no closer to a cure to, you know, I think AI is going to provide those cures. Yeah, but I think that's that's different from someone duplicating someone's voice, correct. And talent or face or if you look at it, the the voice and the face, in which case actors and no ultimately musicians. How do you know if it's Metallica or if it's it's being created?

1:26:53 I mean the the, the ABBA thing, the the ABBA Theatre in London. Yeah, yeah, I think is is good because it's not being, it's not being touted as this is the band. Everyone knows what they're going to watch. It's when you get stuff mainly on the flat screen which you can't tell if it's real or if it's Memorex. Well, audio music as well. Music as well, because I've created songs on some of these AI apps. I could just go on and say, you know, make me a heavy metal song about Dizzy Gosnell, who's like one of the godfathers of metal lighting from the 70s and, you know, do it using a voice that sounds sort of like Ronnie James Dio. 5 minutes later I'll have a song just like that. Intelligent.

1:27:47 Well, what's the word? Can't you think of the word now? Not intelligence, but the intellectual theft. Yeah, yeah. Where your thought is, or your face or your voice or even your style of doing something could be taken by someone else or taken by a machine and. I don't think it'll be allowed. I don't think those things will be allowed. I, I do believe there's regulation coming very, very quickly and there's already some stuff there. Like I, one of my friends is a lawyer that protects people's likelihood. Like even if you use a Beyoncé picture in one of your ads or something, he'll sue you for it and we'll win. He's won many of them. I mean, one of the things, I mean, I was talking with the drummer from a local band up the road here. He's, he's been around for for decades. I mean, he's played with all sorts of bands, jazz and Blues and funk and all that kind of stuff. And he's saying, yeah, well, AI, you said, if you look at it, you said everyone's calling anything which is kind of smart or some degree of smartness.

1:28:51 AI. Does that mean that that the the sort of metronome that I used to have with the flashing light on it just to to set to start the drums or start the drum beat, Is that artificial intelligence? Yeah. And everyone's calling everything out for this official intelligence. And some of it is just program or an algorithm. Well, is it? Yeah, but. They're you're right, you're right. And that's one of the problems right now is everyone is sort of trying to figure out what all of those words it's going on. It's like. OK. It's got MSG so good. Yeah, it's well one of the business. I'll find it kind of I I think it's dangerous for our business and all sorts. Set design, costume design, voices, the actual show, end result itself.

1:29:38 Music for sure. Yeah, but but dizzy, what if, what if the the line is basically AI supports artists, AI doesn't replace artists, AI supports drummers, AI supports graphic designers or people who are doing these CAD drawings or whatever. Like for example, Richard Kadena, who who I talk to quite often. I don't know if you know Richard, but. Very smart guy, but he. Doesn't use AI to do his work, but he uses AI because he uses, you know, a lot of different coding and stuff and what he does. And so instead of him having to sit and do coding for days to create something, he'll have AI. He'll say, you know, hey, I need you to create this JavaScript to do this or whatever, and it'll get that's. Basically a macro, I mean excel at that in this bridge is macro just I want all my all the addresses to be like capital for the 1st letter and you just type it out and you just go boom and then the the address would have the capital for each first letter of the word and.

1:30:44 Let me give you a real world example. So let's say you're doing a show and you're responsible for the budget, and you have a lighting programmer, and he's going to have to sit there and do tons of lines of code just to set this thing up to get prepared to program the show, right? If you could have AI do those lines of code, there's nothing creative about them. You've got a guy that you're paying too much money to do a menial task, and now you've got AI that can do that menial task and you don't have to pay this guy for three days of doing the coding, for example.

1:31:25 That makes a lot of sense. You know, that to me makes a lot of sense. You're not replacing the creativity of that programmer. You're not replacing his skill set or anything. You're taking the menial BS away from what he's doing and providing that to him as a sort of support, right? So I think there's as far as that kind of stuff, I mean, could you do it with the sound guy then? I mean the front of the house, just have a microphone at front of the house and just have it automatically, just all the knobs. Do that, don't they? Don't they kind of do that. As for bass levels, you know like. Yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm not 100% with. Watered down shit. And the other thing is that the how smart is the AI going to be if the drummer's actually playing a little bit faster tonight or the guitarist double S his guitar solo? He does 8 bars instead of four for a solo. Yeah, is all that.

1:32:18 I mean, right now we still have to have somebody pushing the button. Crap music. He's starting to busk now. Someone has to be put the override switch on if you've got no I. Never want to. I don't want to see AI controlling lighting during a show. No, no, no. No, that's where they can see. Any of that and I don't. Think we'll go there? I don't know. I can see people if we get people on the front end and I think it is a thin end of the wedge thing. If you get people on the programming, then yeah, then it's not going to take that long for for accountants to go. Well, if we're saving on this guy who's not quite as expensive as this guy, yeah. Do you think we can get him to run the show? Yeah, but for the reasons including the one you just said, like when somebody starts jamming or something, or they change the song or they change the set list or whatever, I think AI is going to get smart enough to deal with that stuff pretty soon. But there's a human creativity and there's a human feel involved in some of those things. And, and even mistakes, like sometimes human mistakes make a show better, you know, because it's different than it was last night.

1:33:26 You could see the show three nights in a row and there's nuances to it, Right. Well. My liking it of all of this stuff with Rock'n'roll, is that OK? If you want to go, would you go and see NASCAR or Formula One Grand Prix racing if it was all AI driven? If it was robots, basically a. 100% no, That's a great example because they've been doing that by the way, they've had driverless formula cars and there was massive crashes and stuff because you know when the tires slip a little bit or whatever, AI doesn't know how to fix that quite yet. It'll even but. Even the battle bots, they have a guy on on a remote control the the battle robot things on Discovery Channel or whatever.

1:34:07 Yeah, at least they got a guy controlling it on each machine. So it's, no, you're not getting injured. But would you want to go and see AI NASCAR or AI Formula One? Hell no. Not even a little bit. I'm even a tiny bit interested. And similar to. Music I don't want to listen to AII mean OK so elevator music if it was done by AI sure I don't care because to me in many ways it's exactly that is so well said I. Think it was Ted Nugent. He wanted to buy a Muzak Corporation, Zak. He wanted to buy it so he could abolish it. And that was one of the reasons. Very few things that I actually concur with Ted Nugent on.

1:34:49 But I mean, I thought it was a really noble sense. But by OK, so Symphony Orchestra, do you have a robot with a white stick at the front then? Because he's going to be 100% on the conducting beat every single time. Maybe I don't know. I, I don't think so. I again, we don't know where this is all going. What I do know is it's coming and what's happening is as these, as these AI systems become smarter and, and it reaches what they call AGI, artificial general intelligence, which is when basically it's sort of crossed a chasm and it's, it's self learning, self programming and it becomes smarter than humans.

1:35:32 You know, that's when we've got a real issue, because what happens when AI decides that humans are no longer necessary, you know, as anymore? Or it decides what medicine you want and how much you want it. But. Well, that's coming. I mean, that's coming for sure. But hopefully it's. Not hopefully it's not evil, but. Yeah, I mean, but you don't know if it's not evil, if if it's anyway connected, it can be intercon, no infiltrated. True. Yeah. So that's the other thing. It depends who's who's prompting these AI things, who's telling them what to do, Who's telling them. Are you a Democrat or a Republican? You know who's telling them? Are you going to cater to the rich people or the poor people? Do we like Jews better, or do we like Catholics better, You know? Does the corporation win?

1:36:19 You know the Sacre correct? Because they got the money and better lawyers than me or you can ever find. It's good to be old today. It's better to be old right now. I don't want to see how that movie ends. 20 year olds right now. To be honest, I couldn't go through it again. In one sense I do because it's such an exciting time because this is like another massive change, you know, but it's a potentially scary change like, you know, put, put AI in Putin's hands, you know, like, have you seen the, they've been doing this thing recently, the, the military where they're doing dog fights between and these are simulated, but it's dog fights between jets flown by pilots and jets flown by AI pilots and the AI pilots are winning everyone.

1:37:13 So now if, and I talked about this yesterday, so sorry to the people who are hearing it twice. But now what happens when you've got wars fought with no human cost, at least on the on the the battlefront, you know, So I'm not losing pilots because I've got all AI pilots now. And so I'll fly them into any situation, you know, sort of like really smart kamikaze pilots that aren't killing themselves. It's just they don't care if they do die, right? Well, it'll be kind of like what's going on in the Middle East right now. It'll be the civilians that pay the price. That's ultimately what's going to happen, Yeah. That's ultimately what could happen anyways. Like Rock'n'roll, it's going to be the audience that pays the price and seeing a mediocre thing because it hasn't this. Is why I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think people are going to accept AI music, like music without artists and and personalities behind it and stuff like.

1:38:14 And the mistakes. Yeah, I don't see it. Mistakes. And that's, that's what it's all about. I mean people, people go to to car racing to basically watch a train wreck. Hopefully, hopefully nobody gets hurt. But they wonder if there's no crashes, nobody will ever see it. Well, it's all people. It's like the, you know, people love Alonzo or they love Lewis Hamilton or they love, you know, Max Verstappen or whatever. Yep. They don't just love watching cars go around in circles. You know, they, they love everything about it. It's, it's like a whole culture and a feeling, right? So you can't take that stuff away and then expect that you know they're still going to love it just as much. I don't see it.

1:38:57 I just don't. See, I mean, I can, I can see AI having uses on safety a lot of things like from moving, moving scenery, you know, heavy bits in the scenery, motors and all that kind of stuff and just general safety things because the awareness is a much quicker than than the human can have. And it's it's 360 in every direction, yeah, up and down and left and right and that kind of stuff in in touring. But when it comes to it, it's the the personal decision making that that is. But again, if you think of your job dizzy like or like when you go into these drawings, for example, if you look at the really boring bits that you wish could just go away because they don't require any of your creative mind whatsoever. They're just tedious tasks.

1:39:41 That's where I see AI being incredibly valuable and functional. I don't because every really from. Nope, absolutely not from the stage up. I mean, it's all decisions. Is it a 60 by 40 stage up? Yeah, we're playing in this place with narrow dashes, you know, or it doesn't have dashes and it's a basketball, not a hockey arena. Yeah. Everything from the ground up is a decision. Everything and the. Drawing those decisions and you tell it, OK, so the stage is going to be a 60 by 40. It's a basketball arena. We're doing this, We're doing this, we're doing this. It's quicker to draw it because it's a one off. So you're going to program a one off, you know, just for if I'm going to be doing drawings for one particular show 1 tour, then it's yeah, it's it's not going to be quicker and I can look out drawing of a 3D rig in an hour and a half.

1:40:31 By the time I've coded everything and told it to do, it'll be tomorrow. So. Yeah, you're, you're, you're probably right. You know, I just know that like in my own life, there are tedious tasks that I used before that are not cheating. It's not, it's just basically enabling me to repurpose that hour that I would have spent doing this thing on something else. And I go through it anyways and I fix all the mistakes and stuff because that's the other thing. AI makes a lot of mistakes still, you know, like I've got I've got one of my geezers of gear logos. The singer has three arms and and nobody notices it, but he's holding a microphone with one and there's still two other arms. And it's like, OK, what's going on here? Well, that's, I think that's a good metaphor for where AI could go.

1:41:16 We could start getting this real kind of weirdness going on. Yeah. But I think it's it, yeah. It's once the art goes, the human part of art. If we've got humans entertaining humans with the possibility of failure or error or brilliance, then that's what people were going to want to see a show 100. Percent 100. Percent. But it's basically like going to see an automatic check. I mean, even automatic checkouts now they're being rolled back. They're pulling back on them for a variety of reasons because. These suck. So this whole automation thing is, I mean, I find it fascinating. AI has been around for a long time, but it's only in in various different forms.

1:42:01 But now it's in the last two years since COVID, really it's become on what new wonder King that's going to solve all our problems. Then the software's gotten better and the, the hardware, the chips and stuff have gotten better as well for the visuals on it. But it's it's going to have a place certainly in my in my thing, this creativity and I I don't want to walk in a building that was designed 100% and not checked if it is designed by AI it's. Gonna happen either like I again I think it's AI is supporting humans, not replacing humans in most cases. So there are some cases. Where that's not the. Case, it's just where most when you get people say first we can do away with that guy.

1:42:44 We don't need an accountant now we've just got an AI. We don't need a designer. We don't need a the truck driver. So we have all the trucks. Where's the truck driver? I don't know. Have you called him? I don't know. We don't have a driver. It's an auto truck because we save some money. But where is the truck? I don't know. It's not answering the phone or is or the battery died in the truck. We don't know where it is. I mean, that's. Amazing. That's amazing. You're right. I mean, you're right. All of your concerns are, all of your concerns are accurate. But guess what? It's still coming. With or without those. Concerns. It's still coming and it's coming fast and hard, so we gotta. Put that created with AI at the bottom. I agree.

1:43:25 Footnote Just like they put, you know, Hallmark Channel or something, the bottom right of the screen there has a big thing there. This was created with AI so people can decide they like it or not. I mean, if, you know, even Google and stuff are already penalizing you for AI content, like if you're writing blogs with AI, for example, those blogs don't get any search traffic. You know, there's going to be some requirement on all kinds of creative things that say this was generated using AI. But there are some really funny uses too. Like I don't know if you saw it, but I saw not that long ago, a few months ago, there was a debate between Trump and Biden, which is very timely.

1:44:06 And it was completely done by AI, but it was so amazing. Like it go go search for, you know, AI Trump and Biden debate and you'll laugh your ass off. I promise you dizzy because it's just hilarious because they're calling each other names and cursing like crazy. And you know, you geriatric old bastard. And like just back and forth bickering and so funny. And I remember because and they did it live. They basically did this thing live, this debate, and I was watching it and I said to my girlfriend, this is what the Internet was created for. This right here is some of the best entertainment I've ever seen so. That and cat videos, right?

1:44:52 Yeah. Can you imagine being the guy who invented one of the no the faster chips, whether it was the lead designer for Intel with the 486 and the 487 Math Co process and all that stuff, you know, and he, he didn't see his wife for years because they're in developing engineering. So I did all this crap so people could watch cat with videos in real time. It's so true. It's on their phones like, wow, I lost my whole family life for this. That is so funny. I think I'm, I'm getting probably a bit a bit technical on a lot of this stuff, but I, I think. So dizzy. I don't even. I don't detect that at all from you right now. No, I think the if you can't be bothered to do it, don't do it.

1:45:33 That's that's my, my motto. If if you wanna, especially in the arts field, if you like Leonardo da Vinci saying, OK, I'll call, I'll do all the edges and then AI can fill in the middle bits. Unfortunately, this is what's coming though visiting movie movies. I mean this is a whole nother conversation, but movies, when you look at some of the AI generated scenes and stuff right now, it's insane. And so like who is it? Tyler Perry was spending $800 million on a new movie studio, and he stopped, He completely stopped construction of it because of AI, because he just saw how good some of these AI things were that were coming out.

1:46:17 And he said, I'm not doing it. I'm not investing this kind of money into a movie. Studio, some of them, some of those movies with like 40 explosions per minute, you know, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I can't watch those things because they just so I mean, anything with the Rock in it. I'm sorry. The Rock. But yeah, I agree. Some capabilities of a 12 year old man. It's just really not the same story you got in your contract. You cannot lose any fights. What's? The little bald English guy. My girlfriend's in love with him. We have to be more specific in. Jason Statham, she loves him. He's like her superhero, you know? And his movies, everyone is exactly the same.

1:46:58 They're boring as hell. He's like the little British version of The Rock. And you ever notice they usually have about 15 gears in the gearbox because the camera got and knocked it up. So you weren't in the Top Gear already and the guy was right in the tail. What kind of more are you? One, they have a handgun. With with about 100 bullets in the clip you. Know my favorite one? My favorite is when a diesel truck scrapes a brick wall and then bursts into flames with a giant rostrummer and it's like no diesel hooks. Diesel is not explosive. That's. Hilarious. But those kind of things I just can't watch. I just go out and that. And even if I'm 1020 minutes into a movie and I see that kind of shit and Spider Man where his body gravity is all wrong when he jumps down and he kind of he lands like floats down.

1:47:50 That's all that CGI stuff, right? And it and it's all just bullshit. I hate CD. Yeah, you know, again, AI is is the same basic thing. It's just CGI on steroids, you know? Drum fills are going to be like that when you see the, oh, what? No drum fill #23 please, yeah. You're right. Yeah, you're right. Definitely right. So what's the rest of 24 look like for you? It's crazy, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, I wouldn't say crazy, but it's very busy and just a nice, good healthy level of, of just keeping stuff tracking along and just wrapping around till next year. And, you know, some of the a lot of these acts are going to go out again next year and it'll be, you know, back on the horse again in January, just.

1:48:32 Any plans to slow down? Me no. No, yeah, I mean, I talked to so many. I'm 67 now and I've got no no interest in retiring at all. Yeah, good for you, man. Good for you. I you know, The thing is, everyone I know who retires at at our age, your age, my age. I'm a little younger than you, but not that much. They die like they retire and then they die two years later or something. Yeah, I enjoy your. Life. Why not keep doing it? Well, that's it. I mean, I enjoy the challenges, the mental gymnastics of making things fit in in a building that it and we've been doing quite a lot of that this year with a few acts where they've been putting, they've been carrying bigger systems than they've had before because the now the ticket sales are going good and they're just a big push for them. And but they're they're ending up playing in places that were booked last year.

1:49:26 They're not quite as big as the system that they're carrying is so trying to make. You're really good at that. You're really good at. I enjoy putting the nuts and bolts together, like making things work. You're very good at that. Somebody a lot of you. A problem and you'll figure it out. It was the English training of like you go out with an A rig, but you'd only see the A rig three times on a 12 day English tour because you're playing it. No, this place where I can't get that up. So the B&C rig was always in your back pocket. And there's quite a few tours I did, or one I did with Saxon in 84. We went down to like an H rig ABC all the way down to H with different variants of the rig. But we got something going on.

1:50:07 I I enjoyed that because it's my, my basic motto for all of this rock'n'roll is do more than yours is expected of you. And that's my whole MO. If somebody asks you to do this, then I'll do this and this. But you know, you take your car to the, to the mechanic to get fixed and he runs it through the car wash. Yeah, yeah. Before he hands it back. It's such a happy a happy. Surprise that's that's my level of my thing is do more than is expected of you and. That's. It's a great battle. That's a great battle. And if you could teach that to the, quote, young kids today, you know, they'd get pretty far. And I've always told, like, my son's 20 and he's a racing driver, and I've always told him, you know, you want to get to the track first in the morning. You want to be there with the earliest mechanic that shows up and stay last.

1:51:04 You know, you want to be the first driver there and the last driver there and you'll be remembered for a long time. Well. I mean, that's what lighting guys are good for because we're in at 7:00 in the morning and then we're doing the idiot check and sometimes we'll pick up the sounds tails because they forgot to pick them up and bring up hey guys, we just got your tails so you want them? Yeah, sorry about that. Just first in, last out and and it's. Yeah. There's a lot to that. Don't be late. Always wear a watch. I mean to me up there was a few crew chiefs I had on tours with me way back and where they didn't have watches, so I bought them like a $5 Casio. So there you go said if you don't have a watch you're absolutely useless because the production manager says we've got 2 minutes till lunch dude, So what time is it now?

1:51:48 Even the phone's no good. You can't have a phone in your pocket most of the time when you're building a rig because it's on the on the rack's charger. Yeah. So it's just timeliness. Yeah. All of that stuff. Punctuality. Yeah, it's an absolute given. And the willingness to want to do it too. Yeah, these are. Know how to do it will teach you, but just be willing to do it. Well, and, you know, the young guys today and girls who have those kind of values and and character, I think are going really far and will continue going really far, you know, and it's not like we are any better than young people. It's just that, you know, it's been a a shift in in what's important in the world and those who can remember back to the way that some of the older guys did it, I, I think are doing really, really well right now. And I know a lot of those people so well. Diz, thank you so much for doing. This I appreciate it.

1:52:43 It's. Always so fun to catch up with you. Yeah, it's a great one too, after four years. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll check in again with you at some point, maybe in the next year or so, and we'll see what's changed. We'll see if AI has taken over your life yet. Well, the chances of me being vertical still in four years are slim, so we just don't make it every two years. I. Don't know. I think you're doing okay. All right, Daisy, thanks so much. All right. Thanks a lot Marcel all. Right. Cheers. Nice. None.