#272 - Mark Fetto

0:00 You're going to want to check out episode #272 with Mark Fedo. So Mark is one of these guys who happened to be there at the front end of so many things early in Verilite Morpheus. He has spent time at the OB company. He was actually with the OR at the video shoot where Michael Jackson got his hair caught on fire from some pyro. And then he was brought in to start a lighting division with OSA. And so Mark is a great guy first and foremost. He's been around since the late 70s in our industry. He's taught and been taught some very valuable lessons and it's just a really good guy, very interesting guy. So I hope you love this episode.

0:50 I think it's a good one and enjoy. Today's podcast episode #272 is brought to you by ACT Entertainment. ACT have just shown us the new Airton Mobile Manager app, a game changer for lighting professionals. With this app on your phone, you can easily adjust fixture settings like address, universe, and network settings, as well as access crucial systems info such as software version, LED hours, and even error logs. And there's no need for external power or internal batteries in the fixture. When you do this.

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3:06 Mark, how are you? Hi. Marcel. What's happening, man? How are you doing? You know, it's been a weird couple of weeks. So we were up in Canada at my house in the Canadian Rockies, and these hurricanes kept blowing through Florida and North Carolina and Georgia and all that stuff. And so there was one about to hit Florida, Milton and I live in in Palm Beach. And so it was like Palm Beach down here. It was hitting up here and on the West Coast, Tampa. So no worries. You know, none of my neighbors put up hurricane shutters or anything. We weren't here. My girlfriend's son was here at the house. And so he was actually, she had him on the phone and she was like, OK, make sure you pull in the little planters that are outside the door and stuff because. All the loose stuff.

3:57 Although the storm isn't going to hit us, you know, it'll get a bit windy. Pull in some of that loose. So he goes outside the front door and he sees a funnel cloud in front of him and he's like, holy shit. So then he's like pulling to try and close the front door to get back in the house and he literally ran into the laundry room and just kind of ducked down as it was going, you know, and that's insane. So yeah, we lost us screened in patio. We we lost almost all of our trees, our garage door, one window smashed in. Wow. And we would have thought in Florida, I mean. Part of our roof, part of our roof is gone, you know, so we've got a blue tarp over our roof now. The the standard Florida attire.

4:42 And yeah, I mean, I've been here 3132 years and never anything like this at all. Like I've been hit by some hurricanes sort of indirectly, but never anything like this. It's just bizarre. So the the. Weather's just been insane. Yeah. So, I mean, everywhere. I mean, here this summer in Las Vegas was, yeah, brutally hot for a brutally long time. No, I mean, it really it, it not like it was this year. We had something like 110 days in a row over 100°. And yeah, some 30, some of them over 110. It was. Yeah, yeah. The weather's gone wacky everywhere.

5:24 Yeah, I, I, I think at the end of the day, like every time friends of mine will bring up, you know, global warming or whatever, without getting political, I just say, you know what? We're flying around space on a rock lit by a gas ball and, you know, what could possibly go wrong? You know, I mean, every once in a while there's a little wiggle, a little wobble, and that could be an earthquake, a hurricane, that could be all kinds of things, you know. And so, you know, be happy we're here for however long we're here until, you know, a big enough rock hits US or something. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, it's been a weird couple weeks dealing with adjusters and insurance companies. Like, one thing I didn't know, my girlfriend and I were talking about this, 25 years I paid insurance and never filed a claim.

6:15 And same with her, 25 years, she's paid insurance, never filed a claim. And so we don't even know what the process is like. We don't know anything about it. So the insurance company sends an adjuster out who was basically 100% useless, didn't look at the roof. So meanwhile it's raining into our attic for two weeks because this adjuster didn't look at the roof and, you know, barely took pictures and stuff. So then they sent another adjuster out because the insurance company went, well, we don't have enough information here. And so the other adjuster came out and went, wow, you have holes in your roof. We need to put a DARP up there and and then all these private adjusters hang these door hangers on your door saying, hey, call us, we'll get you more money. Hey, call us, we'll get you more money. So I called a friend of mine who's actually in the disaster recovery business and I said, what should we do? And he said, let me give you a name. And he gave me a guy who's a builder and who is going to do all of our work for us.

7:18 And that guy gave us a private adjuster. And he said deal with no one but this person. He will sue your insurance company. He'll fight with your insurance company because what happens is they'll they'll write you a check for 50 grand and send you on your way. And you go out and try and hire contractors and it's 125. Right. Yeah. So then you're, yeah, don't settle, don't sign anything. You know, and so we've just, we've just hired this this independent contractor or private or private adjuster and, and the contractor and stuff. So yeah, it's just been a pain in the ass. It's been a pain natural. Disasters one after the other like that. It is crazy.

7:58 Yeah, they'll. Hire whoever they can to come in. And so they got a body. That's all they need. Yeah, well, and there's just a lot of ambulance chasers, you know, because like the, the, the way the tornado cut through our neighborhood, it's really bizarre. But there's probably, I don't know, about 1516 houses that got hammered and then nobody else, like their garbage can didn't even tip over. My BBQ went from the backyard to the front yard. You know, I mean, I was like, where's the BBQ? Because they sent me a bunch of pictures. And he goes, oh, it's over here in the front yard. I'm like, what? So yeah, it was pretty crazy. So anyways, thank you for doing this, Mark. I appreciate it. It's pleasure.

8:40 I've been finally got the opportunity to do it. I've been trying since pre COVID, yeah, yeah. That's sort of like, you know, BC and AD, yeah. Exactly, it's before COVID years. It just went away. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it, but it's like it's a line drawn in the sand. What was before COVID, what was since COVID, you know, Yeah. And our industry is, is a contrast of that for sure. Oh, absolutely. How you handled things before COVID and how you're handling it since very, very different, very different business. It is. Things have changed. You've been doing this for a while. A little, little while, about 45 years. Oh, that's it.

9:21 Yeah. I thought it was longer. Actually, I think it's longer than that. You said 1970, You sent me some notes and you said 1970. Oh, no, yeah, no, no, no. I don't know where that note came. From specifically it was 79 was the. First year of the day. That I got involved. And. You know, back then, you didn't have to know a whole lot. You more had to know somebody. Yeah, which is how I wound up, you know, get involved in this. I've had AI, graduated from college with my degree in in my associate's degree in electrical technology. Moved to California, started fixing CB radios at the end of a production line at ACB radio factory in in California Harbor City.

10:17 Yeah, you know you're old when, Yeah, you worked on CB radios. And that was at the height of the CB craze. Yeah, and I wanted one so bad when I was 16. I didn't know why. Like I would have just had, I would have just had old trucker guys pervin out on me or something, you know, because I was like 6 or 7 going. I want a CB radio. Yeah, I want. It was. So my supervisor brings the guy in one day, says, hey, he's because I'm originally from Buffalo, NY Yeah, He says, hey, this guy's from Buffalo, too, you know? And we start talking and we wind up. We know mutual people, but we've never met. Our fathers knew each other back in the old neighborhood, you know, the old telling neighborhood in Buffalo. So we started running.

11:04 He didn't have a car. His name is Jim, Jim Pace, and he didn't have a car. So I pick him up on my motorcycle every morning and take us into work. And then every Friday afternoon I would take him to audio company called Tycho Bray. He was into bands and, and that kind of thing. And he wanted to get into this. I've never done so much as a high school play. Yeah. And every Friday I'd drop him off a Tycho Bray so he could, you know, work on them to get a, get a gig, which he finally did. He went out and did a, he quit the radio, CB radio fixing business and went and did a, he got hired by Tycho Bray, went out and did a Black Sabbath tour and threw him through that. I got to meet other people, one of them being Dave Olbermann of the Fighting production, and they used to have what they called the South Bay Roadie Association. So on Sunday afternoons they'd lay out string for a the outline of a football field and we'd play football down in Hermosa Beach.

12:08 So I got to know OB in that through that and got bored with what I was doing. Told him that, you know, hey, you know, I'm I, I could never figure out what Jim was doing because we want to be in roommates and I'm like, you never know when you're working, you're never sure what's going on, you know, and to me that was just weird, you know, I didn't. And but then I see he's traveling all over the place. I'm like, man, I ain't doing nothing else. I'm 22 years old. I'm like, you know, so I hey, if you got a spot, you know, I'd be interested, so. About a month. Later, Obie gives me a call and so I go and give my notice and I go in and on a Monday morning, 8:00 AM, and I'm working in the shop helping a guy restring a cable on a on a super tower. I've never seen any of this, but pretty mechanical. Yeah.

12:58 And helping him do that in about two hours in we finish this and Obie calls me over the PA. Hey, that'll come up to my office. Yeah. So go upstairs. Hey, what's up? He says. Wanna go do a tour? Two hours in your first day in the industry. Two hours of of you know, doing hilarious my shop duty. Here I'm quite experienced. Next day I was up in. Yeah. Next day I was up in in Hollywood at Gino Vinelli rehearsals and went out and did that tour. Bob Gordon was the lighting designer for that. No way. Yeah. So my first tour was with Bob Gordon, first crew chief that I had.

13:43 I was the third man on the crew and Steve Jackson was the he who was with Cat Forever. Of course, yeah. And you know, he's the one that taught me about how that how those cables needed to look like a like water flowing, everything need to be neat and tidy. And you know, and that's how I did once it was not too long before I was crew chief in my own stuff. And so. You were in rehearsals in Hollywood for how long? Like. A couple of weeks, you know, so. That was your entire sort of indoctrination into the industry. Was that two weeks? Yeah. And then and then you're on a bus. Yeah. And what was that like? You know, again, 22 years old, that was. Yeah.

14:28 Let's go. You know, so you know, I think it was about the fourth show into the tour. We're doing a show and it's a like A7 camera shoot in New Orleans and and all of a sudden during the during the shoot, Bob Gordon's yelling, the foul spots aren't reacting. The foul spots aren't you know, something's wrong with the communication and Steve runs up into the booth and you know, every all of a sudden, you hear, you know, the rattle, rattle, rattle a headset and Steve comes on goes well, the foul spot operators aren't here is why they're not reacting.

15:08 What's called this. Meanwhile, the show is still happening. What? Well, they're being arrested. They've been selling drugs out of the follow spot booth before the. Show. And the cops came and busted them during the show, so we had to run the follow spots for the rest of the video shoot or. Actually, I think it was. Filmed back then, so that was like one of my indoctrinations into. That is the. Business, you know, on my first week out on the road so. Did you have to go run follow spots? Yeah, I don't think I actually did because I don't know how. Again, Yeah, and the other two guys did, but it was. Crazy. That's a funny. Story. Bob still brings that story up every time I see him at LDI. Yeah.

15:51 So yeah. That's a crazy story. I love that one. You're going to see Bob by the way, cuz you're, by the way, everyone, Mark Fetto is officially a dinosaur. So you're doing this dining with dinosaurs thing that we're doing at LDI and Bob is also there. He'll be there, so. I'm sure he'll tell the story then, too. Yeah, he hasn't told me that one. He's told me some good stories, but not that one. You know, Bob, here's a funny story for you. Bob was supposed to record last week and you have to have Chrome. And man, I became an IT guy for about 3 days with Bob. He kept texting me and saying how do I do this? How do I do this? And so I finally convinced him, showed him how to download Chrome.

16:36 And because his operating system on his Mac was so old, it couldn't work. The version of Chrome that he downloaded, it wouldn't, it wouldn't work. It wouldn't open. And so he's like, So what do I do? And I'm like, well, you gotta upgrade your operating system. You gotta bring it up to date. And he goes, so how do I do that? I'm like, I'm like, Bob, have you got a cell phone? And he goes, yeah, I go, what kind of phone? It's an iPhone. Tell you what Download the app for our podcast and we'll do it on your phone so he downloads the app and then of course he can't figure out how to log into the thing. And so I just said, you know what, Bob, let's just talk at the show.

17:19 We'll just do this later cuz I just ran out of time and I love Bob. I love his stories, I love his spirit, But but you know, he's, he's now behaving like an old guy and, and not knowing how to work his. How do you work these damn things, these kids, these. Days. Yeah, that sounds familiar. I mean from the guy, you know that. From the guy who sold some of the most complicated lighting consoles on earth for a long time. He couldn't run 1 today. I mean, that's like me. I you know, I used to be a hotshot programmer for Verilite, you know, Now I can barely turn on a console. It's just, you know. You know it, It gets away from you. The technology is has changed so much. But you know, the other thing is Bob, similar to me I guess, is a relationship guy where it's more about the network and the communication and all that stuff than it is about my technical skills.

18:09 Because if I had to make a career on technical skills, you know, I'd be living in a cardboard box. That's what they build kids for now. Yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's it's Robert. Mockery, Robert, Mockery used to always Tell me, Marcel, you really should learn more about the technology and the what's, what's in these lights and stuff. And I'm like, what for? You know, I sell more of them than you do. So I'm good, man. I'm fine. I can sell a lot of lights. You know, I don't have to know what's in them. I just need to know, like, what was John Wiseman's famous line when somebody said, were you there? I've been I've been on the receiving end of some of those when I was programming. Go ahead. What is? What is this? One, he was on a pan, he was on a panel and I, I can't remember if it was LDI or what it was, but they asked him John, what's what's the difference between the VL 5 and the VL 6 and he goes about 50 bucks well. I used to be, you know, program when I was program, you know, I started after, you know, Bennett always for a while and that I, I did a tour with Toto and Zeb Cochran. They had verilights and Zeb Cochran was the operator and he, you know, was one of the that was really responsible for me getting hired by Verilite.

19:35 I got hired over the phone by Verilite and that never happened, but it was on Zeb's recommendation. But what? So you'd be, you know, program John and Cela show with V, you know, this is the days of VL ones, you know, and this is that's pretty rudimentary stuff for moving light, you know, for what you have now. Yeah. And, and the, you know, the client would say, well, John said you could make these things sing and dance and and perform a pirouette. And I'm like, well, then John better get over here and tell me how to do it because I can't make these lights do that. Yeah, that's, you know, he had, he had no idea what they could do. No, of course not. Still doesn't. Still doesn't then we would. But who sold more lights? Fill them out, make it look good, you know, and move on to another in another show.

20:21 So true, so true. How long did you stay at Obie's? Till about well, it was kind of, I guess I started doing stuff for verilite around 84. Mike Swinford, another, you know, original OB guy. Yeah, he had given me my first. I had, you know, my whole thing was every, no matter what I was doing and wanted to take the next step and and what, you know, even, you know, third guy start, third guy cable crew humping cable. Yeah. I couldn't wait to get my hand. Sorry.

21:02 Timed lighting. Yeah. In the motion sensor. Yeah. But I couldn't. I loved that watching the guys run the show and that's what I want to do. So any opportunity I had, I I would run a board for an opening act do that, you know, didn't care if they paid you or not, Just I just wanted, wanted to learn that stuff. And Swinford wound up giving me my first LD gig, which was Kenny Loggins. So I had taken that out. So that was like an 8485 when I started doing that. And then I wound up becoming the, I turned into the lighting designer for The Moody Blues and did did them for, you know, till I think it was like 1990. I turned it over to Zeb, but.

21:50 You moved up the. Racks pretty quickly I did I think you know, had the aptitude whatever, whatever. And during that time I was kind of working for both, you know, is independent working for both Verilite and, and OB, you know, and then, well, actually when I did the movies, I was, you know, they paid me there. It was independent, but that was through OB and wound up in guess it was 89. Verilite was going to open the office in LA and they moved me at is the time I was living in Denver. I lived in LA originally and then moved to to Boulder, actually Colorado for a while. Yeah, 6-7 years.

22:37 What a great place to be when you're not touring. It was. Perfect. No kidding. And. The Moody's were they were that, you know, the European take off 3 weeks in in August for their holiday Yeah. So in the middle of summer touring boom. I got three weeks off paid at home. That was nice. You know you couldn't ask for. Better than that, yeah. But anyway, so Verilite was going to open the LA office and they moved me to LA to help with that and open that office. So that's when I start. That's when I became a full time employee. And and that was, that was in 8089. Well, actually 88 was. When they moved me to LA to help open up that and then I was in LA for I think it was one year, three months, four days, 12 hours, 27 minutes, 30 seconds.

23:32 I couldn't stand being back after being in Colorado. I had to be back in LA and I was doing so much work up in in Vegas. I come on, man. Got Openoffice, got open out and they and Verilite wound up making me the manager and we open up the, the Verilite office in, in Las Vegas in 89. But in 88, when I'd moved out there, you know, Tom Duncan owned Stage Stage Call and they Stage Call pretty much exclusively moved the Verilight gear around because you couldn't move that stuff in anything but air ride, you know, and that was a rare thing back then and, and all that. So the original warehouse for Verilight in LA was Tom Duncan's warehouse.

24:18 And I used to have to go out there and tech lights and I would have to wait for his son Phillip to get off of high school to come and help me flip down cases. So. That I could. Take. Lights out. That's wow. And then. Eventually they open up. They brought in Jimmy Barnett to be the Manage the LA office. And so I did a lot of television stuff and that, you know, for that year and a half, I was out there, did a lot of work with Karen Healy. I did American Bandstand with Lee Rose, did Top of the Pops with Kieran Healey. And you know, Kieran was kind of grooming me just to become a television LD, same thing you do with Tommy back. And and that was the point where I had I made the decision of moving to Vegas and becoming a management instead of staying. Why was that doing doing shows just, you know, I've been traveling and doing so much, you know, for so many years. It was just time.

25:24 I got married in 88. Yeah. You know, so it was just kind of time. Priorities changed, yeah. And then as it turned out, you know, it opening up the office in Vegas was was a lot of fun. And it was, yeah, me and one other guy basically. And we did all the shows and teched all the lights and did everything. And, and then I wound up moving up to the ranks at Verilite and becoming the, that was the the dealer manager and we're on the product development committee and couple other things. And, and I wound up turning that office, the Vegas office to Todd Mertzl, OK And I became the general manager in North American operations for Verilite. Oh wow, and that's a big total.

26:20 Yeah, I mean, I apparently Rusty Boucher and Lauren Haas saw something in me that, yeah, I didn't know because I want to be about the number three guy at Verilite for a for a time. Damn, damn. And that. Was when that was now the 90s, right? Sometime early 90s, early to mid 90s and. Yeah, I can't remember. We were supposed to move to Dallas and some things changed and wound up year and a half later, I was no longer there. And that was 2001. Was. Just before, so I went independent back to doing, you know, whatever program and project manager and whatever and, and just before 911, which you know had its own set of repercussions for our business.

27:10 It certainly did, yeah. But, you know, so it was, I don't know, it wound up, you know, I'd still thank Rusty Boucher for, you know, I mean, taking that turn and getting away from, I mean, I was still programming stuff when I went moved to Vegas, but they they moved me up to the, you know, in the management team there. And that's very cool. You know, that was yeah, that was, you know, like I said, he and Lauren Haas, you know, I've got done to thank for as far as I've. Gotten well and that was that was when verilite was still verilite too, like you know, that was before they became part of the Phillips organization and and it was the. Best job you could possibly have at the time. Yeah, it was you.

27:56 It was, you know, everybody that was the Rolex. Yeah. Very light. You know, everybody was chasing us. Everybody. Yeah. You know, and it was shit. I mean, you know, it was, it was fantastic. And until it went public, yeah. And then the whole character of the company changed. Then you're just chasing quarters and, you know, chasing sales and, well. At that point, that's when I was a general manager in North American operations and I went from, you know, I was, I was basically managing the eight US offices and my job turned into every two weeks I was turning in, you know, sales reports for the bank.

28:38 Yeah. And PNLS, we went from yeah, we, I mean, we went from being a having a one year, three-year, five year plan to all that matters with the quarterly reports. Yeah, quarterly's were all that stuff. And, and it, you know, it just changed. It completely changed the complexion of the company. Yeah. You know, I mean, they had to get, you know, it was, it was just a lot of fun being there during the whole growth period, you know, and then during that time also we, we developed VLPS as a yeah. Oh sorry, you were frozen on my screen there. Yeah, you were on mine as well, so we'll edit that part. Make a note, Sarah.

29:23 Yeah, Well, you know, The thing is when when companies go public and when companies bring in private equity and all of those things like it's easy to to beat everybody up for doing it. There are different reasons to do it. But one thing I would guess is that verilite today, you know, if, if we had the sort of financial situations today that we that we didn't have back then, but you know, they would have been a different company because, you know, they would have had access to incredible amounts of capital. And they may not have had to or wanted to go public and they may have just done a completely different deal for a different reason. But you know.

30:05 Well, I mean, I think that was mainly there was a a number of owners that it got in very on the on the ground floor Genesis basically. Yeah, that, you know, we're looking for cashing out and that was really the only way cuz it had grown so much and become so, so much bigger than when it started. Yeah, yeah, that was done on 1/2 on a handshake and a half $1,000,000 deal. Yeah. So it started it, but you know, and. But you're right, though, it was, it was the cat's meow. Like it was, it was, you know, the verilite business card probably got you, you know, into a lot of places that, you know, my shitty Martin business card wouldn't have got you into, you know, it was so.

30:53 It was fun. I mean, we, you know, like I said, you know, we were, it was great. We worked our asses off, but it was the greatest place to work. It was, you know, like I said, I'm not exactly sure how I got where I got. Thank you, Rusty, but I'm really grateful for the opportunities they prevented me. And yeah. And where it's gone? Yeah. So where, where'd you go when that ended? So that was 2001, you said? Yeah. And then independent for a couple of years and then I went to work for Rocky Pulse and it's stage rigging as the national sales manager and. Interesting. Yeah, and I mean, it was good, but it was a Freeman, you know, it was owned by Freeman at the time. I was the only stage person in in Las Vegas. Everything else is in California. Yeah.

31:48 And I mean, it's fine. You know, it was just a little too much convention work for me. Yeah, But you know, and it was, you know, half ton, one ton, 12 inch, 20 1/2 inch, you know, it just and then so I did that for a couple of years and and Paul Weller came and recruited me to help him revive Morpheus. Yeah, which is really interesting. Like that's, that was, that was an interesting play because Morpheus, you know, obviously had several lives And and so this was sort of, I don't know if you call it the last life or the second last one or whatever it was, but this was near the end, but sort of a rebirth, right?

32:34 And and so were you there during the whole Ayrton thing, like when Ayrton happened there and you were a part of that? Oh yeah, we were, you know, they were still looking to manufacture some stuff and we were doing like a color changer for, I can't remember the name of the, IT was a arc source ellipsoidal, can't remember the name of it. Anyway, we're, you know, building stuff like that. Bob Fry had finished the Pana Beam XL or whatever we called it. But it was a Washington light that continuously panned and tilted with a 1200 Watt source, you know, and but the manufacturing it was, you know, that was pretty much it for. I think I remember you guys were showing that in like a little black box at LDI or something and, and hey, come over here and look at this thing, you know one of those. Still still selling color changers. Those were still at the time.

33:37 I know. You know, there were still plenty of theaters and cruise ships that needed them. Well, Morpheus was on top of that world. I mean, like, you know, they definitely did that one right, you know? You know, and that's the thing when I, you know, having worked for both the companies, if, if Morpheus would have had Verilite's management early on, yeah, they would have been world beaters. They had better technology. Yeah, they had better technology. Morpheus brilliant on the technology side but just didn't know how. To run first rotating gobo and all that you know all the everything mount. How do we do everything today mounted in GT Morpheus was about that in the 80s, you know, packaging, doing that whole packaging thing, you know, and, and that's for touring now. I mean, that's the main, you know, that's, that's one of the main things you got to do is how small can you fit that big rig into?

34:30 Yeah, a few. Trucks well even shops like I'm starting to see shops without Rd. cases in them now you know I don't know what you guys do but I've seen so many shops recently where lights are mounted in either racks or trusses Well so. OSA, we have a case company called Mt Cases in Chicago. So Mt, we're still using, we're still using Cases, Yeah. Yeah, cases are good cases. Cases are not bad, cases good. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. But no, I've seen like, I never in my life thought I would see lighting companies that have no cases, you know, but I've seen a few of them. Like, who did I see recently?

35:11 Was it Volt, who has no flight cases at all? Yeah, Yeah. They're, well, they have some, but I mean a lot of barely, yeah, barely travels. And that yeah, it it's just a whole, you know, that's another way how the whole thing has changed. Yeah. Back at Obie's we used to put 6 lamp par bars into Rd. cases, two par bars into a road case. I mean they were massive right? 7 foot long and probably 3 or 4 feet wide. Just huge cases to protect the park hands. Now you wouldn't even think twice. Throw them in a rack and be done. The economics of all of it have changed so much because now you like, back then you didn't have 1000 moving lights on a show, you know, whereas now that's pretty common, 1000 moving lights on a show.

35:59 And so you know. That was one of the things we did at you know, that we did at Morpheus was tried to re repurpose the the flipbox Truss, you know, the swing wing to for modern because it was it was built specifically for the pana beam and pana spot fixtures. We wound up redoing it and retooling it so that it you could hang a center pipe in it and you know, and use put hang modern fixtures in it. Yeah, it still work pretty good, but that's the square Truss just made made difficult, you know? Yeah, you had to have all the specialty stuff to put a You just don't grab a cheeseburger and stick something on it, you know?

36:47 Well, plus when you're a competitive lighting company and you're trying to sell trusts as well or whatever, like, I don't know that, you know, GT Trust seems to have done very well or Tyler Trust, but you know, they've done very well and, and they've created, they've basically done what people have asked them to do. They've built products that people wanted, you know, Yeah. And so, but Morpheus was always like that, like the company before and during you were were innovators. So who or how did the whole Airton thing happened? So. Paul Weller was at. So the manufacturing thing, we're looking for something else, right, Because we needed to boost sales and that and we didn't have a lot of modern equipment. You know, first thing I did when I got there was bought like 24 VL, 25 hundreds or wherever they were. And because they had no modern, all they had was Pana beam and Pana spots.

37:47 Yeah, and, and they were garbage by that point, you know, just. Old your general thought was, you know, we got to focus on being a rental company and worry a little bit less about whose brand is on the fixtures. Yeah, yeah. And Paul found this, a company called Air 10 over at Pro Light and Sound in Frankfurt had a little boost set up. And they were interesting because they were the first one that that we saw that didn't have, you know, the Skittles LED lights. Yeah, they they actually had, you know, the diode. Kind of, yeah. It's a 500CVA500C Wild, Wild Sun 500.

38:29 Yeah, I think it was a fixture and their sales guy at the time they're, you know that he brought over a a number of fixtures of different things that they had to show us because they had no US representation at the time, right. Yeah. And they he pour Val Aire, who is unfortunately not not with us anymore. But yeah, he came to Las Vegas in July to show his wares. And about melted, Yeah. I don't want to do business here, yeah. Yeah. But you know, and we like what we saw and we we showed it to Jeff rabbits and rabbits liked it.

39:09 So we wound up buying them because of Springsteen was getting ready to go back out and we wound up getting those specified first, you know, the Springsteen rig for the wash lights and replacing the fader beams. I guess it was Yeah. And and so that was the start. And then shortly and within the next year or two is when they came out with the magic panel. Yeah. And that just. That thing was a rock star. That made yeah, I mean that was A and it was kind of like being at Verilight again, right? It was everybody wanted them. Everybody. It was so new and interesting in the rotation and all the stuff that it did, you know, everybody had to have them. So it was, you know, it was cool. It was, and I think we were kind of responsible because like at LDI, everybody had gotten away from doing the big show and the, the, you know, the, the demos and that and just here, here it is on the on the stand.

40:08 If you want it, I'll bring it to your shop in three weeks. Yeah, we did a wall of the. I remember. It of the of the. Magic Panel. And it forced everybody to start doing shows again. Yeah. Every. You could not get near that booth. Yeah. I mean, right, You know, So it was a. That was fun. That had to be fun for a minute. It was. Great. I mean, I was like, I was reborn, you know? Yeah. And, and it was just Paul Keith Bennett and myself selling those things. We sold a bunch of them. Yeah. We were the basically the ones pitching it all over the US And you know, fortunately because of my TV, you know, the stuff I've done for television, I had, I knew a bunch of TVLDS and, and we, you know, we were able to get them in front of a lot of important eyes and on television and that and as as the Ayrton brand grew, you know, we kept sorry. It's all good.

41:09 We kept, you know, introducing the the new the more stuff they came out with. You know there's and every year ACT it would be pitching. Yeah, it. Would be. A real air tin to take the the distributorship and and they finally got it. Yeah, yeah, it was inevitable. You know, when you got it, it was just a $200 million distributor on one side and, you know, a rock'n'roll lighting company on the other side at some point. Well, and I think probably being bought by Golden Sea and becoming more corporate and all of those things. Well, they had, you know, there was a, I can't remember his last name, Michael.

41:55 He used to be the the Rep for MA and went to work for for Ayrton. So then that was a natural, you know, bridge makes sense. So that that went away and that was that hurt. Yeah, you know, that hurt. That hurt bad. And they're still, we're still doing stuff. But it was just, you know, struggling a bit. And then they put Morpheus up for sale. And I was not wild about what was going on. And at that point, this was in 2019.

42:40 You know, I've been there since 2005. So I'd spent 14. Years there. Yeah, that's a long time. And then OSA the International was the rest of the building that Morpheus was in. We were the first two Swedes. Oh, really? OSA had the rest of it. I had no idea that's how that worked. Yeah, yeah. And as a matter of fact, when one of the verilite offices we had early on was at the other end of the building from OSA, that's crazy. In a different location. You must like that building, Mark, I guess. Yeah, but so then Mario made me an offer and I literally took my my little refrigerator and and stuff in my office, a box of stuff on a 2 Wheeler went out in my office and down the sidewalk and into my new office and they went to work for.

43:38 A wholesale that is wild. That's crazy. And I I start because of LDI. I was planning on taking a couple of weeks relax, blah, blah, but LDI So I I started sooner than I wanted so that Mario and I could because OSA had no lighting. Now a couple of you know, they had like a dozen movers and some parts and leak goes and one guy you know, for a corporate event stuff, but and it. Was an audio company. Total Audio Company, it's it's now almost 40 years old. It's an audio company started in Chicago. Yeah. And then I don't know, it's maybe, I don't know, it's 15 years ago or something. I remember the exact date that Mario bought Media Solutions, which is a video company here in Las Vegas. Yeah.

44:29 And brought that in and then so they were they he needed the the lighting portion and. So the plan was you were going to go to LDI and build a lighting company basically? And that that's what we did, huh. You know, that's awesome. And we went out and bought whatever a lot of stuff, dollars worth of gear because, you know, I told them you can buy a company or you can start from scratch. When you start from scratch, every nut, bolt, shackle you got to buy, you know. Yeah. So the good part is everything we own is new. Yeah. Especially with the two year hiatus. It happened, right? That was bought.

45:10 That was pretty screwed up timing, wasn't it? Like, buy all that shit, it's not even delivered yet and you're shut down. It was. It was brutal. I mean, that was that was rough. And you know, fortunately we do. We, the LED and the video team came up with a, a virtual, you know, studio that it wasn't like the VR stuff that some people built. This is, this is more like ATV studio. And we did a bunch of of, you know, virtual shows where we would send out, you know, because nobody wanted to touch anything, you know, so we'd send a laptop to or you didn't want anybody in their house or something.

45:56 So we'd send a laptop with a headset and A and a light to the CEO of whatever company and with label, corporate meeting or whatever plug. Yeah. And then here's a box with a label. Send us back the laptop, keep the keep the light in the headset and. You know that was. Going through all that and it was busy. It's called Concertata. That was what, you know, helped keep the the company floating. Yeah, that time. Period, because that had to hurt him, though the the owner, Mario is it? Yeah, Mario that had that had to hurt, you know, because you spend all that money, the bills probably coming due at the same time that your food supplies shutting off, you know? Yeah.

46:41 Oh my God, He what a shit show. That whole COVID thing. I'm still angry. I'm still angry. Well, it's like you think, and I think back it's like next month I'll be here five years. Yeah. And and you know, a year and a half of that was basically. Yeah, nothing sitting on your thumbs talking to me every Wednesday. Yeah, talking to you and, and just calling people and making sure that, you know, they're still alive and stuff. You know, it was, Yeah, it was. It was rough, it. Sucked. And then you know, and we had had unfortunately we had had a record first quarter. That year. And then it just. It went nothing and then a record second quarter, yeah. Worst quarter.

47:22 Best quarter, worst quarter. Yeah, Yeah, that's nice. You know, it's funny that the whole buying a whole new department sort of thing before, like when they were in their temporary business or building, I went up and visited Haskell and and Cosmo at at Gateway and walking through their building was eerie because it was just like everything was new. Like half the light fixtures didn't have plugs on the ends. And yeah, you know, everything smelled like a new road case because it was all the cable was brand new. I was like, you gotta say, I've never seen them. From us, you get that new car smell, Yeah, you know well. And that was what Gateway was, too.

48:03 Like literally everything in their building was brand new. Sound, lighting, video, all of it. Right. Yeah. And yeah, so, but fun as hell because you've got all brand new gear, but, you know, obviously not something you could do every day. It's very expensive. It's yeah, it's, but it's tough. You know, we've, we have the, the nice thing is, well, the good and the bad, you know, you get so many. Just give me some, some beat up stuff. I want to, you know, just take this out for three weeks and that, you know, I got nothing for you. Everything I got is new and shiny and and the way Mario wanted to build the company.

48:44 It's all high end. It's not there's. Did you even? We don't own any junk. Did you have any situations where you bought something and then it sat still for a year and a half and then you went, wait a second, you're launching a new version and we haven't even taken this out-of-the-box? Yet. Well, yeah, kinda. We, we actually had a situation and I give Roby credit for, for taking care of this. They had, we had bought all this stuff. All we, you know, we bought Spiders, Esprit and Megapoints. That was the the start, you know the the basic start of the. Good package, yeah, although there's now an eye spider and an eye Esprit. Everything, yeah, eye everything, yeah. But the, the foam, the injected foam for the cases, it wasn't just us.

49:39 Other people discovered that apparently they had done an improper mix of the stuff that fills the filler for the foam and it was out gassing and the out gassing was was like making like we had. People were sick or what? Well, no, no, the the well, the lights got sick. We had like spiders that look like they've been sitting out in the sun for all summer. Wow. They've like turned kind of white in that and you could see degradation in the LE DS and everything. And, and to to Robbie's credit, they replace the entire inventory because we had just bought it.

50:23 I mean, it barely had any hours on it. Yeah. And because of that, they, they wound up replacing all of the gear. So kudos to Roby for that. Yeah, but yeah, that's cool. That's cool. So, so now you're there. Now you're at OSA. And So what was what was the desire to build a lighting company on to OSA? Was it because clients are packaging more and clients want a single source more? Is was that what drove it or was it just wanting to go wider and bigger or? Well, yes. Yeah, all of that.

51:05 You know I. Mean they like people like writing one check and but the you know, I think honestly, Mario was tired of sub renting packages from companies and writing that check. So you know, and and you can control it better this way. You know, you have your own people. We have, you know, your own gear. We know what it is. We know. And, and you know, to his credit, man, we've, we've got a bad ass lighting department. Yeah, the the people. That we have and the and the gear that we have is has been really good. So is the majority. Is the majority of your clientele there? Corporate, yeah, we do quite a bit of corporate, but we've done a lot more touring now, really since I came in. Of course, I had touring clients that I brought in. You know, it's kind of funny.

51:59 They've had for years. They had like Paul Anka and David Foster, and then the first tour I put out was corn. So when you're touring. Little bit different clients. Are yeah, David Foster. We need more Subs decor. Yeah, we're going to need more Subs. Yeah, that's funny. But corn? And then we have, you know, we've brought on Bobby Allen is now part of the team here. And so, you know, more touring for that. We're doing very cool these days. We're doing Bocelli and. Wow, we. Do Limp Bizkit. Who else do we do this summer? Oh, we did, pre Peter Frampton. Which was that'd be a blast. Man, I went and saw the last this past tour. He wasn't going to go out again.

52:48 Then he went out for like 3 or 4 more weeks and called it the Positively Thankful Tour. So I went to the last show in Cleveland then and that was the last show they were doing before he came back for his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. And I don't know if it was that the crowd, him, whatever it was musically one of the best shows I had I had seen in a very, very long time. You know, he's got he's got some health issues now and he has to he has to sit down and play. He can't stand out, you know, but the whole band sits. And but they were just, I mean, the playing that night from everyone was just unbelievable. I mean, you know, I've seen a few of the shows, the tour and that it was just just knocked my socks off. Last time I saw something like that. This was, you know, one of the best bands I ever musically went out with was Toto.

53:41 Yeah, Toto. I mean, Steve Lukather is a musical genius and, and he's like the musical director of Toto and OK, you're going to do this. And I mean, yeah, he's such a perfectionist and stuff. Like I've seen seen some of that stuff happen and he's amazing. Back when Jeff Picaro was still alive and. Yeah. And they were just great guys. It was. He was Speaking of Picaro, I mean, Lukather, we're. I got to go to Japan with them. Yeah. And we were sitting in some bar just getting hammered 1. Night When was this? Oh, this has been like 85 something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And they were huge and they were bigger in Japan than they are here. Yeah.

54:25 It was. It was, I mean. We get off the train. Because we traveled with the band, we'd get off a train and they're people at the train station waiting for that stuff. It was, it was, it was a lot of fun. But we're sitting there one night and, and he had messed up a lick. You know, these guys, they're all stitched, great studio musicians. Every night was like listening to the album and, and he had screwed up a lick. And what? So what do you do when you screw up a lick like that? What how he goes? I do it twice. And then they think I meant it. And I went home. Man, that's words to live by. That's awesome. Yeah, that is so good. Yeah, he was so work with a lot of cool bands and stuff, but.

55:09 So the touring thing, was that all you like when you went in there or you said they were already doing? Yeah, they had. But I mean I I. That's not real touring, No. Well, that's not real. But it's it's consistent. It's been going on for years. That's true. You know, we, we actually at Verilite, we had a anchor rig of this set of lights that were only used for Paul Anka. It was just 24 prototype lights that that was the anchor rig. And that's that's what they got saved for. Yeah, probably game for a deal because that's, you know. So you'd rather have you'd rather have one Paulinka than 10 Nickelbacks, right? Yeah, Well, I'm. Just kidding, I don't think.

55:50 Nickelbacks had a pretty good run, too. Yeah, wrong choice of words, but you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, Bands that are hot today and not around for a while. But so our, our, the touring presence has expanded and, and you know, we have it's, it's a, you know, anytime you have a, a business that is rental. Yeah. As this man, it is a it is not for the faint part because it is a cash eating monster. It really is everything you know, especially when you got audio and video, you know, lighting you can get some some length out of, but you know, as soon as that next best widget comes along, video or the next best thing brought, you know.

56:40 Well, NVIDIA just keeps going like we're at what now .9 mil or something? Yeah, but and audio, like every time I turn around, I'm sure that, you know, they're announcing now the L rig or whatever, right? And it's like, come on guys, like I'm not even done paying for the J and now you're up to L and what the hell are you doing? Like they're in, in a sense, they've become worse than lighting, you know, where everybody's ragging on Elation or Ayrton for coming out with new fixtures, but at least they're sensitive to the issue that this fixture cost you 8 or 9 grand. You need some time to make that money. Back little ROI the. Sound systems, two and a half million or whatever.

57:21 Yeah. And and, you know, they're coming out with a a newer model a year later and the hot shows are going to want that newer model, you know. Well, we we now own PK. Audio. Oh yeah. Which is sound, yeah. From Calgary, my hometown, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's got the it's automated. Yeah, yeah, I saw the demo in the showroom and yeah, so to me, it almost felt like being a verilite guy standing in that showroom when the lights moved and going like everything changed. You're never going to want stationary lights anymore. And I got that same feeling when I saw the PK system in the showroom in Calgary with Jeremy the the CEO, because I have a house up there. I have a house in bed and so I last year, two years ago, he invited me into their their showroom to come see this stuff. And I was actually the one who connected them to to Bennett act.

58:19 So the fact that Act is their distributor now is is my fault? Damn. Well, there you go. Yeah, so, but yeah, I, my mind was blown instantly when I saw that. It for me as soon as I saw the system move like that I was like yeah why would you want a system that you can't do that with yeah you know exactly but we we put our engineers are special yeah last. Year and I mean it went up lightning fast. Yeah right. You hang it. None of the jacking around that they got to do. Yeah. All done from the from the pad, you know, from the iPad. It's incredible. It's incredible. Well, and I can see a day and I was talking with Jeremy about this last year.

59:01 I can see, and I'm sure they're planning this where, you know, you don't do any calculations ahead of time. You just hang the same rig in every situation. And once you're in the room, you just say calibrate the room, boom, go, you know, and it does it all using AI and some automation and stuff and and there you go. But yeah, that stuff is cool. I forgot you guys are like the big PK guys right now in the country. Yeah, plus we got L acoustics. Yeah, it's. Yeah. And he's Mario's big on keeping the having the good stuff. Yeah, that's.

59:42 Well, hey, we're not gonna be the cheapest guys on the block, but we're gonna have the coolest toys. You know what though? You get known for that. Like you get known for being the coolest toys. You know, everyone knows who's got the junk and who's got the real stuff. And you know when you got a junk budget, sometimes you got to go to the junk guys. When you got when you got a good budget, you go to the ones you really want. That's what I'm saying. I've had people come to me like that. I'm like, I'm sorry. I can't. Yeah, I don't have it, you know, we're, we're too new. I don't have any old stuff to give you. Yeah. So that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, you know, when we started this process, you know, sat down with Mario, how do you want to do this? Do you want to, you know, we could do the elation Chauvet, you know, lower end stuff.

1:00:29 You know, their stuff's fine. Nothing wrong with it, yeah. No, I said maybe get 2 to one. Yeah. Or do you want to stay at the high end and the name brand stuff? Yeah, Name brand. Yeah, we want the name brand and that's, you know, that's where he's built the company. So it's it's cool. It's funny that you're saying Elation and Chauvet are not the name brand stuff. When when if you go to LDI, Like I remember my days at LDI in the early 90s and stuff. Martin and High End were the two big companies there. It was obviously big, but they didn't do big booths at LDI. But Martin and High End we were battling like maniacs and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on these booths and elation and Chauvet were tiny little, you know, these these tiny sort of offshore companies over in the corner, right.

1:01:17 And now it's the opposite. You know, now they're massive Chauvet. And I mean, you know. We own, we own something, some of each of it. You know, there are certain things that we bought into in that. Yeah. But you know, and like I said, not, no, not knocking anybody's product. It's just. Everybody's stuff is good these days, you know, it's the the gear. I mean, look, I came from the days of the Verilite hospital. Yeah. OK. Where? You know, it's funny how well they hid that stuff, though. Unless you were on the inside, you didn't know, like what you didn't know, right? And I've, I've had so many verilite guys on here who have told me stories about, you know, rebuilding fixtures in the middle of shows and stuff.

1:02:01 Yeah. It, it was, I mean, when I started there, I mean, that was one of the reasons I got hired because I was, you know, I had my electrical technology degree. I could actually fix stuff. And back then, like when you had AVL one rig out, you had to like solder things and, you know, replace components and that to fix your gear. So you had to know kind of what you were doing. And, you know, now it's just swapped the boards, even even the newer, you know, once I went to the series 200 stuff, all that went out the out the window here. Swap a new board, send it back. We'll fix it. Yeah. So, you know, but I mean, that's how it is evolved, you know, from well, when you had to be a real technician to now. 100% Well, now, I mean, so Speaking of Ayrton, I was at the Ayrton factory, or not the factory, their office in in France a couple of years ago.

1:02:54 And I was talking to one of their engineers and I hadn't seen the inside of a moving light since probably I left, I don't know, Komar or something when we had Komar. But it's been a while. It's been 15 years or something more maybe since I saw the inside of a moving light. And so he opened up a fixture and I was blown away by, first of all, how much shit they're putting in there now. Yeah, Oh my God, They pack a lot into these little fixtures. Yeah. And I said, OK, So what breaks? And this French engineer looks at me and goes, excuse me? And I said, what breaks? And he goes, but what do you mean? And I said, well, something breaks in this thing. And let's say I live on a remote, I'm taking them to a remote island and I want enough stuff to keep the shit working for six months or whatever.

1:03:47 What do I need to bring with me? And he goes, ah, I see what breaks. Yes, nothing. It's funny you say that because, you know, and the Morpheus to bring in, you know, they introduce a new light. Yeah, Right. OK, OK. We're going to take a hundred of them, whatever we're doing. All right? Yeah. And then we want so much spare parts. What do you mean? What parts? Well, you know, for. No inflation. That's what I'm saying, yeah. Yeah, and and they they were. This is a foreign concept to them and because especially when you're building in China, if you're building 500 units, they build 500. They don't build 500 with a 10% overrun for spare. Parts true, yeah.

1:04:35 You get 500 lights and there aren't. We used to have to gut new lights to replace parts under warranty. True, yeah. So that was just not a concept that they understood. He basically finally told me, you know, a main board and, and maybe a couple of motors and, but that's about it. Like, you know, you don't really need much more than that, you know, and but my point that I'm making is, is, and I've said this 1000 times on this podcast, but young kids these days don't know how good they have it because everything is good. I don't care what fixtures are showing up at a show. They're 100 times better than the VLS or Morpheus stuff that you used to work on or the Martin stuff that I used to sell or even the high end stuff I used to sell.

1:05:21 It was good at the time. But if you compare any old high end fixture, a studio color studio spot to anything from Airton or anything from Robe or anything from any of the companies, even Elation and Chauvet and all of these companies today, no comparison, you know, it's just so much better. The the, the manufacturing processes have become so good. Yeah, that you know, it's. Well, it's also. I mean, it's what it needed to happen though. It's LEDs too, you know, Because absolutely remove the heat. You remove 80% of the problems you know. But you know, that's the thing there. That's a fallacy now. I mean, we're looking at a light the other day, 1800 Watt LED.

1:06:04 That's 1800 watts. 1800 Watts Physics. Is. Physics, yeah. You still got to get rid of that heat. It's still got to do a process to generate that kind of output. Well, these things are drawn 989 amps now, so. Much. Yeah, this is the thing that some people don't seem to understand is one Watt equals one Watt. So I don't care how bright it is, I don't care any of those things. One Watt of energy equals X amount of amount of heat. Whether that Watt is coming from a light bulb or an LED, it's still gonna. And the problem with LE DS is LE DS don't like the heat coming back to the, you know, to the, to the. Chip, the chip.

1:06:44 Yeah, to to the what do they call it the where the chip is on mounted to the board, you know, the the contact point or whatever the contact temperature. They don't like to be more than whatever it is 70° C or something, right. But yeah, I mean, but The thing is again, like you've got companies like this B Topper and all these companies that I see on Facebook selling on Facebook marketplace and stuff that, you know, is it's pretty low end non brand kind of Amazon lighting, right, right. But that stuff's good. You know, I mean to use once or twice it's great. You know, it might not last very long. You wouldn't want to take it on tour, but it's good. You know, for your bar band, it's going to be fine, Yeah, You know.

1:07:31 So on the topic of an interesting story, I remember you telling me once that you were actually at the at the Pepsi commercial shoot that MJ did. Yeah, where his his head caught on fire. Yeah, Yeah, that was it was 8082. I can remember exactly what year it was, but yeah, I was actually, I was working for OB. That's the first time I ever met Zeb. Oh wow. Was he was doing scientist? That he is or was? Sorry, yeah. He was I think he was doing what was it is one of those tube kind of moving lights mirror.

1:08:17 I can't remember the OH. The Telescans. Yeah, he was running telescans on that and. Or Z scans one of the two. Oh yeah, it may have been Z scan. Yeah, yeah, I was talking to Brickman yesterday about the Z scans. Yeah, one one of the another Pioneer light. Yeah, but we I was running, there was the staircase that he was on and I was on the side of the stage running the lights as he would come down the stairs. I would have to, you know, bring up the lights as he's coming down the stairs. And they had done a couple of takes and it's like done like 5 takes. Yeah, fine.

1:08:57 And they're the big, there's a through of of pyro at the top, you know, big flame at the top of this. It was like a stairway to nowhere. It was that was it. It would have fallen off the back if you would have went any farther. And I think director had changed the choreography a little bit and we didn't know it. So he had made his, Michael had made his move like he was coming down the stairs like he had in the other takes. But he told him to hold up there and the pyro guy fired the flash, you know, big through of flash powder and he was just in it. When? Just came and I just saw this from the side, right. Went right up, right up his back. And when he came out of it, the Jheri curl or whatever, the stuff that was in his hair caught fire. And by the time he got to the bottom of the stairs, you know, his head's on fire and they hit the brothers, you know, attack in the and the security guys were on up on stage, you know, and I've been talking to Michael just before that happened, just before that take.

1:09:59 But anyway, so it wasn't as bad as they made it to be. Apparently it was like a, you know, maybe half dollar size burn on the top of his head and that. But, you know, he was he was OK. Yeah. But the interesting part about that was George Travis was the production manager on that and Michael's security team comes charging into the production office. Where is the pyro man at? Oh no. Because that was Jackson was, I mean, he was the hottest thing literally on the planet right then, right?

1:10:40 Yeah. And George, as soon as it happened, George had taken the pyro guy and put him in a closet and said don't come out of here until I come and get you. So the three, there's like 3 security guys are combing the building looking for the pyro guy. Oh no. And there's there's no doubt in my mind that George shaves his life that day because these they would have killed him. Wow. There's no doubt in my mind they would at least beat the shit out of it. Hopes. Wow. But you can. You can say shit, we've had much worse on here. Trust me, I'm sure. I have had wise it went on here like three times or something. So yeah, yeah, no filter, John.

1:11:23 No, that's a crazy story. Did you know at the time like this is going to be something that I'm going to be talking about 40 years from now. I. Mean, you know it's. You know how things happen on a set. You know you don't. You know, and you're part of it. You don't really think about it. There was 3000 people in the audience that saw it happen. Yeah. Right. So it wasn't like a closed set or anything. So it was kind of weird, but yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, you at the time, you know, and that that's, I guess that's the thing. I've always, I've always, this is a job. I I never really collected, you know, you know, a bunch of, of memorabilia or autographs or any of that stuff because to me, it was always a job.

1:12:04 And I was, I was just working. This was, that was just part of it. Yeah. And so I never really thought about, you know, I never really thought about it. And then you hear people talk about it now like it's this thing that happened. And I guess it was, you know, when you set the the biggest pop star on the planet at the time on fire. That's. Yeah, that's significant. That's newsworthy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, imagine how he felt. You know, the the Biro guy, right? Like I did e-mail. Yeah, but it, it wasn't, it wasn't his fault. Like I said, there was a there was a change of direction that we never heard. Yeah. So we just did because I I hit my queue, He hit his queue, you know, everybody else, all the other lighting, you know, because he was making his move down that stair. And then he stopped.

1:12:54 And that's, that's what the thing. Yeah. If he would have just kept going like he had, the other takes would never happen. But he had asked him for more. I want a bigger flame, bigger flame for that. So they. You got it. Yeah, you got the bigger flame. Wow, that is a crazy story. I don't know if you noticed, but my internet's going crazy, so I just. I had to share with you, I just did a speed test. So I've got 4 megabits per second when I normally have like a Gigabit. So yeah. Yeah, it's, that's what I was telling you earlier. You go from a Gigabit to like 0 to a Gigabit to four. So, yeah, we've had some struggles on this podcast because of it. But because of the way we recorded, it's going to be all smooth at the end.

1:13:38 Yeah. Here you go. So you're married still? Presumably, Yeah. And you, you have kids and I think grandkids now. Oh, yeah, they're fun. Yeah. I have three daughters and, you know, raised three daughters in Las Vegas and. Oh boy. Have you heard that Chris Rock routine about your duty as a father is to keep? Your daughter off the pole. Yeah, we kept ours off the pole. Good for you in Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, none the less. Yeah, all of them got advanced degrees. They're all teachers of Wow elementary one's APHD teaching up in Reno and the others teaching nursing. She was a she's an MP who's now teaching nursing. And then two of them have I got a three-year old granddaughter and a 2 year old granddaughter.

1:14:29 And then we got expecting a grandson here within the next couple weeks. Is there no male DNA in you anywhere or what the hell is the deal? Here, Mark, that's punishment for being on the road. Yes, you will have all girls. That's. Right. Yeah, but I was, I was in a rock band for a number of years and so I probably didn't deserve the one son that I got, so. Oh, but he's a race car driver and if I can come back, that is what I would do. Yeah, that's what I would do too, if I could afford two of us. Yeah, I can hardly afford one of us, trust me. Yeah, I had Donnie Ladico on the podcast a few weeks ago and we were comparing notes because he's got his kid in go karts and I'm like, hold my beer, man.

1:15:14 Wait till you move up from go karts to cars, Donnie. Yeah. Oh, no, we're not going to do that. Neither will we, but we did. So. But next. Yeah. But wait. There's more. It happens. It just happens. So we got two more on the way. So fun. You know they're you are 5 grandkids. No 422 daughters now will have another son and AI mean a grandson and a granddaughter within the next two months. Oh, so you do have a boy coming. Yeah, There you go, final. He's due within the next couple weeks. Well, he's going to be spoiled by Granddad Mark. You think? Yeah, grand. Happy Mark. There's I don't know if the girls will want the Corvette, but there'll be a shiny 2001 06 waiting for him when he turned 16. So there you go.

1:16:02 We'll see how that works. There you go my my son had take that car from you. He'd scrub your floors for the next 5 years for that. He doesn't like the C8, he likes the C6. Yeah, he's the C5, but yeah. I know, but he, he just, he'd love AC 506 if it was clean enough. You know, he goes C6. He goes C6 just because, you know, most of the C fives. He prefers the C5 actually, yeah. It was the first one with modern technology. Really. Yeah, yeah, I had it's, I had Corvettes right up until C sixes. I never bought AC 7. By then I had moved on to like Audis and stuff and I just noticed that they didn't rattle as much and they didn't make as many funny noises and stuff.

1:16:46 I'll be at a little bit more expensive, but yeah. But you know, I, I still keep saying I'm gonna go back to another vet. I've had like 10 of them. I've had 10 vets I think. This is the only one this was That vet was my gift to me for getting the three girls through college. I took care of their undergrad stuff, any of the grad stuff they did, but I went OK and once the last one moved out of the house about a month later the the vet moved in. So you you probably thought, holy shit I got money left, I better spend it quick before somebody has a kid. Yeah, really. Yeah, raising three daughters and putting them all through college and stuff, you know, good on you.

1:17:29 God bless you. That's that's a big, big accomplishment. So. They're and they're great. They're yeah, I love them. They're they're, they're really good kids. Yeah. It's all you can hope for, really. We mentioned it earlier, but Mark is going to be doing this thing that we're calling Dining with Dinosaurs at LDI and it's on the 9th, on Monday, the 9th between 12:30 and 2:00, and it includes lunch and stuff. You can get to it by registering at ldishow.com, I believe, and it's going to be cool. It's basically guys like Mark who have been in the business a long time and who have a lot of great stories to tell and who have wisdom to pass on, which is a big, big deal. And that's what was the start of all of this, is we just did things differently back in the day. Then it's done today.

1:18:21 And and some of those lessons probably don't need to be passed on because they were dangerous or whatever. But some of those lessons, what? Yeah, some of those lessons do need to be passed on. So Mark is going to be part of that event. And we're very grateful to you coming and doing that. That'll be fun. It'll be, it'll be a fun group of people too. You'll recognize everyone there. So yeah, we're getting new confirmations every day. One of them is a designer that you just brought up, Mr. Rabbits, Who's coming? Yeah, he's awesome. Great guy. Well, he was very good to Morpheus for so long, too. I mean, talk about loyalty, Jesus. Against all odds, loyalty, you know, that maybe wasn't even deserved at sometimes you know. But but you know, he he and and again, George Travis, you know, they're very loyal to the people. You know, that was they wanted Todd Ritchie out there as the board up and you know.

1:19:16 Yeah, Brad, and it's very cool. It's very cool how long that run was with Jeff and Morpheus. It's. It was 20 some years. Yeah, it's amazing. That just blows my mind how loyal that guy is. And I love Jeff. He's such a nice guy. So I look forward to seeing him in a few weeks, months, two months. I don't know how. Far it is. That's great. I'm glad he'll be there. Yeah, he'll be there. Well, I think I'm gonna have to say goodbye to you just because I know my internet's gonna die at some point completely. And then, and then we've got a problem. So yeah, while I've actually got Internet, I should end this thing. And. And I appreciate you coming and doing this though, Mark, It's. Fun. Super cool to get to know you a little better and certainly your company.

1:20:00 Yeah, so. It's just building another lighting company. It's kind of what I do. Yeah, well, hopefully you're slowing down now and you found a home and and you're stuck there forever. Yeah. So yeah. At least a few more years, Yeah. So. Yeah. All right, Mark. Well, I'll see you at LDI and and thanks for everything. Hey Marshall, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. This is a lot of. Fun. All right, Enjoy it. Cheers. All right, bye. Bye.