#282 - Andrew "Hamish" Mills

0:00 So it's episode #282 with Hamish or also known as Andrew, his real name, Hamish Mills from PRG. And if you don't know Hamish's story on how he got named, we actually talk about that today. We talk about that. We talk about his incredible history in the business, you know, just working with the best companies, doing some of the best tours. I would say he's probably very good and also very fortunate and lucky because he has sort of checked all the boxes. The biggest best companies LSDPRG. Well, lots of. Three letter companies, PRGLSDVER Verilite and you know, he's done some really great things and has a very important role at Verilite as well. So enjoyable guy, great story and a lot of fun so I hope you like it.

0:53 Hello, thanks for joining me for episode #282 of Geez of Gear. Today's podcast is brought to you by the Event Safety Alliance. Safety should never be far from center stage. The Event Safety Alliance is North America's leading association for event and venue professionals who care about safety, security, and risk management. ESA focus on all the things that help event professionals work safely and help guests enjoy their events through education and training opportunities, expert developed standards, and guidance and programming on issues affecting safety at live events. ESA empowers event professionals of all stripes to mitigate risks and ensure their well-being and that of their coworkers and guests as well. Because everyone deserves to make it home safely. Become a member of the Event Safety Alliance and join thousands of event professionals from around the globe, creating a safer, more prosperous future for our industry. Visit safetyalliance.org For more information. And this podcast is also brought to you by AVL Media Group, one of the leading distributors of professional audio, video and lighting equipment in North America. Please take just a moment and watch the following video with me.

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4:04 And so by the time you hear this, LDI is over and. It was a great show. Fantastic. Actually I haven't left yet so it is now Wednesday. I'm recording this on Wednesday right before the LDI show. I leave on Friday and I actually just changed my trip. I was originally leaving on Saturday and then a few people wanted to have meetings on Saturday. And what do you mean you have no time? What do you mean you're leaving Tuesday morning? What do you mean you have? You can't have a meeting on Saturday or whatever. So I have changed it and I am now arriving Friday night late. And so funny story, I like to stay at a particular hotel. I won't say the name just so that people don't start putting their drink bills on my room or something. But I like to stay at a particular hotel and it's easy. And, and there's not a big casino that you got to walk through to get to your room, which is now probably eliminating a lot of hotels and making you focus on one in particular.

5:07 But I booked it a while ago and I got this deal where it was like sensible, like 240 bucks a night or something like that. Plus, you know, the ridiculous resort fees. I think it was like 270 including resort fees maybe. Anyways, whatever it was. So I went to add the one night at the front end, the Friday night at the front end and and I am a a VIP member, platinum member, whatever it's called of that hotel chain. And so I thought, OK, this isn't going to be a problem. You just extend it by one night, same rate. No. Well, first of all, we couldn't extend it by one night.

5:48 I had to book a separate reservation. Secondly, it's literally more than twice as much money. It's 600 bucks for one night in this place. So guess where Mr. Marcel is staying? I'm staying by the airport in like a Holiday Inn or something, one of those kind of places, Hyatt Place, I don't know what it was, but one of those, one of the lower end hotels of a higher end chain. And I'm perfectly happy with that. I get in at like 11:00 at night. I'm not going to go anywhere. I'll go straight to the room, crash, wake up in the morning and move to a real hotel. And so that's my story. And so by the time you hear this again, you can't say hi, I caught you, you're at such and such hotel or whatever 'cause it's already over.

6:32 So I'm really looking forward to seeing lots and lots of people. Of course, I'm looking forward to dining with dinosaurs, which again, by the time you hear this will have already been done. It's our inaugural event this year. It's going to be a hell of a lot of fun. It's I'm getting calls like I've actually, I remember when I used to get calls for concert tickets. I don't get that anymore. But when I used to get calls for concert tickets all the time, I'm getting more calls for, for can you get me into this dinosaur thing? And I can't. Like I don't have any passes. They haven't given me anything. I thought I was actually going to have to pay for my own lunch knowing these wonderful folks at LDI. So. So yeah, I don't have any passes.

7:13 But, you know, again, by the time you hear this, you will have known that because you've probably called my phone 100 times saying get me into this thing. It's wild. I mean, it, it feels like, you know, it feels a little bit weirdly viral, you know, and I know I'll get there and only four people will show up, but it, it sure feels like the room's going to be stacked full of people. And it's just going to be a really fun event. And I'm really looking forward to seeing not just the the people on our dinosaur list, but a lot of the people who have told me they're coming, like real key people in our industry and stuff. I thought it was just going to be kids. I thought it was going to be students. But no, like people who've been in the industry a long time and that are almost certifiable dinosaurs.

7:54 Actually, there are a couple dinosaurs who have told me they're coming. So so yeah, looking forward to that. And again, it's a little bit redundant because by the time you hear this. It'll all be over. What else? I got nothing on AI. There's so many things happening with AI right now that I can hardly keep up. And I promise, hopefully next week I'll give you one of my updates, not only on the things that have happened in the AI world, cause a lot of things have happened, but on ways that I'm utilizing AII want to get into more of that kind of stuff like how's it changing my life? What are things that I've tried that are really working for me and that I recommend to you possibly for your businesses or your lives?

8:38 And there's a bunch of those. Like there's some things that you'd have to, you know, beat me up to get them away from me at this point because I use them on a daily basis. Like literally AI and don't tell my employees this. But AI has has quickly become probably my favorite employee at this point. And so, yeah. And Speaking of employees, through my company, we've actually just hired another person. So I always love that. It always feels like Christmas when a new person comes in. We've parted with one person and we've added one person and we're adding another person. We've already sort of up the list and, and so we're working on finding that second person right now. So it's exciting times. We're back to finally growing again. If you know me, you know, we've been through some pain over the last few years.

9:24 You know, everybody kind of got over COVID. We didn't, you know, we got sicker as time went on and we've fixed all the things. We've built a Better Business today. I'm really actually proud of what our team have done and, and what we've survived. And so the future is bright. So enough about me, how about you? So today's guest, I won't say I'm really excited about this one 'cause I always say that, but I am kind of. So a gentleman named Andrew Mills, who's better known as Hamish in the industry, brings more than 30 years of entertainment industry experience. Hamish has toured with acts like You Too, Metallica, Nirvana, Rod Stewart and other high profile entertainers. And he worked with service providers in the US, Australia, UK and Europe.

10:15 And Hamish has been responsible for managing and directing operational functions for large entertainment service providers in multiple countries. A leader with proven success at companies including VER Tate Towers, Epic Productions, Verilite, and Light and Sound Design. Now the senior vice president of operations for PRG, Hamish has a drive for excellence and success. Please welcome Andrew Hamish Mills to the podcast. Well, hello there, Mr. Mills, How are you? Very good, Marcel, how are you? I'm doing OK. I'm sitting here in sunny South Florida when everybody else is freezing to death. So although, you know, my friends in Canada love this one, but I went out for my walk this morning and I actually had to put a jacket on.

11:02 It was like I think it was 48° or something. When I went out for my walk this morning I walked like 4 miles every morning and I was like whoa, this is a little bit chilly at six O clock in the morning so. 41° where I live in Simi in California here right now. I do, I ride my bike every morning. I'll do like 8 or 9 miles on my bicycle. Yeah. Not electric. Yeah. Yeah. And those are so funny. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know what? Those have a purpose. So I, I've got one of my, my best friends is, you know, he's an older guy and you know, it's he's able to still get on a bike, he's still able to get out and experiencing of. Course I love. That for, for for people that aren't as inclined physically, it's a good substitute for that. I have a house up in Canada in, in like the Banff area basically, yeah.

11:51 And we go there for the whole summer. And so I have two E bikes and I have, I'm buying an E mountain bike as well. Yeah. And so that one kind of surprised me. I was like, OK, what's the purpose of these E mountain bikes? But so many of my friends up there are like, you know, these crazy like champion mountain bikers and stuff. And The thing is you can just get further, faster, you know, because E mountain bikes are all, and you know this, I'm sure, but they're all pedal assist. And so you still have to work, you know, it's. Just absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, you can just. Faster you can go steeper, you can go higher, whatever it is, right. And so they can get in what was a four hour ride and you really had to plan for it because you didn't have time. They can get that in in two hours now. And so that's sort of the the protocol for me. I'm just old and out of shape ish. And you know, I want help up the freaking hill. I want somebody to hook a chain up to the front and just pull me up the hill, you know, so but the, the mountain bikes because of where are are the E bikes, I should say, because of where our house is, like you can physically ride your bicycle down into town, which I do, and then you got to ride back up. So if you have a couple beers when you're in town or whatever, it could be a little painful coming back up. Yeah, it's a struggle.

13:08 But if my girlfriend or one of my house guests or something wants to go down for a coffee or a beer or whatever, we'll take the E bikes and ride down there and, and you know, you could just hit the button and ride back up again. It these aren't pedal assists. They've got a throttle on them and and so they're fun. I think I've always said those E bikes that I have are probably like the most fun per dollar that I've ever spent on something 'cause they really are a blast. You know you can do 30-40 mile rides and you know, not break a sweat so. No 100%. Yeah, it's pretty fun. So I I got to ask you because I don't know the answer to this one. Where did you get the name?

13:49 Where did Hamish come from? So everyone asked me that question. I've had that nickname since Australia and it was funny like, you know, my career started with, you know, when I was 18, left school, I had my best mate who ran a, he set up his own little small business, which is a mobile disco. So, so he would, you know, you invested in some speakers and bought some lights and we made in his garage a homemade lighting board basically, which was a bunch of, you know, household switches with Edison's or, you know, extension cords plugged into the back. And you would just sit there during, you know, whatever. He would get a job, whether it was above it, so wedding, whatever, and do the lights and stuff for that.

14:29 And so I started there and then he was a drummer as well. So then he started doing cover bands. And so I followed along and my actual first gig, ironically, was audio. As you remember doing, we did this rehearsal in this, you know, it was like a preschool that one of the band members had a friend that had access to and that's where they set up. And you know, I did audio for the first time there, but, but basically we, I work got into the cover band circuit in Australia in the late 80s and the cover band circuit in Australia was actually pretty vibrant back then. And you could go out and you know, we still see it today, right? We still see quite a lot of pretty popular Australian cover bands with the Bee Gees, Pink Floyd, and they have a definitely still have a vehicle and an audience for those sort of things. But back in the 80s it was a very vibrant thing where you could go out and tour Australia for four or five months going around, and you'd go around and do what I call a pub circuit. So it was a good way to see a lot of Australia you'd go into. You'd play some of these really Outback towns where, you know, you have to sweep the blood and the glass up at the end of each night on the loadout.

15:35 Yeah, to go do that. But anyway, one of the drummers and the bands I was working for, he couldn't remember my name and he just looked at me and says you look like a Hamish, so I'm just going to call you Hamish. And it's sort of stuck because it's a pretty unusual name. Yeah, it is sort of it just it sort of just stuck with me ever since then. I sort of, you know, it sort of followed me because, you know, I did the cover band stuff in Australia and then I started to do recording bands and ILD D Australian band called Spy Versus Spy. And then I ended up doing Susie Quattro. Wow. I ran around Australia. So I did that. And then I did Cliff Richard, as you know, as Aligning. I was like the youngest kid on think I was like 20 at the time.

16:18 And, you know, I got on this Cliff Richard tour of Australia. Cliff Richard, for the audience who may or may not know, is a pretty renowned performer in the UK, Europe and Australia. And, you know, he, he his, you know, the lighting designer at the time was a guy called Bob Elliott. And we had a pretty, a pretty complex lighting rig with that. It was all, you know, triangular pods that moved during the show. He had very lights on it, you know, and that was sort of my intro into what I'll call a large scale production tour. Actually, the first one I actually worked on was Bee Gees. I remember delighting into Bruce Indoor Stadium when I was working as a stagehand and Mel was a lighting board operator and I think it was called obviously the lighting designer.

17:06 And you know, we did the be that was that was that was amazing. That's what sort of got me in into real, Hey, this is a career for me very early. Did the media blow up as big in in Australia as they did here? Huge 100%, yeah. Like, yeah, huge following. Yeah. Well, you know, that that that they sort of lived there, right, is at one point, I think, you know, between, you know, UK, Australia and then obviously, you know, settling in the US But yeah, they're very popular. There, Yeah, I mean, obviously the disco thing here just went completely boom and and they were suddenly huge, but. But I didn't know if they were all so big, I would assume they'd be big in Australia as well. But yeah, just curious.

17:48 So the name, the name stuck and and it's funny. Like, I mean, at least it's Hamish. It's not like, you know, some of the really funny ones that people have walked around with for 50 years. You know, poop is always one of my favourites. Yep, nice guy. Well, and I guess his comes from his name at least, you know. But but still it's it's a weird name to have to carry around your whole life and get called on radios and stuff. Poop. Yeah, yeah. So, so you kind of started late then by, let's call it geezer standards, you know where a lot of these guys started in the in the 70s.

18:28 Yeah, yeah, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a young in, in the things. I mean, I'm 55 now. I mean, I've been doing this 37 years. But yeah, you know, I sort of called the tail end of what I'll call the sweet spot in our industry where it really changed quite dramatically. I mean, you know, I, I moved to the UK It was interesting because when I finished doing Cliff Richard in Australia, you know, the guys who did that were from Samuelson's at the time, which was, yeah, you know, a branch of you're like Jerry as the crew chief on it. And, you know, they asked, hey, Amy, she want to come over to the UK and do the next clip of the leg, leg in the UK. You know, I was sort of like, you know, I'm 20 at the time. And I said, you know what, Australia is only so big. And it was for me, it was an opportunity. And both my parents were English. So I got a British passport so I could literally jump on a plane and oh, that's good.

19:16 So I had a drunk in at the time I sold it. That's what was paid for my plane ticket. And the tour was meant to start on I think August or September. This is back in 91 and or 90. I've got a good so long. So I, I just said, you know what, I'm going to move over to the UK early and at the time they didn't have a gig for me. So I said, you know what? I'm not going to sit around. I'm going to, you know, pound the pavement. So if I can just lay in another gig with a different company, just see what happens. And I ended up working, but first gig was with a company called Super Mech. Yeah, and Super Mech. Mr. Clark. Mr. Clark. Peter Clark. Peter Clark. Peter Clark. Job interview. Do you know what PDS are? No. You've got the job, Maxi, give that man a tenner. You know he was.

19:58 He was. I loved Peter, man. That guy was. Is he still around? I don't know. I don't know where it is so I know what it is. I asked someone else and they said I think he's. Still. Around like he's still above ground, which is good, but I I haven't heard of or about or from him in 100 years forever. Yeah, but I mean, it was interesting because you know, my first tour in the UK, I landed doing the Gipsy Kings for Clarky and it was like, you know, at the time, you know, Clark had a pretty unique formula to how he did lighting, right? It was just like straight box trusses. You would go up to, you had two offices, one in London and one up in Banbury where you generally prep, prep, do the preps and he would just have stock looms and stuff.

20:40 And it was pretty cookie cutter and how he sort of did it and he was very, you know, yeah, I remember I was on tour with him and then he said, oh, you got a day off. I want you to go do a load in at Sheffield Arena for the WWE, you know. Oh, thanks, David. You know, Yeah, yeah, nice. But yeah, I ended up doing that. And then it was interesting because the next job I did for him was Nirvana. And that was, you know, God, was it the Never mind tour? Whatever it. Was and the first time. And that was an LSD job that was completely that was so busy with what they had, they just outsourced it all to Clarky. Wow. So they sent the crew chief over who was Mill, Rocky and Mill.

21:21 I sort of was on the lighting crew there. And he said, well, Hamish, you need to come over to Light and Santa Design. So I said, OK, so you know, I finished doing Nirvana and then I got a job at Light Santa sign and went out to Black Sabbath was my next tour and I did that. And that was that was so that was a, you know, once again, this is a cool learning experience. You know, like 21, I'm starting to do these hijacks travelling around Europe. And then and then I got what was probably my first major, major tour, which was Metallica, the Black Tour and you. Know that was that was going yeah. Yeah, well, it was like for me, it was funny. I forgot to bring the T-shirt. We, it's like think I was like #54 on the crew as that cycled through, you know, where we were with that.

22:07 But you know, that was because, you know, Jack Berry was a production manager. That was my first interaction with Jake. John Broderick was a lighting designer and you know when you work with JB, he's a very articulate guy and his expectations to very fanatical bodies in the column in back in those days. What was quite interesting growing up in Australia and working lighting boards, that we actually were using DMX, you know, pretty early compared to the rest of the world, right in. Jam him and his analogue desks, right? 100% Well, him and really are both like that, right? Yeah. They are very much into the mindset that the analogue 12 Volt control is you've got, you're getting an instant gratification of the feel of the light through the faders on the board.

22:51 And they felt the degradation or the signal from DMX was too slow to the response time that they had to work with. So they were adamant. I mean I did Metallica and I had like 672 way Dimaraks in a banana patch Bay that was messy to deal with the fact that everything was managed on an analog console. Yeah, yeah, no, I, I remember that he, he actually, I got into. I wouldn't call it an argument because I wouldn't have got into an argument with JB. But I was doing a demo with I don't remember if I was with Martin at the time or what, but I was at upstaging in a demo and he got into this conversation with me about because I was looking at his setup and I was like, why are you using an old Avo analog console?

23:37 And he said because it's so much better and it's it's there's more feel and it's faster. And I said, why do you need faster? Like, you know, you're changing from scene to scene and he he, you know, brings up a look and then he starts going like, he's playing drums for Metallica, right? And I'm like, OK. He had that free strokes, right? He had two buttons on the front of that console, which was exactly that. Yeah, like it was what, Metallica song where he. Played the Strokes. He's basically playing the strokes, yeah. Yeah, it was probably like Dun Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun Dun, whatever that song's called. Yeah, I've got. I'd say. Yeah, yeah, that, that, that 2 of me, by the way, was at the time 21 on the Black tour.

24:24 And that was their breakout tour. That was that. That album went nuts for that. Well, you know, it was funny because at the time it was us, We had Guns and Roses out. Yeah, OP was doing Guns and Roses, Jake was doing Metallica, and of course those two are like 2 pieces of pot, right? They're all they're always on the phone trying to outdo each other on the how quickly you do the loadout or whatever the things were to go. And do you know, Jake would always bust your balls to say, hey, it took took long an hour loadout. It was only an hour and 50 minutes. But yeah, 15 trucks. But you know, it was it was a good cutting experience for me on that tour because I actually was paired with a lot of good people on that tour. A little buddy, Gordo Heinford, you know, Tommy Booth, and we had a very strong crew and. At that point you were just part of the lighting crew or. Yeah, I was doing dimmers, yeah, I was sort of head dimmer technician.

25:17 So, you know, and you know, that was a large tour because I mean, like I said, I walked in or suddenly got, you know, 672 way demo, you know, dimmers to to manage and you learn very quickly all the craft that you need to, particularly when you start doing different venues and stuff. I think one of the things that I struggle with even to this day is that people have lost the fundamentals with touring these days because it becomes so complacent or just don't understand some of the things that you should be doing. You know, and it first starts with your power of you not measuring your power and understanding if you've got a good clean power, you're going to have a bad day. Yeah. And I've seen that happen on a couple of large jobs where, oh, we've dropped a neutral or the electrician wired the tails in incorrectly.

26:04 And, you know, it really does start with those basic fundamentals, you know, going like, you go out in the venue for me, you know, what the hell I used to work with Metallica was. And I said, Mr. Joe, I, I would go to every department audio, you know, video myself. I, I basically took on everyone's tides in the morning because I would used to be able to ask the right questions. An electrician, you know, okay, what are these? What are the feeds on? Are they independent of the separate mechanical ground? Electrical ground is already AC units on these stuff. You know, you get into all these different things because, you know, if you were tied on the same power as the audio, then, you know, the audio guys would come at you and wine because of the buzzing or, you know, yeah, all those other things. So, you know, it was in my interest to try and get in front of that.

26:47 Yeah, as much as possible. So you know. Have you, have you seen them recently? Have you been out there recently for Metallica? I haven't seen metallic stadium thing. No, I haven't. Yeah, the last, so interestingly not the last Metallica thing was when I was at tight when we did the the video. The rig that fell over or whatever, the fake crash of the one of the towers or something? What? Was it something? Broke or it looked like it broke during the show. Well, that was that. Well, I mean, that was, you know, 'cause when we did the forgotten, it was. I think the load, load, Yeah, you. Had loaded the, the, the collapsing towers each, each one had that thing, right? We had the justice tour with the large statue. Yeah, you would have that tour that with the towers collapsing. They had a huge toilet.

27:31 I mean, the, the stuff we did at Tait was a culmination of all of those things for these, you know, large movie shoot that they were doing. So, you know, we we designed this off and I was at Tait that was, you know, massive in scale to all the different elements of those different tours that they didn't combine it into one show. And I can just remember like testing the hydraulic towers out in the car, parking at tight on, you know, just the mass that you were moving at such a quick rate. Yeah. And then stopping on a time. We actually, we, it was funny. We used to had some, you know, I think it was Nathan Cross who was the guy who's running navigator for the programming on that particular thing. We we used to yeah, we tested things. We had a video with like a watermelon and we see how we can crush the watermelon with the towels coming down. And then we had a night Adam Davis doll. It was plugged in there as well at one point. That was that was pretty funny.

28:25 That's. Awesome. But yeah, you got to see some pretty cool. Stuff the, the new ones. So I, I went and I hung out with, with Koenig up in Canada in Edmonton last summer because I was up there at my house and I had never seen monitors done under the seats like that. Like the, the whole monitor setup was under the seats. And so you had follow spots down there, you had monitors, you had Video World down there and it was all happening under the seats in the audience had no idea. And I mean, I guess you got to put them somewhere, but I was, I had just never seen monitors done remotely like that. Like I'm old school where I always saw them done from the side of the stage.

29:08 I just, yeah, maybe I just didn't pay attention. And we've been like that for a long time, you know, and, and. Yeah, I mean, most of the stuff, like in the largest stages I did stuff, they were always under the stage and they had the video. But yeah, they had the video cameras or the sorry video monitor screens to look at the artist and they were just. Well, this wasn't under the stage. This was under the seats, like off the field. Yeah, yeah. I mean, next to one of the bombs and and I mean, it was just like a full on production center down there. It was wild. I couldn't believe it. But yeah, it was pretty cool. So, you know, you were just talking about moving these monstrosities and stuff. Like, I know I'm jumping around a bit now, but when, like, is there a point where you and others, like you start feeling uncomfortable that, like, maybe we've gone a little too far here? Like maybe this is getting dangerous. You know what what I say to that is, so you kind of have, first of all, confidence in the level of engineering that you feel you have behind it.

30:09 And yeah, it's interesting when we talk about the safety of the industry, like, you know, I go back to my time at Clint Frenchard. Yeah, we used to walk the trucks. Yeah. I didn't have any safety harness on it. You know, that was the days where you would like camber down the cable pick to get off the trust. You wouldn't even use the trust ladder. You would just slide down the cable pick and get off. I mean, we did some pretty stupid stuff. Yeah. Back in the day, there was non, you know, safety like. Half the people doing it were high as a kite as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. It's. Not like people were of clear mind when they were sliding down the cable pick. Yeah. So, I mean, from a safety perspective, you know, we, you started out, if you go back to the infancy of the industry, back in the 70s and 80s where safety wasn't necessarily the forefront of people sinking.

30:53 Yeah. And it has made quite that journey now, you know, with the Event Safety Alliance and all these other things in place. And, you know, we've had some consequential issues or, you know, failures out there. You know, I think Garth Brooks, one Justin Timberlake when I think it was just Timberlake. Yeah. Failures. Sugar Land yeah, there's, there's a lot of things that that happened and they really, and, and that, that is a challenge, I think for anything you're doing today in production is really understanding what you're doing and having the confidence in the ability of, of other people behind that to ensure that you don't put yourself into that situation. Yeah, I mean, it's it's funny you brought up ESA because they were actually a sponsor on today's podcast. Yeah, I just, I just did their sponsor read here 1520 minutes ago.

31:40 But I had Digby on the on the podcast once and I had no idea. He told me basically where the whole concept of it came from was, you know, his his first gig in a in a club when, you know, a set piece basically came off the rails literally and crushed a girl and killed her. And he was the guy who hit the switch to make the thing move that fell and killed the girl. Yep. And I was like, holy shit, that's a story like. Yeah, it's a heavy wow, right? Yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot to deal with when I was kidding, you know? Yeah. You know and. That's and that's something for me, right, is that, you know, we talk about life overhead safety and you know, particularly when you get into this, some of the complexities of the productions today because we're always pushing the envelope with it. Yeah, yeah.

32:28 You know, if you get into high speed performer flying or just automation in general, it's there is a lot of risk to that and it's really making sure that you had been skid doing a due diligence. So always third party engineering for me, always try and make sure that you're, you know, you're having those right level of conversations. But unfortunately quite often these things end up as a father of just human behaviour more than the fact it was an engineer or something like, well it was engineered, but I didn't follow the engineering directions. Yeah. Well, and you know, like you said, I mean, the way it used to be done, everything was a shortcut. Everything was sort of a made-up last minute idea. Well, we could just do one of these, you know, and strap it to this thing over here and it won't go anywhere, you know.

33:12 And I mean, most of the time it worked, you know, most of the time. Pretty much we we got away with it, right. It was just one of those things you were lucky when there wasn't an accident where you were probably doing something that wasn't probably in the best interest. So the outcome if was to be looked at done, you know, the right way. Yeah. You know, that was back in the days, too. That was always part of The thing is there was a shortcut. Yeah, to trying to get to what you needed to get done. I mean, it's interesting today. I mean, I was listening to your podcast earlier with Chris and you talked about the, the technology reliability now, because, you know, back in the day you were when I toured, it was you had to strive for 100%, you know, everything working. So if I had something, I would actually go up in the trust during the show. And you know, if I had a bowl, can you know, a pod bulb out sometimes.

33:59 Oh, I would go up and say, oh, you know, during the show I'd sit there with a chain bag and a rope and drop it within someone, load it, bulb in and I do it and I put it in and get the leg back up and getting it back to 100%. Yeah, Yeah. And that just doesn't seem to happen these days. It's like, oh, we just don't worry about it. Well, if something does go down. There is the fact that there's like 1000 moving lights in the rig now. Right. So I'll just. Cover it with another one. That's OK. Like you don't notice them missing. Like back in the day when there was only 12 of them up there, you did notice 1 missing? Totally. Yeah. Now, now it's a little bit different. It's, you know, I had that conversation with somebody yesterday and I don't want to get into any negative stuff, but we were talking about just sort of the lack of, of sort of art or drama in some of these lighting rigs now where, you know, everything has 1000 moving lights. It's all a little bit ubiquitous. Yeah.

34:51 Whether it's a country act, a pop act, a rock'n'roll act or an opera, they all have 1000 moving lights and similar looks going on. And, you know, that's what I loved so much about that. And people are ad nauseam on this one right now, but the Mark Brickman thing, the, the. Yeah, Roger Waters. I almost said, Jesus, David Gilmour. Yeah. And I mean, it was so artistic and so unique and so different. And I just loved it. It was. It was, you know. And you're just talking about that tour you just did, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cuz yeah. I think you you went to Madison Square Garden. I did. Yeah. Yeah, I went. Yeah, I. Went to the LA show it into it there and you know, my I told my wife and the show is amazing.

35:34 I mean, look, you know, as an artist, it was he was the one. And that was for one disappointment. I never got to do was tour with Pink Floyd because if you go back to the Pulse tour in 94, whatever it was that was on the tour, obviously Metallica. And then I think I finished that. I went out on Deep Purple or something afterwards. But, you know, I had friends who did that tour and it was like, you know, for and from a lighting perspective, that would have been the ultimate, you know, you know, and I still look at that show today and it still holds its own today. It's true in the creativity and just the well, you can't. Say that about very many shows. Can you you know that like what is that 30 years ago? Yep. And it still holds up like granted you'd have much brighter moving lights today.

36:20 You know, you'd have much brighter everything today and you'd have more video and all that stuff. But. But that show was incredible and it still holds up. And I I watched some video of it right before I went to New York just for nostalgic reasons. Yep. And but yeah, like I love any time a designer, you know, like I loved. What was that? The Coldplay video, speed of sound, the one with all the Element labs tubes, the Versa tubes on it. Yeah, I loved it. Like that to me was just. I think Keeling did it if I recall. Yeah, Keeling, he did that too. He did something for Kravitz, right, With the. Yeah, exactly. Circular to video and yeah, yeah, exactly. And I love stuff like that.

37:01 I like when somebody takes a chance and says I'm not just gonna put 1000 moving lights, I'm gonna do something a little bit different. And so, yeah. Well, I mean, that's the thing, right? It's the artistic level of the people. You know, we sort of go back to the conversation about, you know, JB and you know, like Willie Williams on YouTube, similar sort of guy, right, moving a bunch of lighting with not actual move, you know, physical moving lights and stuff. And there he was also in that mindset with, hey, I'm still going to have an analogue console because there's certain movement. I want to see the fixtures themselves that I'm not necessarily going to get on a moving light console. Yeah, from that perspective, you know, and his his sort of design methodology was interesting because when I did the Pop Mart tour, I mean, you know, if you look at that and in the core, he took, you know, architectural elements that he saw at LAX and, you know, whatever else, and he sort of incorporated him into his design. But I remember doing the Pop art tour and, you know, that was the real, what I would call a transition on the LED side of the equation, right.

38:03 So before that, we're all using bloody jumbotrons and whatever the other is, right? Yeah. You know, LED screens that weight a ton and to very cumbersome. And they came out with the blue LED and then Frederick and that group basically built this video wall for you too. And, you know, obviously the band funded. It's interesting when you look at the history of some of what bands have funded in the technology of the industry history with like Genesis, you know, U2, Supertramp, you know, used to buy all this stuff as well back in the day. It's it's. Almost like what porn did for, you know, video file compression. Yeah, yeah. And. You know it's true. Like none of that stuff would have gotten as as big and as fast as it did without porn paying for it.

38:48 You know it's true. Sad but true. Yeah, but so how long were you at LSD? About eight years, 8 years. I did, you know, I you know, I lived in the UK when I did. You too. I met my wife in the audience, interestingly enough, at Oakland. And, you know, her sister's American stewardess. Yeah, she's American. She's born and raised in California, and I was living in the UK. I met her. And anyway, cut a Long story short, we got married a year after I met her, and we're still together today. We've been married 26 years. So do you have a 2020 what 5 year old kid or something? I've got, well now I've got a 21 year old and I'm actually got a, I got a 35 year old.

39:35 I was just making a joke that maybe she got pregnant and you got. Married. No, no, no, no. It wasn't like that. Yeah, yeah. But yeah. So, you know, that was. So I came off you too. And then I moved to the States and then, you know, because on Samsung we had offices in Birmingham and Newbury Park. Yeah. You know, you know, Nick and Tim said, hey, we'll just, we'll just sponsor your visa over here. You can just work over in the US until I got my, you know, my visa from my marriage or whatever it was, you know, my green cards. Yeah. And then I did Rod Stewart for for Tim. And then interestingly enough, I got a that's when I got an offer to go to very light because, you know, I I wouldn't when I got married.

40:19 I want to come off the road, you know? Yeah, it's the one thing for me, right? You've got to have a successful marriage. It's very hard to do that. Yeah, really on the road. I don't know how. Some of these guys do it, I have no idea. It takes a special person, they're going to willing to stick it out and they don't see their partners for long periods of time. And, you know, and that just wasn't for me. And I sort of made that conscious decision that, you know, after whatever it was 1215 years of Trion's done. And, yeah, I wanted to sort of have a more grounded, yeah, so stay a little regular line moving forward. So interesting enough was, you know, Tim Lamb, who was a stage manager on U2, got a job at Very Light. And it was Tim that got me a foot in the door to go work at Very Light in Los Angeles. Interesting. So, you know, and then, you know, transitioned over to LA and then I ran that shop for about 6 years at Verilite.

41:06 And you know, we were sort of, that was interesting because that was sort of coming up to the talent. You know, that was early 2000s. So you know, I finished Q2, right? It was 99. So I think it was 2000. I think I started at Verilight and you know, I did did around six years there. Yeah. And that was funny working in LA and you know, you do the Bob Barnard shows and, you know, the, you know, the Grammys, the Oscars and yeah, Dickinson and you know, the just the craziness of working in the LA market. Yeah, because that is, it's its own beast. Yeah, but people don't understand sometimes what it is in the LA market. But it's very interesting how that functions from that perspective because you know, a lot of the design that happens in the lighting side of things is that you are you really? They design in what I call situ quite often. It's not like on a prescribed tour or production where you got a definitive design and it stays pretty regimated from the minute you get it on the plot to the minute you're out field. Because quite often they're out on site and they're making institute decisions on where they're putting fixtures and doing everything else.

42:11 So you would always have to put in a ton more cable and additional fixtures TBD because it's up to the designers, you know, do you know ideas of where they want to do it when you're out on job sites? So you know, and also very demanding too on when they want to see response times when they need added of. Course. Yeah, yeah, You know, it's wild too. Like with Verilite, I had, I had Dickinson on the podcast not that long ago, I think maybe six months ago or something, and we were talking about the VL 5 and just the sheer numbers. And I, I think he threw a number out and it just blew my mind like of basically the number of VL fives that he's rented overall, like just a, a ridiculously huge number, you know? Yeah.

43:01 I mean, it was crazy, right? It's like when you had Conti on the other week, it was like, you know, because a lot of the fires have obviously converted to LED. But yeah. And it's funny, when I, when I sort of came back to, well, came into the POG fold, I sort of walked back in the shop after living very light. And I said, oh, look, there's fixtures I touched 20 years ago, 15 years ago. They're still they're still working. Yeah, it is wild, isn't it? It's it's pretty crazy. Talk about a successful fixture, though. I mean, you build it, yes, what, 30 years ago or something and it's still in use. Well, I mean, it's got, it's got one of those aesthetics that's just not duplicated right now. It's just the actual physical look of the fixture itself. And it was interesting when you had Brickman on the other day and you, you know, you think he was calling VL 3S, but I think it was twos and fours, right? Yeah, you see the things.

43:48 But even for me, the VL 2 and the VL 4 that the light source and what that put out is still a beautiful light source compared to some of the other stuff you have today. It's still, it's, that was always the thing with verilite was the optics to that sort of fixture were second to none. I mean, it was almost too good quite often because you'd see the imperfections come out on the go. Vote sometimes when you do it, but I think I. Think the thing that lost me with the six or at least when you go back and compare it now to some of the things that are out now, the small aperture like just yeah isn't as pleasing to me anymore. You know, I love the big aperture lights that are out now. They. Are 100% yeah, and they keep getting better. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

44:31 You know, like that, that new stuff from Ayrton just blows my mind that Rivali and I don't know what the other ones are called. There's a bigger one that just came out, which is, oh God, it's a track in South Africa or something. Oh, no, that's the other the Kailami. They they obviously everything built around racing and stuff. So I should know it, but I don't. Yeah. So so now you've basically completely transitioned. You're off the road, you're running shops for these big lighting companies. Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, I came and thrown around Verilight or is the shop manager there for six years. So it's just putting product out the door. And you know, I ended up wanting to go into project management, right, Because that's, you know, after touring for so long, there's so there's a lot of knowledge base. It's so important when you're working with your clients and advancing jobs and doing all things like, you know, I wanted to sort of participate in the beginning stages of developing a project to avoid the heartache you would quite often find yourself in.

45:30 You'd go in rehearsals because people weren't paying attention to the details. Yeah. So, you know, when you go into production design, am I in the round? Am I, you know, at the end of the arena and then getting into the devil in the details. Right. What's, How does the show go together? You've got the creative element to the show that the designer wants to meet, but then you've got the practical elements that still have to be meant putting it in and out every day, putting it on a trailer, a truck and moving it, you know, from city and the city. And then depending on your schedule, you're doing back to backs. If you design something, it's, you know, you're still putting shit up at, you know, 1:00 in the yeah, sorry, at 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon, it's a problem, right? It's like you're burning your crew out. They're not getting any break.

46:15 And you really got to take into a lot of things into consideration when you're sort of, you know, working on finalizing my design is taking in all those different elements, right, Is, you know, am I, am I loading in from state, upstage right, upstage left, upstage centre? Am I designing a mother grid that holds a whole arena floor for two hours? You know, what are the things, how do you make things so there's flexibility in what you need to do each day so you you can move more quickly depending on the constraints of the building or whatever it is you're in. Yeah, pretty much it's, you know, that's the biggest for me today, seeing where we are in the industry and seeing the old guard you jokes, your own piece bugsies, you know, all the old, all the old production managers that have the craft because you know what happened to them years ago? They actually spent their journey with the bands expanding at the same rate as a band did and really, really understood all the different nuances they needed to to be successful right to where they are today.

47:16 When I think some of the up and coming production managers today are sort of more so thrown into the throes of all I'm doing a club tour or a small, you know, shed tour and suddenly my artist has gone viral and now I'm doing arenas and are they so? Often now and they let. The yeah, I mean. Social media phenomenon. You start out in clubs and you end up in stadiums, you know? Yeah, they they transition a lot of these artists happens very quickly. I mean, Lady Gaga would be a good one for me too, right? I mean, you know, I remember when I was a tight, you know, that she started out as a a lower tier, you know, production budget. And then she went through nuclear within two years, Three years.

47:59 Yeah. I mean, it was sort of crazy the level of production she went to. Some of the country artists now too, like some of these country artists like Jelly Roll and some of these guys like they, they're not overnight successes because like Jelly Roll's been doing this for a long, long time, but all of a sudden it just exploded from social media and you know, suddenly he's doing stadiums. You know, it's these things are crazy so. You get, so you get, you get that expansion and then you then you then have you got the capability of making those next tier UPS in those different size productions. And I think, you know, for me that becomes a challenge is, you know, going back to is the creative designer element meeting the requirements of the size of the tour and the the schedule and all those sort of things. And you thought in all the practicalities and you know, are you able to drive better conversations to avoid a lot of heartache or potential issues when you do get out into, into the rehearsal side of things?

48:57 Because yeah, you'll get the designer same thing, right? Is that their, their trajectory to Oh, you know, I've gone through school, I've done my stuff, I've loaded my stuff on YouTube or whatever it is. And now I'm doing these higher level productions and you know, I'm sort of designing without any sort of practical knowledge behind it, right. So for me, if I'm working with a designer like, you know, Spike or Justin Collie's an example, those guys did their graft in setting up as lighting technicians first. So they clearly understood the practicalities. Yeah, but quite often what they would design and they were really great to collaborate with on the Fender side of things because you could speak at the same level as and sort of work for some real problems to get to the right act on a good.

49:43 Point, you know, it's such a good point. I would guess especially some of the younger designers coming up are, are not as aware of how hard it's going to be to put this thing together every day and take it apart every night and they just designed something pretty. You know, you're correct. They've just got the end result up there. I mean, you know, if I take my time at Tait as an example, when you're designing a Tait you're you you've got even more things you're laying in because I've got to look at it from the manufacturing standpoint, right? I've got to look at it from the implementation on show site. How am I looking at the ergonomics, how a stage hands going to unload it to all those sort of things? How is it going to package? How's it going to ship?

50:24 Is that you're an upper deck or lower deck of an aircraft? Is it going into your box, an American box truck? All these things that you were factoring into a design, custom design situation that you could have taken into consideration. And you know, am I doing something that takes the least amount of tools possible and the least amount of human effort to pull it up and pull it down each day? And you know, that's that's where what production obviously wants to see with that because that just. Well, yeah. And there's, you know, I think like back in the day, call it, you know, there were problems where as we were starting to sort of go from the the simple box sort of set up to all of this scenery and these weird shaped things and stuff, you started having things that were designed shows that were designed not for every venue, but for some venues. And then you get to the first venue and you go, oh shit, it doesn't fit.

51:19 Yeah, yeah. Like it fits physically in the building, but it doesn't fit in the loading door or something, you know? Like, yeah. And well, so it's funny because I did, it was a Goo Goo Goals tour. And you know, we had the Maya or the Maya 10s or whatever. They had huge, they had huge prison stuff. And it was literally, you know, to get him through the door, there was a couple of shits that we did where it was a real problem. And you'd have to, you'd have to change your loading based on that, right? I'll, I'd have to actually get the speakers in first because there's no part quite wise for them to get round if I put the lighting in first. So. Oh, Jesus, We'd have to take into those sort of things into consideration when you go into the building and it goes back to the same thing.

52:01 Or even back when I took it, right, You still had to have a plan, Bab and C, Right. What am I downsizing the ring to for this? Yeah. Yeah. We're only going to put up the, you know, the front and back trust. We're going to miss the mid trust or, you know, the side trust or whatever it is. Yeah. And still be able to do do all those sort of things. So what did you do when you were at TAP? So I brought, oh, it's just enough. You know, when I finished at Verilight, I went over to Ed and Ted's and I worked there with Donnie Ladico and Ted Fowler and fun. And that was actually one of my favorite parts in my career because we are a smaller company boutique. We did a lot of large acts, you know, you know, Eagles, Billy Joel, John, we had some pretty good acts and we were very good at maintaining that sort of stuff. You know, when I was working with Spike and Justin, I used to do a lot of collaboration with tape on the tours that we did. So, you know, I'd be on the phone with Adam Davis or whoever the design team was on integrated because that, you know, for me on the lighting perspective, I always wanted to say, is there an opportunity to have some custom things made that really make the installation out on job site really easy?

53:10 And I think it was slide that sort of mentioned Adam because at the time Tit's model was changing as well, right? Where there are pretty much an end to point sale where they sort of had to now integrate with the changing model of the clients and say, hey, I'm not necessarily going to drop a large check for an end to point sale to a whole set. I'm interested in partial, but I'll rent the rest. Yeah. So, you know, I sort of asked me to come in and be the general manager and start running the rental side of that company and sort of building the inventory, setting up the AMS, doing those sort of things. And I ended up doing quite a lot of other things as well. I sort of was pushed where they needed me to, to put out whatever fire was. So it became the, you know, the director for automation there for a while.

53:52 So I was heavily involved in the Nam Hoist and the performer flying side of things and actively participated in. Very cool. All of that sort of stuff. So yeah, that was that would. Be fun different. Well, it is different because you go from a commodity based sort of situation where you know your design stuff, it's very much you know already you're working with things that are already being designed in manufacture. Yeah, you got 4 products. How many of these do you want? Yeah. Exactly. So then you get thrown into this environment where everything, every day is so different. I mean, you know, would be amazing. What I'd watch going for that place was because you know, one day you'd be doing Kylie Minogue, which is all these water fountains, you'd have a lift in a swimming pool and you'd have these water jets that all had to be controlled and automated.

54:39 And then you'd go to, you know, you know, go back to Justin Timberlake, an 88 foot bridge laser tracked going down the full length of the arena. And you would just everything was so different and they had its own set of challenges and complexities to it. I mean, when you go there, you were in the pressure cooker because you got a, you were designing things in a very short time time frame and to a very high standard to what you're trying to do. And that's, you know, that's it was just, you know, one of the probably my best experiences just from a learning perspective to walk in and sort of feel and see that. And you get a different understanding of different aspects of the business that weren't really seeing there before. And you have a greater appreciation for from from that perspective.

55:22 So that. Would be fun plus a fun time because it wasn't like it was. Probably quite corporate by then, but nothing like what it is today obviously. Yeah. I mean, obviously I was in the infancy of that, interesting enough. I mean, you know, Michael was obviously still around quite a bit. And, you know, you know, and Adam and Winky and, you know, that they were in that transition because I think at that point we sold it to Rocket Cargo. At the time that was acquisition by them, which was by another parent PC company. And then, yeah, you know, and for me, I ended up leaving because, you know, my family's based here in California. So we decided by what? So we actually wouldn't move back. So I made the decision that it was, you know, time to move. Yeah, it's probably hard for a California person to live over there in.

56:08 Litters joined by the time in litters. Don't get me wrong right? We were in AI was on a farm. I was stuck between two Amish farmers. I had this little 8 acre piece of paradise for me. He missed the Amish. Yeah, it was, it was. It's just enough. We used to have a vegetable patch in the back, back of my property and I would have the Amish neighbour come over with his mules and his plow as I was coming up and he would basically plow my garden bed so I could plant my food for the, for the, you know, that's spring or summer. I mean when you grow your own food it is night and day difference to wealth. The of course, yeah. At the supermarket and it's noticeably. Love to do that. I would love to do that. Yeah. That's, that's one of my dreams is to, you know, have one of these sort of regenerative, regenerative farms, you know, where you, you grow your own food and everyone talks about how just how much better it tastes and how much better it is for you and for the environment and all of that stuff.

57:05 I try to buy that stuff, like I try to buy from regenerative Farms, but yeah, it's hard. You know, there's a lot of people in this country and if everybody wants grass fed beef, you're going to have a hard time finding it, right? Yeah, 100% So, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that was, you know, that was cool. It was just a different aspect. You know, we had horses and three horses on there. My wife took care of all that sort of stuff. So yeah, it was a it was a different experience. You would get into the chaos of Titan, like I said in the pressure cooker and then you'd step out and it was just like immediate zoned out. You just hear the horse drawn carriages go on the road as you lied in bed at night and stuff. It was it was different you. Know your wife's not in the business, is she? No, no, no, no. Good for you.

57:47 Yeah, those two, those two people in the business family scare me. I don't know how the hell they believe. Yeah, no, my, my wife said it was a successful real estate broker and yeah, so yeah. So where'd you go after Tate? I lost my. Place in your massive resume here yeah and well it's interesting it's sort of it's it's been quite the journey in the different companies so I ended up coming back to LA yeah it was a very short period at a company called DPS and I'm not going to get into the politics of what happened there but yeah interestingly enough I ended up getting a job offer to go over to the video clipping rituals yeah and I ended up because you know I before I left Tito I was speaking with Vince and Susan and you know they were interested and finally the planets aligned they said well come on on board and I came over to VR and I'm sort of put in charge of running the global lighting division at the time you know that literally you know it's funny when I went into initially interviewed it was a day that Vincent sold it to to their VC so it was the CEO of the time Steve Hankins first day was.

58:55 The same day. Yeah, first day and. Then my guy. Looked in there for the interview and then, yeah, it's, you know, that that whole thing has been a journey as well, you know, because I literally spent probably a year, year and a half in the lighting side of things. And then, you know, fortunately, you know, so the industry knows it went nose up. And I was asked to sort of step in and sort of see the company through bankruptcy and then through acquisition emerge with POG. And it was funny because I had a conversation with Jerry Harris. Something was in Dallas. And I was saying, you know, well, I was sort of laughing. And I said, you know, in my career, I've always stayed one step ahead of everything. Your acquisition emerged with the companies I used to work at before you bought it. Right.

59:38 So I left light and Sound design basically a year before he bought them. I left Verilight a year before he ended up buying Verilight. Yeah. And then finally caught up where I was at a company where, you know, I hadn't moved on or done that sort of stuff. Yeah, you should probably just plan with him every time you're going to move. You know, just like, hey, I'm thinking of going here. What do you think? Yeah. Tell me what you think. In other words, are you buying it? Because just move me over there instead, you know, it'll be easier save a step. But so you were at VER sort of after like because going in there in any kind of an operational role like back, I don't know, call it 10-15 years ago would have been really hard because I remember they had no clue. Like they didn't know how much inventory they had. They didn't know where it was.

1:00:25 They didn't know. They their inventory management system seemed to be like on napkins or something. Well, they they started out on a program called Rental Point and then Vince decided to go to a proprietary system, right? So yeah, his own developed system called Rev, which is the reversed. So how? Ingenious. Yes. So, you know, and I think at some point he thought that was an opportunity to market it on as just a an IMS for general public consumption and so on. And you know, for me, it was interesting, right, because my whole career was based around production based businesses to where I was at leading up to the VR was really my first experience walking into a sort of a hybrid, what it becomes a hybrid of dry hire and production business. And these have very different operational implications as to how you have to service it.

1:01:19 I mean, the first thing I sort of had to get my head around when I first joined video, it was just the volume of stuff they would move around the network on a daily basis. Because, you know, it was really everything was sort of the salesman was the effectively the rental agent was effectively the logistics manager, the AMS manager, everything in one, you know, one position scheduling the gear in the AMS to move around to sell these jobs. So you were saying 5 volumes of equipment transferring from 1 branch to another to, to make demand. And you know, the dry business has a different expectation obviously to production. It's very short term, it's very last minute. You can have an order drop in at, you know, 3:00 in the afternoon for a 5:00 delivery sort of approach.

1:02:05 So you have a different requirement on how you look at your equipment from a ready status and how you have to service that. So operationally, there's some real challenges to mixing both and not degrading one for the other. Yeah. How do you successfully still manage those types of situations? So, you know, it's the same thing, You know, we talk about camp eggs, you know, and I've, you know, this is a conversation that comes up because, yeah, you know, it's interesting. I've heard some of your other podcast. It's quite true, right? It's the, the trouble that you have with CapEx is that I it's what we have to spend today to be relevant is astronomically expensive. It's crazy, yeah. And so. Generally get the return on investment you would like to see for the investment that you're putting in because you know, it's interesting though, it's funny how the market is sort of allowing itself to sort of dictate, well, I'm not going to pay this, but you're not actually going to get the return on your investment because I'm sort of trying to set the market price for it.

1:02:58 And it's like, you know, it's like go back a few years, like, you know, at one point fence by the decision. I'm going to corner the market with Win Vision products, right? And he actually did, he got it in such volume in mass and you had a long return on that investment. It was he. Did, yeah. 567 years right there's of of continual rental and you know, I think. Even though everyone figured out where he was buying it you. Know what it was and. Could buy it direct and everything else he yeah, he did pretty well with it. Yeah, he did. Yeah. That was one of, you know, his, his six. And you know, you look at any entrepreneurial owner, they'll just like, you know, Rusty and Fairlight. Am I in an opportune window point in history where I can sort of, you know, take a large market share with either, you know, you know, designing, manufacturing my own stuff, or am I going to invest in a product where I can corner that market and hold it for for a period of time?

1:03:52 And it's getting harder and harder to do that today just because of the life cycle of how quick since the technology changes. I mean, you know, for you, right gear source, you know, for me as a in an asset mindset, you already have to know what you're doing with the asset before you even take it in the doors. How am I getting rid of it? What's the life cycle or the opportunity for the second hand or the used asset sale? Yeah, yeah. Because you've got those curves on the just like a car is that you're, you've got that window of opportunity where you're going to get the biggest amount of return of, of that used asset sale. And when is it time to sort of cash it out and have a, have a have a real sort of strategy to that you've already defined before you've even ingested something disposing of it? Am I selling it?

1:04:39 At what point in this life am I doing it? The most successful model I ever saw, and I hate to give him credit you know, but is Bob Cannon. Mike Cannon, the the old bash model years and years ago where basically no matter what it was, it was for sale in two years. Yeah. And that included the hottest lights of the time. You know, like I remember because I worked for high end at the time and they were selling cyber lights used. And they, they beat us on deals like where, you know, and because they were selling them at dealer cost, but they were selling them to end users at dealer cost used, right. And so we would lose a deal for 100 cyber lights. And I'd call up Canon and say, what the hell are you doing? And he'd be like, you know what, you guys will get an order from us, don't worry, You know, because what they would do is as they were selling them, they were buying new ones at dealer cost.

1:05:27 But at least, I mean, their model was just incredible to me. It was just an incredible. And by the way, Mike Cannon does it the same way today. It's just the numbers are way shittier today than they used to be. Yeah, I don't understand. So. Because I've got a bit of admiration for that because that's truly it, right? You're sort of you're leveraging the idea on buying in bulk at a lower price. I have the idea that it's always available to sell and and know that I can replenish that with a new inventory. It keeps my inventory new and fresh and I'm still getting a profit on the used asset salad. You're minimalizing your, your utilization cost basically because if you look at it and say I'm going to use it for two years, what's that going to cost me? And all you're doing is making that number smaller and therefore hopefully making it more profitable. But yeah, I mean, it's the same thing. Like I, I've had this conversation with Jerry, and I'm not trying to do a sales pitch here, but I've had this conversation with Jerry where it's like, Jerry, why don't you look at your CapEx, carve out 10 percent, 20% of your CapEx for used gear instead of new.

1:06:32 And you know, I understand the leverage he's using at the bank and all of the different things he's doing. And you can't, you know, you can't, you can't do some of that magic on used gear. I get it, that's already been depreciated etcetera, etcetera. But but if you can, instead of paying $10,000 for a brand new light fixture, if you can pay 7000 or 6000 and get a used one and rent it for a year for the same rental rates, you would have rented a new one and then sell it for somewhere around 80 to 100% of what you paid for it. Doesn't that make a little bit of sense somewhere in that math somewhere? And the generally the answer is if you're call it a small to mid size rental company and let's say under, you know, 25,000,000 a year or something, it makes a hell of a lot of sense. But if you're one of these big companies using, you know, either private equity or public money or whatever it is, it doesn't make sense.

1:07:29 Maybe, you know, it doesn't make as much sense anyways. And it's because of how leverage works. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, I mean, the scale is pretty. I mean, we, we do. I mean, I think, you know, I think Conti said we did like 241 shows a day or whatever it was. That blew my mind. Yeah, that blew my mind. I'll. Do in a week I can move anywhere between half a million to 1.2 million scans in a week and anywhere from 500 to third tech 1400 orders in a way that was. Insane. That is just wild to me. Those are crazy numbers in our industry, which is a small industry if you think of it, you know, compared to others, it's pretty small. But that just blows my mind.

1:08:10 The other stat was, what did he say, 100,000 moving lights? You guys have over 100,000 moving lights? I think he said yeah, just wild, crazy stuff. It's a yeah, it's, it's a yeah, 30 plus years of acquisitioning, merging. It's a large inventory base. Yeah, yeah, to, to, to manage to. So, you know, and it's, you know, that's the usual challenge, right. Is that always, am I in possession at the right time of asset at the right time. And so true. Yeah, it's what most companies always struggle with because you never get the dates to fall where you want to, to optimize what you have. As always, crossover where I've got a sub rental, you know I've got to go put my hand in my pocket and buy more. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's it's a crazy balancing act and it's not. The numbers just have gotten so much crazier and, and the simple math is like a Cyberlight used to cost you call it $5000 and you rented it out for $300.00 a week and you sold it two or three years later for very close to $5000. Now that same Cyberlite, which is a Mac whatever and Ayrton whatever, a Verilite whatever is $10,000. You're renting it for 175 a week or 1:50 or 200 a week, and the value is dropping more quickly generally, and you know, all the math is kind of screwing you.

1:09:30 Yeah, it is. It's a it's, yeah, now it is. I mean, look, we've been in a very tough year and I've, I know that too, right, Is that it's been a race to the bottom, I think for most vendors. I'm just trying to secure the work. And, you know, we're all obviously hoping for a, you know, a prosperous 2025. But yeah, you know, I think, you know, it's more indicative for me of, you know, because when we talk about assets, you always got the cost of the asset itself, but then you got all the other peripheral stuff that supports it, around it and what it takes operationally to support it, what you're doing in parts and everything else. And sometimes it gets missed as to what the real cost is of what you're doing to get it out to market and making sure that you're making the margin to revenue to cover your cost of what's really going.

1:10:13 On and that's true. It's see, that's the one thing for me, you know, it's funny because we get into VCP, you know, VC, P/E, you know, I, I go with the saying, right, EBITDAR is an opinion, cash is, is fact, right. So. So true. Yeah, it's net free cash flow is generally what is driving your decisions on how you're going to look at your CapEx and what you need to do. But I think for us as an industry, we've done a poor job of educating our clients and sometimes ourselves on what things truly cost. And, you know, how do you impasse all that on to make sure that people are willing to pay for it and that you're getting your cost covered so you're a profitable business? Yeah. So I'm not going to mention any names or anything, but I, I recently was made aware of, call it a, a letter that went out from a certain company CEO in our industry to their staff and they've lost money.

1:11:10 And generally the, and, and, you know, they're in a really bad place right now. Could be bankruptcy, could be a lot of things, but and they lost money. And so he comes out and says basically everything's OK, Puff of smoke, everything's OK. Actually, if you look at it, we've grown this year. Our revenue is higher this year than it was last year. I mean, your profits have tanked. You know, it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep, you know, at the end of the day, that's what matters, right? And so I just like this is the wrong mentality, like I'd. Rather. Say, hey, you know what, our top line sales are down, but you guys killed it this year and we actually made more money than we did last year. You know, that's amazing.

1:11:55 Like that's obviously a win win for everything because smaller revenue means less inventory and less people and less buildings and all the hard costs. Yeah. Less cost, yeah, Yeah. Less cost. And when you're in the VCOP environment, you're always on this perpetual mill of starting to exceed the next quarter or, you know, infinite revenue growth continuously. At some point you hit a threshold where that's just not sustainable or yeah, you know, you, you're exhausted where you're going to get out of the market to do that. So, you know, for me, it's about, you know, how do you improve the the quality, the balance and to your point, come back to margin and you know, am I making money?

1:12:36 Yeah, that that to me is that's as long as you're covering your costs of of what you're doing and and making a profit on the top of it. And that's a fundamental out of all the metrics and KB IS that get thrown out to businesses that we're all asked to look at the very most fundamental one. Do I have money in the bank or not? You know, I have cash is is really the one that is of. Course, of course. Yeah. I mean, take it away and see what you do. Hey, you know, I mean, maybe venture capital would invest in you or whatever, like as venture capital loves to spend money on things that don't make money, but but eventually they're expecting it to make money, just not today necessarily. Right. That's interesting, right, Because you know, the, I think also, you know, I was listening on one of the radio shows the other day and they were talking about, you know, the, the, the, the PAVC sort of model of, you know, it used to be five to seven years, then it went down to three to five years on, You know, what I'm investing in.

1:13:29 When am I selling it off to the next, next investor? Yeah. And I think what, what's happened now is that three to five model is they're still holding companies well past that into the seven 8-9 year range. Yeah, probably. And, you know, some of the other companies are just going in there and it's like, you know, so what's going to happen? Yeah, you know, well, they'll be in into that, you know I don't. Know what's going to happen with the big one out there right now that's for sale and, and constantly in rumors of who's going to buy it and how they're going to buy it. And, and so, yeah, I mean, to me, you know, it's, it's wacky math. It's all crazy math at this point that we're dealing with. And I think at the end of the day, a successful company is, is one that buys gear, has a great plan for, like you said, disposal of that gear and also how to make money and how much money I need to make. And, and, you know, a willingness to say no. Like as a business owner, one of the most difficult, difficult things to do is not to say yes, but to say no. And and in this industry, especially, like when somebody's going here you go like, I don't know if you were at VER, but I heard one of the things that really hurt VER was the what was the moving like that you bought like thousands of for Bruno Mars.

1:14:45 Oh God, it. Was an LED fixture. I forget what it was, but it was thousands of them. And I, I heard that that Bruno Mars deal was one of the ones that kind of broke the camel's back. And it was just, you know, it was just so asset heavy and priced low. Yeah. Well, it goes back to the same thing, right? If I'm spending my EBITDA contribution to the cost of the CapEx and it's not going to end well, Yeah, it's there's some basic principles that need to be followed when you're sort of looking at how you're spending your cash and yeah, what you're going to commit to from that perspective. You know, so that's always the challenge for when you're working with clients and saying can you always look for the upsell on trying to work with stuff that you have today versus going out and buying you. And some of the pressures on the designer side of things has changed now where they're more open to doing that because they are constrained by the books of their. Of it kind of fixed a little bit of that stuff, especially initially, like initially it seemed like you guys could all get away with kind of renting whatever was in your shop, you know, because they were just so desperate to put something out the door, right?

1:15:53 But but then it seemed like everybody got a little spoiled again and said, no, it has to be Model 3. I won't take the Model 2.5. It's got to be Model 3, you know, or else I'll take my show to Christie Lights or somebody else, right? And that stuff to me is what's got to really come to an end. And I, I know that, you know, the manufacturers who are all friends of mine don't like when I say that, but I think it's true. Like you can't just keep shoving new fixtures up. Everybody's 100. Percent, yeah. That's the, I think Steve Richards brought that out of his comments back in the pandemic saying, yeah, well, actually it might have been actually the bankruptcy going back to the idea of you keep forcing a new product at such a a quick rate.

1:16:35 The the people that are actually having the front of cash to do it and it's just not getting their returns and you're just, you're sort of biting the hand that feeds you at some point. It's tough. It's, it's hard because you have so many companies out there now, like whether it's audio, like let's pick on audio for a bit. You know, everyone, like I, I talked about this, I don't know, last week, a couple weeks ago with someone about these line array systems where they're 2, two and a half, $1,000,000 to buy a line array system. And you go from the model J to the model K to the model L and it's coming very quickly. And if you want the Academy Awards this year, you better have the model L or whatever. I'm making things up. Yeah. But. But you know what I mean?

1:17:15 Like, and then they're stuffing the L series up your ass and you go to sell the the K that you just finished paying for and you find out it's only selling for six or $700,000 now. And you're like, holy shit, you know, that was expensive. So and video's the same thing now. I mean, like these tiles that you guys used to rent for four or 500 bucks are 40 bucks now, and you know what I'm talking about. Obviously, I mean it's. Yeah, it's way too much. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I mean, LE DS a real painful one. And particularly too, because you've got, they've gone to such a high definition pixel now that and particularly on the practical implications of that from a day-to-day management of loading it in.

1:17:56 Loading it, the higher the pixel pitch, the harder it is to ensure the integrity of it because your cost to maintain and keep that product up or through the roof, because it's really something that's more purposely designed for what I call a permanent installation. Yeah, I'm going to sort of, yeah, I'm going to sort of still define this because I want that level of definition on my or whatever it is. And you know, on the vendor side of things, you end up having to carry the stick on, you know just how hard it is to keep that packaged in in in rentable order doesn't have fragile it is. Well and the crazy thing is like the reality of all this and I'm not arguing with designers who know way more than me, but from what I know, the audience member in the front row isn't going to know the difference between 1.9 mil and 3.9 mil.

1:18:40 Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which might be, which might be $2,000,000 in cost, you know? So and that goes back to on just the CapEx conversation again, right. So if you look at and it's pertinent to different business markets, right. So you know what is a requirement in the music market because the designers want that high end fixture, that ten $12,000 fixture versus I can go into a corporate or a dry higher environment in hotel and staging where I only need a $6000 fixture. That's the same thing 'cause they don't care. They don't need well, I need this last thing. I just need to know it puts light on the stage or the set or whatever it is. And yeah, I really don't need that. And that's that's where the challenge becomes when you're looking at CapEx expense, particularly on a company that's multifaceted in the different. Businesses, and I'm careful to say this, but the, the probably the most profitable time was when the designer worked for the lighting shop.

1:19:35 Yeah, you know, because then they just looked around and went, OK, I got four of those. I got 12 of those over there. I got 100 of those over there and they put a rig together. Yeah, well, and. If you get the opportunity to go back to the upsell, right, it's the first thing you would as a salesperson you want to try and do, right, is that, look, if I've got product on the shelf that I can put to you at a lower cost or do it without the additional need, you'll get the benefit of that. And of course, the benefit of it, you start to go do that, you know, and that's, I like those sort of conversations when you do get into it, because that's, that's what. Obviously is optimal for both parties in that perspective. I'm sure there's just, I'm sure most people are like that still, right?

1:20:16 Yeah. But yeah, well, yeah, it's sort of really up to the tenacity of the salesperson, obviously. And then obviously also on the client side, right. Are they just going to stick their feet in the ground? So it absolutely has to be this. Yes, through, through nothing more than that. I just saw it on YouTube. That's the latest thing I've got to have versus yeah. Is there a real requirement for it in the design that this fixture or this technology can only meet? Yeah, sort of understanding that it's. It's interesting because I, I think, you know, when you see that an artist is growing as fast as these artists are growing and they're going from clubs to stadiums. And then you see, you know, a PRG or a Christie or A4 wall or whoever is growing and they're now, you know, hundreds of $1,000,000 companies and then the manufacturers are growing.

1:21:01 And I remember when I was at Martin, we were like a, well, I remember when it became $100 million company and that was a big deal. Yeah. And, you know, now that's a relatively small moving like manufacturer these days, 100 million. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, I just don't know if there's room for, you know, 10, like 2 or $300 million moving like manufacturers. I don't know if the market is big enough it is to keep supporting it. I think it's always been part of the problem, right? It goes back to, you know, I always bring this up too, right, is the level of R&D that goes into these fixtures is really, well, it's a huge cost. But when you look at it relative to what I'll call genera consumer products, like whether it's a flat screen LED or a washing machine, whatever it is, it's going to billions, yeah, billions of people. Then they're going to have a lot more capital upfront to really sort of invest in a more robust product where in our industry the market is only as big as what it what it can be. You're only going to put your R&D level to what you willing to burden on that cost before you have to get it to market to make that profit and you know.

1:22:07 Runaway success, you know, something like a Sharpie or a a Mac one or something like that that you might sell 100,000 if you're really, really lucky, you know. Well, that's not a lot, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, that's not a lot, yeah. And how many of those are you going to have? Like not every fixture is going to sell 100,000 units or whatever so. Anyways, yeah, I always find it, I always find it interesting in our industry because we always think, oh, we went in this huge market like motors is a good example, right? The entertainment portion to motors is infinitely so small compared to who buys the rest of these scenes in the manufacture place. It's so. True, so true. Well, Phillips used to always tell me about that, about lamps whenever, like when I was at Martin and I try and beat up Phillips for better deals on MSR 1200s or MSR 570 fives back then, they'd be like, Marcel, you have no idea how little you are to you Like, yeah, compared to, you know, the medical and all of these other industries that use these lamps. You're nobody like you guys are tiny. So, you know, we were talking about something before we started recording about.

1:23:14 You were talking about just how challenging it was coming out of the pandemic and trying to operate a remote business. And yeah. I obviously have a different viewpoint of that because I operate a remote business and have for about 10 years now I think like way before it was ever cool. And and so you know what, what tell me about that. Tell me about like, what was the challenge and. Well, I think, I think from what we do and you know, the, the I think there's certain positions in any company which could be easily defined as a remote work position, right? Is that if I'm in a virtual thing, I'm just moving numbers around on a screen or whatever it is, then then you know that, that, that works out great.

1:24:00 But for me in, in quite often what we do, having an in such, you know, in person interaction where you'll get so much more solved more quickly because I have a direct verbal conversation because, yeah, part of my trouble with electronic communication. And sometimes even in meetings, right, you'll get in meetings and yeah, quite often people are on the screen and they look at it, but they're off. They've got their other screen and they're off on the side doing it. They're really paying attention to what's been going on in the media itself. Yeah, to start with. And then you get into the other side of things where if it's e-mail communication or text communication, no one has a visible reference to the tone of that. And people's psychology is, oh, is this guy shouting at me or this person shouting at me or they're not or. Is the caps lock on by accident?

1:24:53 Yeah, exactly. You're alright. So you, you don't have a, a, what I call a, a, a, a personal point of reference in that sort of tone. And people quite often we'll blow it up. And then you got the issues with e-mail etiquette and, you know, you're putting the most pertinent information at the top of the e-mail to people write War and Peace novels or the people. You know, I always write e-mail and bullet points. I try and keep it short to the point as possible. That's not trying to get into long winded things because, you know, e-mail for me is a horrible communication because you just get overwhelmed with it. Yeah, it's like, you know, I'll do 5-6 hundred emails a day in my inbox. It's nuts because everyone wants to CCBCC put you cover it's. Really. You're happy, right? So I'll just be called CYA. Yeah, Yeah.

1:25:34 Correct. It's all that sort of mindset, right? Well, I'll send the e-mail. I'm sort of absconded on responsibility. Yeah, yeah, it's on my desk and on to someone else's. You know I. Always tell any of my management team of things it's like if it's important to pick up the phone, have a conversation, yeah, verbal conversation on something to go do that. But you know, if you're in a collaborative environment and you've got you need to get more intimate, you're working on a very tight timeline. I need to get real answers to things and I, I should be able to go straight over my asset manager and say, hey, what's the availability of this or what's my options here very quickly. And do you know they're working, you know, remotely or they're not accessible, You're just sending an e-mail, but I'll get a response for two or three hours depending on what they're.

1:26:14 Working on, I mean, I can tell you it, it does get better than that. So you know the flip side of what you're saying, Like I actually a lot of times, almost all the time, I prefer a call like this. And so we use a software platform called Rome and it's very different than anything else out there. It's basically it's like an in person office, but it's virtual. And so I can look at people's offices and I can see Hamish is in his office and there's nobody in there with him. And I can knock on your door and you can either say fuck off, leave me alone, or you can say come on in. And if I come in, we're just talking. There's no video, but we can put up a whiteboard, we can share a screen, we can do whatever. Or we could say, hey, let's pop into conference one over here. And and then you've got video and stuff too, right? Yeah, but but it's much more real time, like what you're talking about where you can just pop into your asset manager and say, hey, do we have these?

1:27:09 Can we get these, blah, blah, blah, and just have an impromptu water cooler conversation as opposed to setting a Zoom meeting for 3:00 this afternoon or whatever. Let me look at your calendar. No, you're in your office. I see you're there. Boom. I'm coming in, you know. Yeah. So that works really well. And I like it because, like our system has a built in AI note taker, for example, so I don't have to worry about sitting writing notes during a call. It's all being done for me. Yeah. And it sends me a message with all the notes after. And so there are good ways, but I mean, I agree with a lot of what you're saying. Like there are, I think in a company like PRG, I would say there are jobs that probably would be no different virtually than than they are in person.

1:27:53 Obviously some of the accounting roles and things like that. But even then, if it's team based, then the whole team kind of has to be virtual. Otherwise you're going to have some people who are a little annoyed because they have to go to the office and other ones don't and things like that. If you can just say the whole accounting team is remote, then then it's good, right? But here's the challenge. Like when you said sometimes it takes 2 hours to get an e-mail returned or whatever. So virtual and I, you know, I've had employees that some of whom you know, some of you you don't, but who have figured out a way to leave their come their office on. So it looks like they're in their office. No, but they're out like walking their dog or playing with their kids or they've gone to pick up for school or drop off for school or gone to lunch or something, right. But it shows them in their office. So I'm knocking the shit out of their door and nobody's answering the door, right.

1:28:45 And I end up calling their cell phone and they're like, Oh yeah, I just had to run out for a minute, you know? And so there is stuff like that, like a. 100% yeah there's ways to game things for sure people. Sometimes you take the piss doing that. Yeah, you know, my, my girlfriend and I both have worked remote for years and so she knows when I'm working, I'm working like she's not going to come to me and say, hey, you want to go for a walk or you want to go to the gym or you want to whatever. Like, there's times of the day when we'll schedule for that kind of stuff, but usually, you know, it's a little bit more structured. Like I'm in my office, period, even though I happen to be in my pajamas in the living room. I'm in my office, you know, So yeah.

1:29:26 Oh. Big important e-mail came in a quote. It's The Beatles reunion. How old are you? The Beatles reunion, they're putting the band back together. So Michael Jackson, you did one of the Michael Jackson tours, right? One of the late ones. Well, when I did the tour, I, I was, you know, I was at Elliott Watts Sound Design and I was asked to bring in two trailers of additional TV lighting for the HBO video shoot in Romania and then at Wembley Stadium. So, you know, I was in between tours at the time. So I said sure, I went and did that. Benny Collins was the production manager. I think Anthony was the stage manager of the time.

1:30:06 Mel was built up. It used to moving lights. I think it was kind of. I think I used to be. I think it was. I can't remember. Yeah. But that was an interesting one because, you know, you know, I remember the lighting, the tracks of burning. And they flew US Air Romania and I literally, and it was funny. I was on the same flight as Peter Morse, right? So. Really. So if we get down to Heathrow and I get on this bloody plane, right? And this plane was like a miracle on wheels. So I kid you not, right? I sort of looked out the window before we born and I said, is that retreads on the tires? Oh, and we sort of get into the plane. It used to be what I think was a true carrier or whatever it was because they had the camouflage green food trays and stuff.

1:30:48 And literally I went to recline my seat. Note my seat fell back into the. Oh my God. So that's a. That was how we started it, right? So, so we anyway, we, you know, fly into Romania in the Bucharest and, you know, I get a hotel and then we go to this stadium. And do, you know, at the time, this was when Ceausescu had just been outed and, you know, basically killed by, you know, by the public, right? It's interesting when you go there because it's literally like a movie set. So while you go to his palace, and while I was there, I actually got into his palace. So there was, I think it was guarded by the UN, and I got a carton. And back in those days, Marlboro cigarettes were a great currency if you wanted to, you know, you don't get your way around, make friends. Yeah.

1:31:34 So I got a carton of Marlboros and got him off to this guy. And he let me in. And I sort of walked around this Alice. He just saw the amount of money this guy squandered, you know, from his population. And at that point, that was still bringing his coffin out every Thursday so they can spit on it. It was like crazy. You would see that news and things to go do that. But you know, I remember, you know, going into the stadium there and we set up all the lights and stuff. And it was interesting because it was, I remember one night, you know, because we were there for I think 5 or 6 days or whatever it was. Can't remember what the period of time was, but it was there for a while and a couple of nights we sort of got invited.

1:32:14 Oh, you should come out to to this place. So I said, OK, so we've gone with out these guys and we're like the secret police in Romania. And I thought when we're going out to this, you know, out in the middle of nowhere, I thought, jeez, are we going to end up in a shallow grave here? I was like really concerned about it, but I was interested that took us to this out of this way nightclub thing. And you know, we had a good time there, I guess. But yeah, did did that whole thing there. And then when the show finished, it's funny, all the HBI guys wanted to get out of there as quick as possible because, you know, the, the country, what, you know, the amenities weren't the best and you know, it was just, you know, a bit of a shit show. So they all piled into the airport, my flight to go back to London. They someone has somehow they managed to bribe the people at the counter there with cash to sell out our seats off. And you know, I'm sort of stuck there now. For their seats.

1:33:06 That's just the seats. So I literally had no hotel I had, I just spent the last of my currency because, you know, it's up to my last day. I thought he'd go do it. And I said, oh shit. So, you know, I ended up, I ended up calling the steel guys because the steel guys are always the last people here pulling down the steel at the stage. And I said, you got somewhere I can bed down for a couple of days until I can get a flight out. And that's what I did, right? I walked into this hotel and was like, you know, the hotel room with the Steelers, It was just absolutely terrible, right? You'd pull a bed from the wall and the cockroach would pull it back. And you know, the, the, the shower, I didn't have a head on it. So I ended up. Having to put a water. Bottle of punch holes in it and put it up there to go do it.

1:33:48 But you know. We're living large. We're living large, but that that was that was an interesting experience just to, you know, see that sort of level of things. Another interesting one for me was on YouTube and we did Sarajevo and I remember we landed in the Sarajevo and our hotel, I literally saw the hotel opposite where we were had huge shelves, holes in it right now. I remember watching on see it in this hotel getting shelved live, you know, from a hotel and where it was. Yeah, it was crazy, right? So I get into my hotel room and above my bent board is bullet holes. There's machine guns to go do it. So it was, it was, it was sort of really bizarre.

1:34:30 It's a bit unsettling. Well. You know, this is just after obviously Bosnia and everything settled down and you know, because it's just enough. Where we did the gig at the stadium was where Torvill and Dean did their Winter Olympics side of things. We had catering in, in one of the buildings there, which unfortunately was where they massacred a bunch of people, which was really weird, scary. You know, once again, it's, it's an experience you'll never forget on certain things, right? What you'll visually see and understood what happened there from, you know, whatever was going in the country, it was quite. Interesting. I remember going to see Michael Jackson. I think it was the opening show of the tour. That was probably either right before or right after that.

1:35:12 No, I think it was right after that because the tour ended when he was going to court about that boy. So, but I think Obie's did that one and you know, I went over because I had a bunch of lights on it just in support of and plus I wanted to see Michael Jackson and I brought Tim Brennan with me. And you know, which was, was a funny story by itself because we were flying out of Miami on Martin Air and, and I had no idea who Martin Air was, but it was just the cheapest business class tickets I guess my office could find. And so we, we were flying through Amsterdam and, you know, Tim being the big pothead that he is, he's like, we're stopping in Amsterdam, right?

1:35:59 And I said just to get on another plane. And he goes, are you kidding me? Like the entire flight. I usually sleep on the flight over to Europe from the US Yeah, the entire flight, every 30 seconds probably. He was like, man, Marcel, I can't believe you're taking me to Amsterdam and I don't get to see a cafe. Yeah, you know, and just complaining the whole time. So we get off the plane in Amsterdam, we're walking to the next gate, our bags are on the plane getting checked to the next gate or whatever. And he's just bitching in my ear because now he's had a few cocktails too. He hasn't slept all night because he's pissed off. Finally, I said fuck it. We walked out of the airport, grabbed a taxi. I had no idea how we were going to get to Prague after this, right?

1:36:45 Yeah. But all I knew is I couldn't listen to Tim anymore. And so we went to like Bulldog or Bullfrog Cafe or whatever it's called. He bought 3 different kinds of weed, got stoned out of his brains. And we grabbed a taxi back to the airport, got our way back onto another flight to Prague and somehow found our bags when we got to Prague and and made it. So yeah, it was an interesting experience, but that show was incredible. And, and so Peter had invited us backstage to meet Michael. And so OK, you know, we had laminates and we're like, you know, Wayne's World, you know, watching through the audience like this, we got laminates let us through.

1:37:28 So we get backstage and, and you know, we meet the pop star and, and we're going to try to get back out to front of house and we're doing the same thing, holding up our laminates. Well, now they've let in the whole crowd and there's like 100,000 people or something. And they were angry, like they had been waiting a long time and, you know, they fought to get to this position. We're going against the crowd. And they're like, not very happy that we're trying to get through them, right? Yep. And so him and I are holding hands like little girls. And at some point, you know, it was like a movie where it was like our hands came undone. And I never saw him again until the next day at the airport. Oh, well, I was afraid that he died. Like I literally was afraid he died and got trampled and and I was going to have to explain to his family that I lost their son, you know, or whatever, but.

1:38:19 Yeah, I mean, that's interesting because you'll see that when you open the doors in the stadiums where there was Wembley or Bucharest there, same thing, right? They literally Sprint as fast as they can to get to as close to the stage as possible. Going against that. Yeah. Oh, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was wild, Yeah. So there was Sarah told me that you told her about another U2U2 lemon in Oslo. Oslo, that's a little legend. But so, you know, so obviously, you know, Willie designed this lemon on the stick that sort of drove out from the mainstage down a curved track to the B stage, right? And, you know, the scene opened up and inside we had lights, and the band would sort of step out and walk down the ladder and start into their set for the second part of the show. Well, we're in Oslo, and I'm sitting on headsets backstage listening to all this because we're all wiped up on all that sort of stuff.

1:39:15 And the music's going and you see this lemon slowly track out, gets all the way to the end. And then you see the lemon start to open and then it gets stuck. It's a typical Spinal Tap moment, right? That's hilarious. Cracked open, right? Music's going. Nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. And you're. I'm listening to the conversation on headset, right? They're all freaking out. Yeah. How do we get the band out? They're stuck. We can't do this. You know, I was just. I was in stitches. Yeah. It's all they're humor, right? Yeah. And then you see this thing slowly go back again, you know, knowing that they couldn't come out and say your back again, You had to go all the way back to its home position before you get the band out.

1:39:57 Yeah. And then the band need to walk down to the down to the real stage. Yeah. To to do set. But it was like just one of those things. And it obviously made the papers and stuff. I don't know. William was beside himself, you know, he's like, it's one of the worst things you can have, right, Is. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that happens. You know, I had another thing on. She's going struck. Someone into that too, by the way, right? Like someone said, no, no, no, it's a really good idea. We're going to have them come out of this lemon and it's a really good idea and that someone is sitting there like this right now, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. So what was? What was I? Was just going to say on Kiss, we did. I had the same issue. Well, similar to the issue in Australia, right? We had, because in JD Sims, we would go out on these, you know, Grove lifts, right? They're just snorkels that would go out over the audience to do things.

1:40:38 Same thing. That thing broke down and he's stuck out over the audience for like 2 songs until like a God of Thunder, yeah. God of Thunder is when he always did that. Yeah, yeah, So one of those, another classic, you know, spiral tap moments again, wasn't. There wasn't there one with an I don't know if you were involved. I think probably Wiseman was involved because he did a bunch of the Mötley Crüe stuff. But wasn't there a Mötley Crüe show when they were doing that? The track out into the audience with the drum kit. Yeah that roller coaster thing thing your rolling. Got stuck upside down on it. Tommy Lee got stuck upside down on the roller coaster. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the risk right there. We talk about technology and. Those doesn't work sometimes. Yeah.

1:41:19 And then you're going to have a rescue plan. I mean, that was the thing, like when I do perform a flying, that was a prerequisite was that you had to have a defined rescue plan if something failed as to how you're going to get the artist down or whatever it is, and you'd have to have it written out, practice, work through. So yeah, you know, to to, to, to go do it. Yeah, yeah. Well, anything we missed? I don't know, like we've covered a bunch. Yeah, we sort of, yeah, shot the shit and talked to quite a few things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was fun. I'd, I'd, I'd love to do this again. I didn't. Sure. I didn't know you were so interesting. Yeah, he'll be great. And I said awesome. Yeah. I don't know why I don't know you, but there's just, you know, because I never toured. I don't know everyone on the touring side of this business unless you were in purchasing because I always sold moving lights, you know, so.

1:42:08 Yeah. Well, you know, you know, my time at Ed and Ted's and very light and things, you know, I'd still be quite and heavily involved in that side as well. I mean, you know, I used to work, you know, all the time with Martin on on those sort of things. And you know, back in the day he was Hairspray with Verilight when he was selling out of there. You know, Ray, you know, he's got he was the other guy that sort of did the rounds Peter something. He was. He must have sold at every company as well at some point. But oh, you're talking about Ed and Heads. Yeah. Well, the when you mean epic. Well I let he's just say on that side of it. I left when Ed and Teds got bought and we did I I was only there for another six months before I moved over to tape. And for me, OK.

1:42:52 Well, I mean, for me it was just like one of those things I sort of wasn't going the way I would hoped it was going to go. So very quickly it was, you know, not going to come out the way I would have hoped. So, you know, I took that opportunity and it was an opportunity for me at the time and embraced it and sort of moved on. Which is sad because it was likely, didn't it? Yeah, it it, Well, you know when just to understand the history of that, right, The deal for that company was signed two weeks before the crash of, oh, wait, whatever it was. Right. Brutal timing, brutal time, you know? So once again, VC involved large expectations to revenue. You have a bunch of covenants in place against the capital available to go do that.

1:43:33 It's the usual story with covenants, right? You don't, you're not. You don't get the cash. Yeah. So, you know, if you overextend or you're making decisions on the anticipation of getting it and then that doesn't materialize, guess what? It'll go sell. That's brutal. That is so. You know, that's and that's, you know, that's a risk on on those sort of things. So, you know, I was actually surprised they lasted as long as they did and they actually were able to go to, I think Ted sort of reinvesting it at one point to go do it. But yeah, it was such. Bad timing though. Yeah, that that was. Horrible. Unfortunately, it was bad timing. It was just. Like, I know people who sold or bought companies like right at the end of 2019 or at the beginning of 2020. Like actually, who was it?

1:44:16 Itis when Itis still sold main light. He told me right at the beginning of 2020, he took a huge delivery and I forget which light fixture it was, but it they were still sitting brand new in boxes when I talked to him about it. And this was like in 2021. Yeah. You know, Yeah. I mean literally sitting there for a year untouched and probably by the time he gets to use them they won't be the latest model. Not really. Grant Yeah, the words appreciate it. And they got no value. That is tough, yeah. It is, yeah. Brutal. Yep. All right, Hamish, thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it. It's been fun and have have have a great rest of the week. I guess it's Wednesday. Are you going to LDI or you don't go to that I? Probably won't.

1:44:59 I used to go there religiously all the time, but you know, I've got so much going on. Yeah, at POG with all the different shows, we're actually very busy right now. I've got a lot going on this particular suite which is good so. Yeah, Wiseman was telling me, I don't know, recently, he said. It was one of the most brutal years I've had, but the next 18 months is like the biggest pipeline I've ever seen. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. That's well that's, you know, that's sort of I think what the the hope is with all of us, right is to see that change. I mean, for me going back to it, there needs to be a change also in the pricing as well coming hell. Yes, you know, hell yes for everyone. It's like I'm, you know, we all need to say that because it's like, you know, going back to the old edges, I'm doing more work for less money doesn't work well, you know?

1:45:41 And I mean, at least the larger companies have access to to either public money or private equity money or whatever. Like at least you have capital that you can access if you need to, as painful as it might be sometimes, but smaller companies like I know 5 to $7,000,000 companies that are going out of business left and. Right, right. Yeah, No, I actually left and right. I expect to see a slew of bankruptcies to come. There's a bunch of them. Well, you've also got the things to anyone that was able to obtain COVID, you know, funding, Yeah, some of that payments are coming due and stuff. So yeah, this couldn't be but. Also, buying gear like drunks, sailors, you know, right after COVID because you had so many shows coming at you and just going, yeah, I'll take fifty of those. I'll take a hundred of those.

1:46:25 And when you're a $10 million company, you can't be doing that stuff. You got a bootstrapping boy. Yeah, Yeah. Well, I guess you know that's interesting when you talk about entrepreneurial things goes back to in that spot of where you're at and your growth period where the cap. That's why VCPC quite often has to be brought in because you hit that threshold where you can no longer get the capital to continue what you're doing if you want to continue. It's so. True. But you're right, we we need some pricing shift in the market for. Sure we do. You know, and, and one person explained it to me recently, a small business operator and he just said, look, I'm getting so much pressure now from customers who are saying unless you'll give it to me for 2019 numbers, I'm gonna get it from Christy Lights or from 4 Wall or from PRD or from whoever will give me that price.

1:47:12 I, you know, I'm sorry, I know I've been renting it from you for 10 years, but unless you can do the show for 2019 pricing and how do you do that and make money, you can't, you just can't. So have you seen the price of eggs? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. It's all right, mate. Well, it's been a pleasure. Yeah, have a good one. You too. Bye.