The biggest thing, I tried explaining to Jay, was that "lighting" was the biggest necessity to having a good show, even though basically Summer Heat was really providing music for people to dance to. At this point, all Summer Heat really possessed for lighting were a couple of boxed panels that had colored floodlights in them. The lights were blue and green and red, and that was it. They stayed on, the colors kind of mixing, but basically just putting a bit of dark colored light on the stage.
I told Jay I had found some flash buttons at a local hardware store. All you had to do with these flash buttons was put them in the socket before you put the bulb in, and the button caused the lights to flash off and on. These were purchased out the band's fund almost immediately. I also told the band that they couldn't go wrong if they had a good strobe light, but they were so expensive back then, and even though they thought a strobe light was a great idea, they balked when they priced one.
The next dance the band played was at a small venue in town that was sponsored by the local Boys Club that was called the Peppermint Cave. I helped them set up their equipment that night and told them how forward I was looking to add my "special effect" pipe smoke to their performance of "Fire" that night. That was when they told me that the Peppermint Cave was "smoke-free." Therefore, that night, I was there mainly to help set up and tear down. Running the lights consisted on plugging them into the socket and letting them blink off and on. Right away I could see this wasn't going to be one of my favorite places to be with the band.
A few nights later The Chalets were playing the Community Building again, and on this particular night I got a chance to really take a look at the equipment the band had. One of the guys, and damn but the years have taken the memory away of which one it was, but he had built this power box with outlets and switches on it that ran the bands lighting system. The Chalets not only had similar boxlights like Summer Heat's, but they also had a homemade strobe light. The had built a wooden box about three and a half feet square and about 10 inches deep that had a bracket built in the center of it that contained a fan motor. Instead of it having a fan blade, it had a large circular piece of cardboard with a small hole cut in the outer perimeter of it about 4 inches wide and 7 inches long. Mounted at the back of the box was a white floodlight. The fan was hooked up to one outlet and switch in the switchbox; the floodlight hooked up to another outlet and switch. The result was this fan motor whirling the cardboard around in a circle, only letting light go thru the hole. The large wooden box had a hole cut in a door that allowed the light to come out only at the top whenever the hole in the cardboard passed over the light. The result was an absolutely amazing and inexpensive "strobe light."
We immediately started asking questions of the band as to how long it took to make this. The guy that made it said it was a weekend project he had done himself. I asked him how much he would charge us to make us both the control box and the strobe. His answer was startling! He'd be more than willing to sell us these! With a unanimous vote of the band(no, I didn't get a vote since I wasn't a true member of the band), Summer Heat became the owners of The Chalet's strobe light and control panel. I was given the crash course on how to hook things up and how to run the controls by The Chalets, and Summer Heat gave me the job of being their special effects specialist! I was more than elated, to say the very least.
The next week the band once again played the Peppermint Cave. Not only did I get to help set up the stage with the band that night, I also got to hook up the lights for the first time to the new control panel and I got to set up the strobe light for the first time. That evening when Summer Heat played, they had not only flashing colored lights, but they had the strobe light they had wanted for a long, long time.
I experimented that night running the lighting, making sure to shut off the box lights when I ran the strobe light, and making sure not to overdo the strobe in an effort to avoid overkill of a great special effect. This would be the first night that I started getting a routine down to the bands repetoire. I would get better each and everytime they played, and I would be a part of Summer Heat every night they played after that. Even though I was never actually a member of the band itself, I became a fixture with the band. I even came up with a name for my job as their lighting director. The name was one I came up with that I never forgot and one that got Jay laughing each time it was mentioned.
I called it "Simulated Stimulation.
to be continued.....
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