TURN THE TAP ON
Genesis on the road - that has always been a challenging tasks for the crew, no matter whether they belong to the lighting, sound, video or any other discipline of the crew, whether they build up and dismantle the stage or drive the trucks…
Genesis 2007, that is probably the biggest stage they ever had. Christian Gerhardts comes across Livingstone, one of the technical crewmembers, before the show in Munich (10th July) and spoke about life and work behind the scenes of such a production.
Livingstone speaks German nearly fluently. Being on the road since 1978, he has been touring in Germany many times. He is employed by Roadtechservices Belgium and they are contracted for this tour by Neg Earth Lights from London.
Neg Earth Lights is the main supplier for the Lights, FX effects and Rigging gear for the 2007 Genesis tour.
Other than Genesis, Livingstone has been involved in many productions around the world like Uriah Heep, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Rammstein, Riverdance, Oasis and Franz Ferdinand, to name a few.
He is part of the lighting team and runs the LX Hospital on the “Turn It On Again Tour”, and is responsible for the Well being of all the Fixtures and the Vari*Lites.
“Our crew team is split up in 3 teams; 2 Advance teams and a Universal (show) team that makes the show happen lighting wise. The Lighting division counts 16 well trained and experienced crew members of Neg Earth”, explains Livingstone.
The Advance teams start one day ahead of the show to install the cable infrastructure and the lights on the 7 ribs and the Vari*Lites under the roofette (as an example, these are ones right below the roofette that protects the band from rain). The Universal team will arrive early on the showday with the Main rig and effects.
Livingstone explains how the use of lights have been evaluating over the years.
Until the 1980s, stage lighting systems for concerts and theatre productions were bulky with numerous fixtures (a typical rock concert usually required up to 3,000 separate lights). Each light had to be manually focused and colored using celluloid gel material placed in front of each lighting fixture. To achieve colour changes, the lighting fixtures had to be turned on and off or dimmed using electronic dimmers controlled by a computer lighting console.
Throughout the late ’70s, engineers worked to develop a colour changer for a lighting fixture. Finally, they arrived at a solution: Dichroic filters could be used to change colours almost instantaneously and create saturated colours not capable from the gel filters.
Shortly thereafter, the engineering team flew to London to show the prototype automated light (named “VL Zero”) to introduce them to Genesis. The British band had long been at the forefront of cutting-edge performance art technology, and was in rehearsal for an upcoming tour. At an English countryside studio, the new luminaire made its debut on the side of a 500-year-old barn. 50 VL1™ luminaires and a computerized control console on the opening night of their “Abacab” tour on September 25, 1981 in a bullring in Barcelona, Spain.
Livingstone is been working with Vari*Lites since and repairs all kind of automated lights & equipment backstage in his hospital.
Outdoor shows are ment to be summer shows and guess this year is the year of the” “turn the tap on tour” (quoted by Jonathan “Sel`’Sellers our Neg Earth Lighting Crew Chief)
2007 was a complete European rain-tour, with 7 out of 9 shows in the rain and some of them, like Berne, Hamburg and Chorzow, so tremendous. Something even I never experienced over the years, we were literally washed away from the stage by the unusually heavy rain this year.
Chorzow was probably the worst show of the tour for the crew. Besides the rain, a heavy thunderstorm with lightning kept them busy “we were not allowed on stage for approx. 2 hours in total for safety reasons. There’s nothing you can do against this type of weather, so that will keep us really busy to keep all the equipment in a good shape for the next show.
The “Turn it on again tour” uses not only Vari*Lites this time but a whole lot of new innovations, like the new lights from ZAP, Robe and Coemar,
Most interesting say’s Livingstone are the ZAP BigLites and Little Biglites, the new 3.5 and 4.5 Xenon spotlights with colour-changers are so powerful quick and high-tech, they weight up to 150 kg and draw 130 amps each.
These key lights are the eyes in the sky in this design and play an very important role.
They are fitted on the pods and move up and down the towers in high speed by Kinesys Automation Systems.
The Towers (Ribs) are fitted with Coemar and Robe lights and the effects are mounted on the Pods that start to rise the towers for the first time during Home By The Sea.
“There are approximately 500 lights used on this tour over the 3 teams”, says Livingstone, “and they keep us busy” in this year of the rain, believe it or not but we have no roof like a normal stage.
Each rainy night we have 2 or 3 lights that get too wet to perform. Now, maybe many of you wonder what they do if one of the lights is out of order. We have to fix them on the showday. There’s no chance to exchange them while the show is running for safety reasons.
A common question among fans is also whether this Genesis show is bigger than the 1994 Floyd Show. “You can’t really compare that”, says Livingstone, “Floyd had a different type of stage with an Arch type of roof to the back that covered more than 70 % of the equipment and used conventional projection that needed a black box, while this is an open stage with new video and LX (lights) techniques.
All our equipment on this tour like rigging, sound, lights and Video is exposed to the element of nature.
With late summer daylight the lites play another role in combination with video and the design is completely different.
The big screen is run by a different contractor says’ Livingstone; XLVideo via Blink TV is supplying the 15,089 Barco O-Lite panels, 13 meter high and 55 meter wide set back wall which is surrounded by the 7 lighting towers reaching heights up to 28.8 meters which together resemble a conch shell.
This is a world record I believe in video land.
Left and right Xl provides 2 Mitsubishi 16:8 High res screens.

Another question is what Genesis will do in North America, when they have to play mainly indoor show and where they simply can’t put at stage of this size inside. Livingstone: “the current set-up that we used in Europe will do the North American Stadium shows and there will be a re-design for the arena shows.
For this concept, most of the lights will be hung up at the ceiling. That will only cause minor variations to the live show. Mainly the lights and video need to be carefully adapted to the restrictions and limits for the arenas.
By the way…after meeting with Livingstone, it began to rain for 20 minutes, but the show itself was “dry” - Turn The Tap Off!