1995-04 Lighting Dimensions
Urban ambience
By Catherine McHugh, Lighting Dimensions, April 1995
"Quirky" may be the first adjective most people use to describe John Linnell's and John Flansburgh's band, They Might Be Giants, and it's an apt term for the stage design of their most recent tour.
"They're from Brooklyn and very proud of their heritage," says lighting and set designer Myles Mangino. "So I was going for that urban/New York City/suburbs type of look." To achieve this, the designer placed street lights around the stage. "They were real street lights that were sort of semi-damaged from people knocking them over, and I put in a couple of park benches that I got at an antique shop as well," Mangino says.
BML Lighting supplied the tour's lighting, none of which was automated. The design did not require rigging because all the lamps, which included a combination of 5k fresnels with color scrollers, cyc lights, ellipsoidal luminaires, and PAR cans, were scattered around the stage.
"I had about a dozen small tripod-type stands that held everything up, and then the street lights were on their own poles and bases," Mangino explains. "Their original fixtures were intact, so I put a connector on the end of each and screwed in a new scoop bulb. I used those for ambient lighting between the songs, to provide a soft glow - as street lights do."
To control the street lights, scrollers, conventional lamps, strobe lights, and police sirens custom-made out of ACLS, Mangino used a Celco Gold console. And this tour was smoke-free: "I used to love smoke, but this band doesn't like it and I don't really think it's appropriate for this kind of music," Mangino says. "It's happy and goofy - not at all spooky."
The tour began for a month of dates in Europe last September, then traveled to the US and continued until just before Christmas.