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Concerts » Pink Floyd LaserSpectacular
 Feb. 20, 2010
8:00 pm
The Riverside, Milwaukee
Tickets: $25 + $2 for 3-D Glasses
Laser show has all the ingredients except the band.
By Chris Heim
chicago tribune
Technology is usually talked about in terms of its impact on medicine, transportation, work and the like. But new tools and processes have altered entertainment as well.
Concert effects were once considered elaborate if they included bubble machine or the trippy '60s displays created from colored oil globules heated and lit by overhead projectors. Those are primitive compared with the lighting, large video screens and pyrotechnics that are routinely used today. In fact, concert technology has become so sophisticated that shows can now dispense with performers altogether.
"Paramount's Laser Spectacular Featuring the Music of Pink Floyd" is one such show. Produced by Texas-based Paramount Entertainment, a promotion, specialty-show and concert-equipment leasing and operations company, the Laser Spectacular features laser and special effects synchronized to music from Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon," "The Wall" and "Momentary Lapse of Reason" albums. The 90--minute show made its debut fifteen years ago and, with continued modifications and additions, now tours some 75 cities each year.
The Laser Spectacular says Steve Monistere, president of Paramount, "has all the elements of a live concert without a band." It includes digital sound pumped through a 10,000-watt concert-quality sound system, elaborate lighting and props and-the star of the show-the brilliant colors, beams of light, animated images (displayed on a 2,500-foot screen) and overhead displays created by laser.
A laser (an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) produces a kind of chain reaction with light. The result is a light beam so concentrated and powerful it can cut metal. First developed in 1960, the laser was initially used for industrial and technical applications including digital recording, fiber optics, surveying and microsurgery. It moved into the realm of entertainment says Monistere, in the early '70s in Los Angeles. "They put a show into the planetarium there which is still going," Monistere says. "It's been running now for 19 years. It was the home base for one of the laser companies there, and they did these shows every weekend. That got to be popular and they went out, I believe in the late '70s and early '80s, touring around to other planetariums. Then eventually they started doing permanent installations for other planetariums. The planetarium is really where laser entertainment got its foothold."
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