Koh Samui Music Festival
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The Boys Are Blacked In Town!

Koh Samui proved a truly surreal experience in many ways for the intrepid Total Production team.

Entec’s lighting crew chief Dave Black (AKA Blackie) - undoubtedly one of the rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame’s greater characters – proved a font of local knowledge on arrival. Acting as a fully interactive version of “The Rough Guide”, his tips on local taxi fares, customs and practices and extensive knowledge of the islands drinking dens give us a fast track trip into the heart of Chaweng’s laid back vibes.

Black was one of the advance team on site. Seeing it transformed from a dusty, neglected patch of land hidden beside the lagoon to a world class production environment had fortunately also involved some spare time spare. This was enthusiastically embraced by the lighting crew in particular, who seized the opportunity to acquaint themselves at all levels with the local culture

At the hub of Chaweng – pretty much both day and night – is Alan Sadd’s buzzing Coco Blue live music bar, situated smack bang at the heart of the town’s hyperactive, strip-like main street. Coco Blue a lively, easy going gathering place for locals and visitors alike. Apart from the superlative cocktails, Coco Blue is an excellent place to watch the world go by.

Still light-headed from the jet lag, our Koh Samui initiation took place spontaneously at said venue that first night. It started off popping to site for a few ‘hellos’ before evacuating to Coco Blue – as we naively thought - for “a couple” of decorous greetings drinks with Entec’s legendary Noreen O’Riordan.

Time has a way of slipping away by magic in Koh Samui! In what seems like the next moment, several hours had always elapsed. The next thing we knew, gig was finished for the night, the lighting crew were piling into the bar, along with Sadd and his friends and associates, celebrating another night of excellent music, together with a heterogeneous bunch of tourists and locals. The band kicked off and everyone rocked headlong into another manioc night at Coco Blue

Barrages of large orange cocktails – appropriately named “Hurricanes” – kept arriving at the table – heavily laden with alcohol – and hugely drinkable. We all set very vocally to putting the world to rights. O’Riordan proved in-the-flesh that her formidable reputation for drinking all the boys under the table was a proud fact of life.

“It’s like being stuck in a Hunter S Thompson novel” I remember yelling to my esteemed – or was it steaming – editor at some hazy point. Scoping the characters as the hurricane onslaught – complete with truly hallucinogenic properties - entered my bloodstream, I half expected everyone in Coco Blue to morph into reptiles.

The ‘Reverend’ David Black was pontificating on the next table .. when he wasn’t sorting out lighting, power, AC or any number of other technical departments that had gravitated to his parish since the site build started – ‘Blackie’ also ran a confessional booth for crew members seeking absolution.

In his spare time, for survivors of the wildest Coco Blue nights, the Rev’s Balcony Bar back at the Koh Samui Resort hotel also became a popular local talking point and forum for philosophical debate on world issues ….. late into the night. This was sometimes fuelled by the local fire water thinly disguised as gin.

It was en excellent start to an amazingly memorable event.

Actually, a reptile did materialise, but not as I had envisioned that first night. An extremely cheeky gecko launched itself with serious gravitational momentum and a dramatic “splatt” sound effect onto Mark’s head one night on the steps to the hotel entrance! Both survived!

Lighting

Back on site, Blackie continued to look after his flock. He even set the lighting department’s own WIFI network based in the dimmer room – with Emails zipping through the system to the production office 100 metres away in just 3 days.

The KSMF overall lighting design was created by Derek Watson, who’s been on the island before and was also instrumental in putting together the lighting rig at Coco Blue.

The two FOH operators were Andy Emmerson and Adam Copeland, both experienced LDs and programmers, with Emmerson mainly taking care of the moving lights on a Hog II and Adam dealing with the generics using an Avolites Sapphire 2004. They also had an Avo Pearl 2004 and another Hog available for visiting LD’s if required.

The lighting team was completed by Simon “Boff” Howarth – instigator of the now famous Wailers smoke comment – and Urko Arruzo, and they were aided and abetted by lighting rigger, the unsuppressible Danny Spratt.

The rig consisted of a 10 legged 140 metres long by 60 metres wide ground support system, with 2 tonne masts that was purchased new by Entec from Tomcat for the event. This covered the stage and the first section of audience area.

It was trimmed at 25 ft off the ground and the stage was then built underneath, reducing over-stage headroom slightly, This was a deliberate decision to keep it low as the coastal location was prone to capricious high-speed bursts of wind appearing without warning.

Overstage were three trusses, each loaded with 12 bards of 6 PARs and 8 bars of ACLs. Over the audience were a further 14 bars of 6 and 12 strings of ACLs.

Over 80 moving lights were located both over-stage and along the audience spans of the structure, including 30 Vari*Lite 2000 series Spots and Washes, some of which were on the floor. Twenty-four PAR 64 floor cans could be dotted round the stage as needed.

The trusses were toned with 20 Martin MAC 300s pointing up and 3 PAR cans per section doing the down lighting, and the lighting picture was completed with 18 Source Four Profiles on the front truss for use as key lights and specials.

Two upstage tab tracks were available– weather and wind permitting.

The dimmers were housed in an extremely neat and tidy air conditioned dimmer room – next door to the Reverend’s confessional booth. They consisted of an Avolites ART 4000 72-way and four ART 2000 48-ways, all fully loaded. Entec supplied one of their own renowned moving light distros, plus two of their 36-way and one 54-way power distros.

A major operational challenge in the site build process was creating concrete footings for the ground support system. These immediately flooded in a tropical rain storm, delaying everything while they were drained and made good again.

Another challenge was the containers being delayed for 6 days, which made the build time somewhat tight and also allowing plenty of time for the crew to relax and explore the island!

“One everything arrived we hit it big style” says Black, “Being an all Entec crew, they were absolutely brilliant and there were no problems at all. Everyone pulled together to make up the time, they worked tirelessly despite the annihilating heat and humidity, and I can’t praise them enough”.

The Power : Explaining a few basics!

Black also became the site’s de facto power guru, which involved a few issues in this environment as you night imagine! The gennies were all supplied by MTT from Bangkok, and Black elucidates that once he had “Explained a few basics” – including the virtues of good earthing - to their crew, everything ran very smoothly.

Joining his ever expanding flock were six 350 KVAs, run in 3 synched pairs for the lighting power, one 250 KVA powering the pumps for the water show fountains and a 125 KVA for sound. There were also two back up sets and four additional sets for the lake water show lighting.

He also sorted electricity supply and distribution for all stage, backline and backstage power including, dressing rooms, catering, offices ….. and everywhere else it was needed on site.

Ladies of the Lake

The nightly 15 minute water show and fireworks – in the interval just before the final band set of the evening – proved hugely popular. It was staged in the lake beside the site to a specially composed 3 movement piece of music by Bruce Gaston.

The water show and lasers were supplied by Ovation Studio in Bangkok, featuring over 200 fountain jets, run off their own customised PC-based controller, explained Ovation crew chief Pintip Satpretpry.

The 24 pumps were floated just below the water’s surface rigged to special floatation chambers made by Lekotiti in Bangkok. These had to be specially adapted as the lake was relatively shallow only 3 – 5 foot deep, and firmly anchored to the bottom to avoid being dislodged by high winds.

Ovation also supplied floating lighting for the fountains, consisting of Studio Due City Colors, 12 moving lights and a selection of PARs.

The fireworks were supplied and the show was designed by award winning Bangkok-based pyrotechnics company, Somkoi Fireworks. They were briefed to produce “something special” for the occasion, and they didn’t disappoint.

A nightly inflatables show including two giant dragons that moved into the middle of the arena for a ‘fight’ and inflatable prawns, squids and other crustacea was supplied by French company Elasticiens Voltano.

A Site for Sore Eyes!

Entec’s Dick Collins arrived on Koh Samui in early September along with other key members of the crew including production manager Gordon Patterson (Gungi), co site manager Dave Hall and Dave Black.

The site – owned by two sets of people - had previously been used for one of the island’s popular Black Moon raves, so it was littered of bottles, cans and other party detritus which had to be cleared before anything else could proceed.

Once that was done, working with a team from Alan Sadd’s locally-based construction company Cheops under the expert direction of their crew boss Zak, all steamed into the exacting task of transformation - into a 5000 capacity festival with full scale technical and production infrastructure.

This was definitely a galvanising task says Collins. They could get heavy plant, diggers cranes and lifting vehicles at various times, but there was no guarantee of ‘when’ - as the plant was all committed to various building sites around the island. They came to the festival site in their down time!

As mentioned before, they’d just dug out the ground support footings when a massive storm drowned the whole site. Apart from being a major set back time-wise, they also had to re-shape and re-flatten enough land to resume work.

Once drained, the footings were filled with 110 tonnes of concrete, the ground support building commenced and that end of things started to shape up.

They utilised some of the site infrastructure remaining from the rave, but much of it also had to be removed and other elements like all the fencing, barriers, the stage ramp etc., all had to be built from scratch. The viewing platforms were doubled in size as were the backstage and production facilities, and new PA supports were installed either side of the stage.

They worked closely with Jorge Bernal, a local production co-ordinator and also technical manager of Coco Blue who sourced the generators, toilets, buses, tents, AC units, and anything else needed.

The get in was extremely long winded. The containers were unloaded at the top of the site and then faced a steep and uneven downhill push to the stage. Whist a mechanical handling vehicle would have been handy, instead, the process was aided by the Thai concept of ‘people power’ - with up to 40 local stage hands at different times. “This took a bit of getting used to” says the unfazable Gungi, “But it’s worked”

The UK team ensured that the various tents were pitched in the right places for dressing rooms, backstage facilities, equipment storage catering, etc, and allocated AC units, a must in the sweltering temperatures and 90 per cent humidity.

“Look, learn and adapt” to the local flow was one of the first lessons learned says Collins philosophically …. There was no point turning up here and expecting all the facilities of a standard Western festival. There were plenty of pleasant surprises as well. No-one thought the beautify tailored coconut wood picket fence stage barrier would either last or have any effect … but all sceptics were proved wrong.

Gungi’s domain, the production office, was one of the most frenetic places on site. At it times resembled an internet café, with laptops multiplying as crew took advantage of the somewhat erratic internet access. It was here that all the passes and guest lists were sorted out

Reflecting in the final days of the event, both Collins and Gungi concluded that it had been a really enjoyable project on which to work …. Not to mention educational, and a new and totally fresh experience.

Story published by kind permission of Total Production International