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Amoeba
Lightshow
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Amoeba
Lightshow ran in and around Birmingham, UK by Fred Smith, Steve
Hayes and Cass from the mid 60's to early 70's with occasional
help from Roger Fentiman.
Rank Aldis Tutor projector were used, no oil wheels!! with everything
freshly prepared from raw ingredients as we went along, for
that authentic dysenteric look.
Boiling slides, hand manipulated optical effects and watch glass
overheads - I designed and built my own overhead projector with
controllable heat input and anamorphic lens. Fred Smith even
designed and built his own zoom lenses!
Amoeba Lightshow did a lot of work at Mothers Club in Birmingham,
at Mark Williams' regular Strange Days gigs at the Balsall Heath
Institute, and at the Birmingham Arts Lab.
Bands included Black Sabbath (many times), Family (many times),
Roy Harper (many times), The Who (Wolverhampton Civic Hall),
The Sweet (ditto), Dr John (Cambridge), The Idle Race and the
Bakerloo Line (many times).
Roger
Fentiman - November 2001
Bachdenkel
was one of the first bands that Amoeba (Fred Smith and Cass
Cassidy) ever worked with. We rehearsed together and played
a few memorable gigs at Cannon Hill Arts Centre, Birmingham
Arts Settlement, the famous
Strange Days gigs at Balsall Heath and probably others which
I forget.
In 1969, after hitting the cover of Mark Williams "Strange
Days" magazine as "Britain's Greatest Unknown Group",
Bachdenkel was hotly touted by various record companies and,
logically enough if you knew us, fled to France and stayed there.
Fred came with us for some time, and performed his excellent
oily light shows for a variety of very interesting gigs before
some very startled audiences - Amoeba was an important part
of our act at that time and we all have good memories of Fred,
Cass and the show.
Fred used to use Aldis projecters - probably
two of them - in James Cameron's film "Aliens" you
can apparently see an Aldis projector on the table in one of
the lab scenes. He bought glass biological slides and put coloured
photographic inks between the slides - these would boil, and
the mostly fascinating result was projected on a sheet screen
behind the band - sometimes on the audience. He also used a
flat projector which allowed him to put his inks in a dish for
a different effect - he would use one projector after the other,
often two at once
Pete Kimberley - June 2002 (Updated August 2002) |
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