Gridleys Light & Sound

Jim & Ross (Roscoe) Philp started Gridleys Light & Sound in 1970 in Brisbane Australia.
We used Multi projection, Wetshow, Lumia, Polarising & film painting in a range of derivative & original forms.

Apart from The Saints, we lit a few international acts, e.g. BO DIDDLEY but were mostly booked to light local bands and often when bands got their own lightshows we lit the whole of the rest of the hall.

Some of the local bands and artists were, PLANET, MOONLIGHT, RAILROAD GIN, BLACKFEATHER, FAT CITY, SEASON OF THE WITCH, BIGGLES, JEFF ST. JOHN, KEVIN BORICH, HUSH, JAMIE DUNN, DENISE DRYSDALE, DELILAH, JEANNIE LEWIS.

We did work at the University of Queensland, Art College, Queensland Institute of Technology, Union Nights, Harpo's Night Out, Joint Efforts for the university union community radio station 4ZZZ FM using up to 50 projectors.

Also including 18 home made Gridley Mark 1 effects projectors with up to 3 motorised effects wheels, manual manipulation of slides in the slide gate & dimming & key board control of the lamps using up to 3 separate keyboards plus foot pedals to control flash rate, colour , & projector groups.

When we first started we used a 18 channel Colour organ (6 x bass, mid , treble musicolors, with variable frequency response). It sounds very high tech but it was somewhat unrefined by today’s standards, the intention was to follow the music very closely, but it led to us selecting music which responded well on the colour organ.

To solve the problem we made a tone generator and ran the tones through oscillators or keyboards to control the projectors or lights with the added possibility of recording the tones on a 4 channel tape deck to play back later with a stereo sound track.

The keyboard worked but the recording theory never succeeded worth a damn. The radiated interference eventually made me move on to better circuitry.

Also used were overhead projectors with clock glasses, dishes, & liquid chambers animated by aquarium air pumps. Commercial projectors included Aquarius 1000 , Lito 250, Solar 250, Tutor 2, Syllabus 4000, various Hanimex slide projectors, & Kodak SAV 2000 . Coloured slides from Edmund Scientific by Bob Beck were used plus many others from a wide range of sources.

More work was done with film etching, Litho black & white transparencies in positive & negative forms, plus more complicated multi projector images . Much inspiration was taken from the great woodcut artists, electron micrographs, Op-Art, newspaper clippings, photos, archaeological art, & general psychedelia.

Particular contribution from Mick Corley...Where are you Mick?

Inevitably my brother & I parted company, he formed ELECTRIC TOAD LIGHTSHOWS, and I to form A ACTIONPACKED LIGHTSHOWS

We did however continue to co-operate for many years.

Jim Philp - July 2001