'Flashback' arena tour begins Wednesday in Alabama
Music by Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Janis Joplin and Deep Purple, among others, will be performed live by the Mystical Orchestra as part of "Flashback -- the Classic Rock Experience." The well-nigh 50-date U.S. arena circuit launches Wednesday at the Mobile Civic Center in Mobile, Ala.
Inspired partly by Paul O'Neill's Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which features a full rock ring, a string section, multiple vocalists and a laser/light show, "Flashback" boasts 14 musicians and singers, along with an 11-piece string and horn section. The concert's close to 30-song countersink features such classics as Hendrix's "Purple Haze," Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," Pink Floyd's "Money," and the Doors' "Light My Fire."
"I don't think there's ever been a large-scale arena event produced like this," veteran soldier promoter and "Flashback" manufacturer Rick Bowen said. "I tried to pick artists that were either not going to be able to circuit, or were touring very little."
The idea to make "Flashback" came after visual perception a TSO concert in 2006, Bowen said. "In a lot of shipway (TSO has) plowed the ground for us, because we combine rock music and orchestra music together," he aforementioned. "We've just taken it to the classic rock platform and tried to play the very best of the music in the geological era of the late '60s and early '70s."
"Flashback," which cost about $5.5 million to produce, will feature six-spot truckloads of LED light, lasers, pyrotechnics and 30-foot inflated zeppelin that will hang in the centre of arenas. Additionally, seven video screens will play vintage video footage from some of the artists whose medicine is featured during the nearly three-hour show, according to Bowen, whose Mystic Music Enterprises is promoting the tour.
The first leg of "Flashback" will inspect 6,000- to 25,000-seat U.S. arenas through and through the offset of November. Ticket prices cost betwixt $17-$55. "We want to build a fan base, have a fair-priced just the ticket and have the indicate proliferate with other versions that come out in the future," Bowen said. "We're look for an eight- to 10-year life on this show, non a quondam go-around."
The secondment leg of "Flashback" will tentatively begin in mid-February 2009, and run through early give, according to Bowen. "It's another 55 dates, but mostly in the central part of the land and the West Coast," he aforesaid.
