The wife and I were at a show in Vegas Monday night. As the group (Human Nature - strongly recommended!) launched into “Baby, I Need You Lovin’”, my eyes started to tear up. "Hmmmmm, thought I. “The Four Tops don’t usually make me react like that.” Then I noticed that there was a lot of generated smoke from under the stage. This smoke issued at several other points in the show. Each time my eyes went teary and my throat started to ache.
Cigarette/cigar smoke doesn’t do this to me, and nobody else in the audience seemed to be weepy either. So what the hell is in that stuff that I’m obviously sensitive to? Doper staging people?
In the old days, “smoke” was usually generated by dropping blocks of dry ice into tubs of water- but there may be better ways to generate such smoke now.
There are actually two types of concert “smoke” fog and haze. Fog is the cloud you see coming from one or more points on stage, the glycol mixture is heated and forced thruogh a nozzle to make it spray, almost exactly like the bug foggers you can buy a Home Depot. Haze is the same stuff with more water and a more open nozzle, it lingers like cigarette smoke. Both are supposed to be non irritating and harmless, which brings me to…
Used to be fog juice was nasty oily stuff. It would leave a residue all over the place and IIRC mildly toxic. I have not seen the stuff in 8 or more years. It does OTOH make a better longer lasting fog. Old style fog can do exactly what you described happening to you, so much so that one singer I used to work with had me unplug all fog and haze devices and have me tell the lighting tech not to use it.
I WAG that they were using the old style juice. I don’t know of anywhere to buy it still but it could still be around.
Thank you. I knew somebody here would know. It didn’t interfere with my enjoyment of the show. It just made me feel strange that I was crying to The Four Tops.