LONDON – Entec Sound & Light continued its long working relationship with The Bootleg Beatles, a recognized tribute band to the legendary British musical group. The touring show started off largely in ‘monochrome’ to mimic the minimal stage/effects lighting that would have been available when the band’s career kicked off back in the 1960s, and exploded into colors and projections during the psychedelia era as the show’s musical repertoire progressed into the band’s later works. Entec has provided technical production for the band since 1994, playing to old and new generations of Beatles enthusiasts.
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LONDON – West London based technical solutions company Entec Sound & Light continued its long working relationship with The Bootleg Beatles, a recognized tribute band to the legendary British musical group.
Entec has provided technical production for the band since 1994, playing to old and new generations of Beatles enthusiasts.
Entec’s lighting crew chief Pete “Pepper” Schofield was crew chief on this one, and ensured that all LD Brendan Albrey’s requirements were met.
It was Albrey’s first tour with Entec and The Bootleg Beatles, chosen from several applicants who initially answered an ad to submit concepts that was circulated in the Association of Lighting Designers’ (ALD) e-newsletter.
The lighting was based around three trusses – one more than their standard two of previous years – and on these were 20 Martin Professional MAC 700 Spots and 12 MAC 700 Wash moving lights, plus a projector on the front truss feeding a large upstage projection screen.
On the floor were five bars of PAR 64 CP62s, two providing low-level cross light and three behind the drums shooting forward.
Two boom stands were positioned on the downstage edges of the stage, each loaded with four ETC Source Four profiles, also doing front-line cross lighting.
Albrey’s console of choice was a grandMA2 light console supplied by Entec complete with an NPU which was positioned at the dimmers.
Pepper was joined on the Entec crew by rigger Damian Courage.
The rig was designed to be adaptable and to be resized easily to fit quickly into the wide variety of venues on the itinerary, the largest of which was Birmingham NIA, for which Entec also supplied additional equipment.
The show started off largely in ‘monochrome’ to mimic the minimal stage / effects lighting that would have been available when the band’s career kicked off back in the 1960s.
Albrey’s background is in lighting theatre and musical shows, and he enjoyed the opportunity of combining these distinct genres of lighting for the tour. He particularly relished lighting the show’s Sgt. Pepper section, full of bold and chaotic psychedelia, which also allowed him to introduce elements of dance lighting to the concert equation.
Albrey comments, “Entec put together a really good rig, and were extremely helpful at all stages of the process.”
As with the lighting, the sound of the set changed as it progressed – starting with a basic four-piece band organically mixed, moving into more sophisticated and lateral space with brass and strings added as time unfolded and the music and lyrics became more complex and experimental.
