EUROPE – Adlib renewed its excellent and long term working relationship with Grammy nominated US rock band Panic! at The Disco, providing sound, video and lighting production, plus crew for their recent UK and European tours. Once again Tony Marino was at the helm as the highly-respected tour manager. The band released their fifth studio album, ‘Death of a Bachelor’ in January 2016 and have had a mega busy year.
More details from Adlib (www.adlib.co.uk):
LIGHTING
Lighting designer Alex Specht took a floor package for the European dates, which was supplemented by a full overhead rig and video for the high-profile UK gigs in Manchester, Cardiff and two sold out nights at London’s Alexandra Palace where this leg of the tour came to an exhilarating end.
The high-impact floor package comprised two grids of 3 x 5 Ayrton MAGICDOTs which were built into special roll-on-roll-off dollies designed by Adlib and streamlined for quick deployment of the 30 MAGICDOTs upstage. There were also two Atomic strobes attached to the dollies, with four more dotted around the risers.
In front of the dollies on flight cases were four Claypaky Mythos plus two more either side downstage, giving a total of 10 Mythos, which offered many options due to their great flexibility.
Six Sharpy Washes were joined by six Chauvet STRIKE 4 LED blinders – a fixture in which Adlib has invested in this year due to rising popularity. These were all dotted around the three-tiered band riser with the piano upstage center, drums in front of that, trumpets either side and two levels of steps at the front descending to stage level.
For the UK production was ramped up spectacularly. The MAGICDOTs were extracted from the dollies and the frames butted together upstage to create the ‘Great Wall of MAGICDOTs’ which was sub-hung from a rear truss and flanked by two 5-metre-high by 3 meter wide portrait format Absen A3 LED video screens. For travelling, the MAGICDOT frames were fitted into meat racks instead of the original dollies.
Three trusses – front, mid and back – were installed to provide standard lighting positions over the stage and populated with 16 x Claypaky Mythos’ as the main hard-edged / beam moving lights and 16 x Martin MAC Quantum washes for the wash movers.
Ten CP Sharpies rigged in two clusters of five on the back truss, were used to provide big raucous symmetrical rock ‘n’ roll looks adding some impressive geometric effects.
Dotted around the back and mid trusses were eight Atomic strobes, with more STRIKE 4’s on the front and mid truss.
A grandMA2 light was supplied as Alex’s console of choice.
Two Green Hippo Hippotizer Karst media servers were used to store and play back all the video content which was timecode triggered. The content was supplied by Panic!’s production and had been created ahead of their summer shows in the US.
Tom Webber looked after the lighting package on the European dates and was then joined by Adlib’s Mike Summerfield, Jon Priest and Peter Lea, all of whom really enjoyed working on the tour.
One of the visual high points of a set action-packed with great looking moments, was a rousing rendition of Queen’s iconic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, – officially released as a cover in August this year – complete with video parody of the legendary rock anthem. The show was full of dramatic hard-hitting lighting interspersed with some more contemporary looks, all clearly inspired by classic rock lighting.
