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Best of British Comedy Tours with Nexo GEO
Two of the UK's most successful stand-up comics have chosen Nexo GEO S line-array systems for their live shows. Ricky Gervais, star of 'The Office', has added new July dates to his UK sell-out tour, and Bill Bailey is nearing the end of an exhaustive schedule of some 50 shows in theatres all around the country.
Both acts have used an identical Nexo GEO S tangent-array system supplied by SSE Hire, with Camco amplification and Allen & Heath FOH control. The system has proved flexible enough to handle small provincial theatres right the way up to showcases at the London Apollo, with audiences of 3,500 a night.
Bill Bailey's 'Part Troll' tour is carrying enough Nexo GEO S to fly hangs of 16 cabinets a side in the largest of venues. More typically, the system is set up with 9x S805s and 1x S830 left and right of stage, with 3x CD12 subs either side. Why so much sub-bass for a stand-up comedian? You have to hear Bailey's drum 'n' bass rendition of the speeches of George W. Bush to answer that one. Amplification is from two racks of Camco Vortex 4.
In fact, Bailey has made his name for combining comedy with music. A talented musician, his show features obscure instruments like bazouki and theremin: with all the gear on stage, the show's mix runs at 17 channels plus FX. Ian Horne has been front-of-house, behind the Allen & Heath ML3000, for most of the tour, although SSE's Chris Beale has been known to step in on occasion. Bailey uses Nexo PS8s on stage for monitoring, as well as a single in-ear monitor, which means Ian Horne sending three monitor mixes down to the stage. The stage set includes a mock PS8 cabinet, an integral prop in Bailey's impersonation of U2's The Edge, forced to perform without his FX pedal.
"The main criteria for this show is to provide the best coverage possible in every venue," explains system engineer Dan Lewis. "Because the general level is quite low, the coverage has to be spot-on. Geo S is perfect for this, providing the coverage from compact cabinets that are ideal for theatres." The effect is surprisingly intimate for a 1500-seater auditorium. Even if you're not close to the guy, it feels like you are.
Geo S always meets with an enthusiastic response from system engineers. "It goes up dead easy," according to Dan Lewis, "and I keep managing to fly it in places where they tell me I can't. We haven't had a show yet where we've had to trash sightlines in order to get the GEO up in the air."
1st July 2004
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