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XTA Sidds Bring Lonnie’s Skiffle To Life Again
Best known for novelty songs like My Old Man's a Dustman, Lonnie Donegan enjoyed a worldwide reputation among musicians as exalted as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Van Morrison before his death in 2002 aged 71.
During the early 1950s, skiffle, with its guitar-driven rhythm, tea-chest basses and washboard percussion, was hugely popular and Lonnie Donegan was its biggest star, notching-up 28 top-30 hits, with a version of Leadbelly's Rock Island Line topping the charts.
Elvis recorded one of his songs, I'm Never Gonna Fall in Love, and as the skiffle craze waned at the end of the 1950s, Lonnie Donegan recorded new material: fun songssuch as Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavour? and My Old Man's a Dustman. Lonnie Donegan also developed a close musical friendship with Belfast's finest, Van Morrison. The two collaborated on Donegan's well-received comeback album, 1998's Muleskinner Blues, and a second homage to Donegan, The Skiffle Sessions, featuring another fan, the legendary New Orleans Blues pianist, Dr John.
The recent celebration of Donegan’s music at the Royal Albert Hall saw Peter and Anthony Donegan, Chris Farlow, Billy Bragg, Rolf Harris, Baron Knights, Chas and Dave, Roger Daltrey, Joe Cocker, Mark Knopfler and Van Morrison come together for a one night tribute.
Capital Sound Hire provided a Meyer Sound Milo Curvilinear Line array for the main system, complemented with Meyer M1D fills and a Martin Audio system for the sides and choir stalls. Two Midas H3000 consoles FOH mixed by Dave Wooster and a Yamaha PM1D for the stage run by Sam Kruger.
Dave Wooster was delighted with the system set-up, despite little time for rehearsals or sound check: “The entire system was predominantly equalised via the systems’ XTA DP226’s with two slaved units providing six outputs for the main Milo hangs allowing for six zones. A further DP226 was used with two mono feeds providing output to the Meyer subs and the M1D front fills and Meyer UPA’s for the sides. A further DP226 provided crossover and equalisation for the flown Martin system. XTA GQ600 graphic EQs were used in line with the feeds to the 226’s and across the main L+R inserts on the desk was an XTA SiDD. This unit was used for final EQ, a small amount of mix compression and dynamic EQ control at around 2kHz. All the EQ necessary for the show was achieved in the 226’s. As usual the XTA’s functioned flawlessly with no colouration and great dynamic range.
“Two further SiDDs were used across the backing vocals and the percussion groups, for compression and overall EQ. The SiDDs dynamics are perfect for this as they are so responsive to inputs with such a great variation in dynamic response. We also had six XTA C2 compressors used for drums, bass and instruments - again these performed perfectly. Once again thanks to all at XTA for the usual high quality of their products.”
12th July 2004
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