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Bandit Rocks all over the World with Status Quo
Bandit Lites is supplying the current UK and European leg of the Status Quo ‘SQ40’ tour, which sees the maverick UK rock band celebrate 40 years on the road – with no signs of their enthusiasm for live performance abating.
Lighting designer Pat Marks has notched up 17 years with the band enjoying quite a spell of longevity working with one act.
Bandit Lites has serviced the account for the last two years, looked after by Lester Cobrin, who has been involved with supplying Quo’s lighting systems for over eight years. He comments: “The Quo production is like a well oiled machine. I really enjoy working with these guys and Pat has come up with a very tasty design this year. I’m very proud to be involved with this rock ‘n’ roll institution.”
The band has been on the road throughout 2005, and will have done about 120 gigs by the end of the year. They started with production and their new lighting rig on this leg of the tour at the end of October.
This time, Marks wanted a radical aesthetic departure from the last couple of years. Recently, their stage sets had all been based on a load of scenic Marshall cabinets, and now it was time to nudge Quo into the 21st century ….. which he chose to do with five over-stage raked truss ‘fingers’ running upstage-downstage.
He also wanted to incorporate PixelLine battens into the show – but to use them in a new, refreshing and completely original way. He therefore decided that he would have a batch of battens together and transform them into a huge wash light source.
The five fingers are sub-hung from a box mother-grid. On the floor, there’s four 10ft upstage towers made from 12 inch truss, each containing two ACL bars and Pulsar ChromaParCan Par 36 type LED truss toners. The same LED fixtures are used as truss illuminators on the fingers – two at each end per complete section of truss.
On each finger, attached to the underside of the truss is a block of six PixelLine 1044s - 30 in total in five blocks. Each finger truss also contains five Martin MAC 500s and two 2-lites. The mother-grid contains six strings of ACLs and 10 6-lamp bars plus eight Source Fours for key lighting – as the band dislike followspots. “They are extremely good at moving into and out of their lights as and when they need to,” explains Marks.
The front truss contains another six lamp bars, five Source Fours and six MAC 600 washes to wash the backline and set. There are also six Pulsar ChromaBlocks under the drum riser to add a bit of eye-candy!
It’s a relatively expedient rig for an arena sized show and therefore every fixture has to work hard to earn its keep says Marks, who operates the show using a trusty Avolites Diamond 3 console, which he loves for its instant access and improvisational capabilities – as it’s a real ‘hands on’ show.
Using the Pixels and the moving lights give the stage a high-tech look and a completely different perspective from the classic Quo PARcan days, but the rig also maintains the rock ‘n’ roll element. The show is packed with numerous ‘large rock band’ moments, complete with piercing ACLs and billowing smoke. The new look has gone down exceptionally well, he reports, pleased that he took the creative risk to change a tried and tested formula.
“The PixelLines can do so much,” he enthuses, admitting that he has to be careful not to overuse them. It’s refreshing to see something new done with PixelLine in this context, and they work perfectly as simple upstage big-blocks-of-colour effects, whilst also melting unobtrusively into another layer of the mix for the subtler moments of the set – which are few but memorable. He uses the ACL’s for his standard “bump and grind” effects, and merges the two styles and two types of fixture – old and new – in a seamless montage of bold colours and movement for the set.
Bandit has supplied a top crew to work with Marks, consisting of crew chief Mick Freer, technicians Rob Starksfield and Tom Crosbie and tour rigger Seth Cook. Bandit also supplied all lighting and PA motors and rigging.
Marks says, “Bandit’s service is exemplary as usual. It’s excellent working with Lester – he knows exactly what I expect and that’s exactly what I get – I am a very satisfied client.”
Quo’s production manager is Dave ‘Salty’ Salt and stage manager is Andrew ‘Toot’ Carman.
7th December 2005
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