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Flashlight and Flashlight/APR for Zappa Plays Zappa
In a pan-European collaboration, sister companies Flashlight Rental of Holland and Flashlight-APR of Belgium provided the complete audio, lighting, rigging and trucking production for the recent European tour by Frank Zappa’s son Dweezil.
The arrangement was a development of the relationship between LD Bryan Hartley and Flashlight that began on last year’s successful tour with Lenny Kravitz. “I was delighted with Flashlight’s service,” says Hartley, “so I recommended them for the Zappa gig.”
The tour – entitled Zappa Plays Zappa, Tour de Frank – included a sold-out night at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 2nd June in which the venue’s refurbished organ was pressed into service for one number, Louie Louie, just as it had been when Zappa Snr. played the venerable hall.
The hugely talented core band consisted of Joe Travers on drums, Pete Griffin on bass, Aaron Arntz on keyboards and vocals, Sheila Gonzales on horns, keyboards and vocals, Billy Hulting on melodic percussion and Jamie Kime on rhythm guitar. Zappa played lead guitar and occasional vocals, and special guests on the tour were Grammy Award-winning guitar legend Steve Vai, drummer Terry Bozzio and Napoleon Murphy Brock – who played in the original Mothers of Invention – on sax and lead vocals.
Tour manager Maryjo Spillane and production manager Glynn Wood headed the crew. Wood also doubled up as front-of-house engineer, taking the helm of a Midas Heritage 3000 for the three-hour, two-part concert which explored the genius of Frank Zappa and his music. He was aided by stage tech Wim Bleys, FOH Sound tech Neel Swinnnen and monitor tech Oscar Swinnen.
The show began with a 30-minute film of Frank and the Mothers filmed in the USA, before Dweezil and company took the stage to deliver the results of months of intensive rehearsals. Dweezil explains on his website: “I’ve devoted myself to studying and implementing many new guitar picking techniques as well as adding more musical theory elements to raise my whole level of musicianship . . . in order to play Frank’s music properly but also to allow me to improvise in a more sophisticated way.” With so much talent on stage both Zappa and Wood wanted an audio solution of classic analogue quality, and Wood turned to Flashlight/APR for the tools he required, including his favoured JBL VerTech line array.
“A digital board would have made it a bit easier as I had 66 input channels,” he says, “but Dweezil wanted to go analogue and I think the Heritage 3000 is a wonderful-sounding console – a solid workhorse of a desk that has phenomenal audio quality, so everyone was happy with that solution and it sounded fantastic.” It was supplemented with a Midas Venice to handle the extra inputs required for Terry Bozzio’s massed rack toms.
Says Wood: “He’s got a very pared-down kit compared to normal. He normally uses a 27-piece drum kit but on this tour he only has six tom-toms of unusual tuning and a rather peculiar cymbal arrangement. And when he starts playing it’s wizardry.”
Of the PA, he adds: “We were doing a huge range of venues from a 1750-capacity hall in Oslo where we couldn’t get half of our equipment in at all to the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam for 5,500 people. I wanted something that would fill the big ones without having to sub-hire more in.”
The VerTech arrays – powered by Crown Macrotech and Crest amplifiers – were supplemented by Renkus-Heinz Synco Touring System Combi boxes and, in London, the hall’s own Meyer UPAs for upper balcony fills. Routing was provided by a BSS Soundweb with a Lake Contour for EQ. Meanwhile, monitoring was via Flashlight/APR’s Synco low-profile floor monitors with Roger Cole mixing on a Midas Heritage 3000 – a challenging job with the large band playing at high volume on stage.
Flashlight’s lighting rig – supplied to LD Bryan Hartley’s design – was simple but powerful with the fixtures divided between three straight trusses, arranged in a ‘Z’ formation. In total there were 204 PAR 64s, 12 with Wybron colour changers, 16 Martin MAC 2000 profiles, 10 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes, four 8-light Molefays and six Wybron Mole Changers. All trussing and PARs were chromed with several of the PARs serving as truss toners. Rigging came from Rigging Box with CM Loadstar motors and Tomcat Prerig Truss.
Marcel Binnenmarsch was lighting crew chief, accompanied by operator Geert Stockmans – using a Wholehog II console – and lighting technician Sjaak den Hartogh.
Glynn Wood adds: “It’s the first time I’ve toured with Ampco, Flashlight and Flashlight/APR, although I’d used Ampco PA systems in Europe, particularly Holland, and they’ve always been good. When Marc van der Wel from Ampco Flashlight met us in Burbank in rehearsals we decided to have them provide the full package, and they’ve been excellent.”
21st July 2006
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