Lamb, himself a contemporary of Dauksts, is rumoured to stick at the job for the love of rock ‘n’ roll and the huge variety of golf courses this career affords him. Which just leaves Adams himself - why does he keep doing it? "This tour has been running pretty much continuously since ‘98, two weeks on, two weeks off," said LD Mac Mosier. "He just loves touring. He said it to the crowd at the last show - I don’t have an album out, I’m not promoting anything, I just enjoy being here."
Beyond my own personal like for the artists’ song writing and his live performance, this proved heartening news. As with Travis, which I’d seen the week before, I polled the audience; for a middle aged rock ‘n’ roller there were large numbers of yoofs at the front. "Why," I asked a teenager, "are you here?" "I got into Adams about four years ago," he said. "But he’s more my generation than yours," I suggested. "Yes, but there’s so much rubbish about I had to look somewhere else for talent." Four of this lad’s immediate neighbours nodded their heads in earnest agreement: "Are these mates of yours?" I asked? "Never seen ‘em before in my life."
It was a similar story elsewhere. Sheffield Arena was bulging - 11,500 people at £27.50 - how does he do it? I quizzed Lamb. "Exquisite trucking," he replied, a comical reference to Lamb’s roots as one of EST’s founders. "More seriously, he loves to work and people sense that." The fact that this is at least his fifth trawl through the UK in the past three years, and he’s still filling houses, says much about the value of a committed performance.Lighting & Video
Like Travis, this show has the Willie Williams’ touch upon it, though not so emphatic for Adams as for Travis, the former liking to stand alone and be counted for what he is, not his light show. It is nonetheless distinct. Video projection comes from XL Video, providing ELMs and cameras, and again like Travis, Williams has the cameras shooting from the tribunes stage left and right. Three relatively small 11:9 screens sit above the front truss and provide just B&W images. As a conceit, this works; at first I thought it rather low impact - but upon reflection, and six songs later, I realised this is just discretion. Why? Because the lighting is equally understated.
Mosier has 60 moving lights up there, not that you’d notice, and there are good historical reasons for this. "Last time around we had two trusses filled with Pars and a few profiles; we were visiting places like Bombay, Bangalore and Bangkok. We just figured we wouldn’t be able to get much else in places like that. Funny thing was, we got to some of these places and all they had was moving lights."
LSD provide the gear and since last time around have seen things change quite radically, not just from Pars to movers. "We’ve also dropped the rope light panels. And we have simple stepped frames for some of the backlights that raise and lower across the white cyc for various cues." Wire winch a go-go, you might say.The key lamps are Studio Spots and Studio Colors from High End Systems; there are still some Source Four profiles up there too, not for a ‘just in case’, but for quite distinct looks when Mosier uses them alone for band pick-ups, and at just 25%. Amazingly, it’s enough light for the cameras and projectors to still produce an image, "though they have to ride the projectors levels hard up."
The previous design was also largely a gel-free open-white, so it’s no surprise to discover Mosier finds this "a refreshing change." There are other changes too: "Willy and I had to go off to Pig school," he says, referring to Wholehog training, the two men having only now arrived at the point where they both felt it essential to learn this new-fangled contraption. Which makes me think of Damian Hirst only now discovering
