Once again staged in its 4,500 capacity 6-pole Big Top, this year the location was shifted to a site on the Dock Road as Liverpool's new stadium is under construction on the previous one. The lighting rig was designed by Dave Hill. He wasn't able to physically run the shows himself this year as he was fully committed with the Rolling Stones. Instead, Entec dispatched their cheerful team of Phil White and Leigh Yeomans, both of whom have also worked on the show before.
Entec's Noreen O'Riordan comments: "Liverpool Pops is a summer date in our calendar similar to school holidays for a child. We look forward to meeting the team of people working on the event year after year. Sven Knight takes care of rigging, Don Parkes from Wigwam looks after sound, Dave Hall oversees the site, and there's also a group of familiar CMP account handlers to take care of production. Everybody on site enjoys the show and works together as a family."
At the end of the load out Dave Hill always says that he has pushed the tent to its limit elucidates O'Riordan, "And that the show the following year will take on the same format. What do you know - at beginning of the next year Dave comes back totally revived, enthusing about a totally new design, we love it!"
The lighting rig was designed - for obvious reasons - to be as flexible as possible. "Most tours would have carried less gear on a tour doing this size of venue than they have had at their disposal" explained Phil White. The idea was to accommodate as wide a range of lighting design and stylistic requirements as possible.
The over-stage rig was a raked box truss braced with six upstage/downstage straight trusses, effectively creating an angled wall of lights above. This proved ideal for coverage and lamp focus all over the stage - there wasn't one corner of it that could not be hit by one instrument or another.
The box truss was suspended by a five-leg ground support system, also supplied by Entec. The front truss of this was made out of customised Tomcat MegaTruss, allowing a span of 58 metres with the weight taken on two legs. This was built by Tomcat Rigging for Entec two years ago specifically for the Summer Pops shows. There was also a massive box truss around the audience at least 80 x 58 ft, supplied by Outback Rigging.
For moving lights, Entec used Entec's new Vari*Lite 2500s, which are so popular they've not even seen the warehouse since Entec took delivery! 16 of these were used, plus 17 Vari*Lite 2K washes. 44 Martin MAC 300s were utilised for all the truss toning in the over stage and over-audience metalwork which were also a new purchase by Entec. Apart from that, the rig featured 33 6-lamp bars, used, among other things for providing a basic six-colour stage wash that remained one of the constants of the rig. Then there were seven strings of ACLs, 10 Source Four profiles on the front truss, ground rows for the back, three 8-lite Moles and three Atomic strobes from Martin Pro. Followspots were four truss-mounted Panis, carefully positioned to contain the beams really neatly with minimal spillage onto the stage. They were operated - as in previous years - by students from the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA).
Entec offered a WholeHog II and a Wing as the standard console set up, with others including Avolites' and Vistas available on request. The vast majority of bands brought their own LDs, and all were happy with the available spec. In the foyer, the Entec team flew a box truss infrastructure off the king poles of the
