As anyone who's worked on them will know, the festival season presents enormous challenges to technical suppliers and employers responsible for planning and co-ordinating such large-scale events. The logistics are complex thanks to the sheer volume of equipment required and the high turnover of acts at each event. When bands 'flip-flop' between venues over a weekend, as in the case of Chelmsford/Telford and Reading/Leeds, festival sites necessitate identical technical specs. With each venue having its own unique footprint, a massive amount of liaison between sites is therefore needed.
So to the V Festival, where L&SI joined Shure Distribution backstage in the production area. Shure was sponsoring the main stage artists bar at Chelmsford's Hylands Park, donating all bar profits to charity. SSE Hire was the main audio supplier for the event, with Shure supplying SSE with microphones from its Beta range, in addition to receivers, amplifiers and antenna.
SSE has dominated the 2003 season of large summer festivals: over two consecutive weekends in August, the SSE team serviced four music events - the Virgin-sponsored V2003 at Telford/Chelmsford and the Carling-sponsored festivals held in Reading/Leeds. For both events SSE fielded a Nexo Geo T PA system with Camco Vortex amplification. In the space of one week, the list of bands that played through the system included Metallica, REM, Coldplay, Blur, David Gray, Linkin Park, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Foo Fighters, Supergrass, Beck, PJ Harvey and The Coral. This represents a number of different engineers using the system, often for the first time, as John Penn from SSE explained: "The reaction has been really positive. Blur's front-of-house engineer, Matt Butcher, told us he really enjoyed the system at the Carling Festival and was impressed with its performance. Most of the engineers who are new to the GEO T just can't believe how small the PA is."
The Carling Festival is a typical use of the SSE Nexo Geo T festival package. With left and right PA wings housing 22 T4805s, three T2815s and 12 CD18 subs, plus a small flown centre cluster, virtually the only variance is the delay system.
At Leeds and Reading there were two GEO S hangs behind the FOH tower, each with eight S830 cabinets, and further back in the field were two SSE Teepee towers, each with nine Alpha M3 cabinets.
One of the world's loudest bands, Metallica, was headlining at the Carling festivals this summer, with 'Big' Mick Hughes running things as the band's FOH engineer. Hughes, who is legendary for his love of sub-bass cabinets, topped up the existing system with another eight CD18s of his own.
At Chelmsford, SSE Hire also offered band engineers the opportunity to mix their bands on either one of two Midas Heritage 3000 consoles or the DiGiCo D5 Live, complete with DigiTRACS hard disk show recorder. Among those who opted to go digital was Skin engineer Paul Ramsay, who commented: "I had a D5 out on our European tour with Skin for three weeks, and then used it when we supported Robbie Williams in Europe. It was great for those shows because I had no sound checks - I Just turned up with my USB key and off we went with all my settings from the last shows. When they gave me the option of using it at V2003, I jumped at the chance. I've got my USB key with all the EQ and effects settings from the tour stored on it, so it saved a lot of time. I did my changeover in 15 minutes today!"
Emma Barwell, hire director of SSE, told L&SI: "SSE Hire h
