"He wanted a real authentic 'feel' thing going on with the lighting, in line with his music" explains Rhodes, who is very happy to run the show in this spontaneous manner.
Rhodes has always been an Avolites fan - and the Pearl has always been the ultimate 'live' operational desk. The start of the Weller tour coincided with the launch of the Pearl Expert which offers additional live operational features, and so Rhodes thought this was an ideal opportunity to thoroughly road test the desk.
The desk is controlling 16 Martin MAC 700 and 12 MAC 250 moving lights, 12 4-Lite DWE Moles, four ARRI HMIs with Wybron ColorRams and Eclipse dimmer shutters plus four Martin Atomic strobes with colour-changers. There's also four bars of six PARs for the downstage wash, all supplied by Neg Earth along with trussing and rigging. Most of the lights are hung on a raked upstage box truss structure.
The Expert gives him plenty of scope to be as creative, flexible and dynamic as he needs in operation. He says he's effectively using the moving four gobo palettes in the desk, used as the basic show building blocks. Everything else is mixed and layered on top completely live - and as a result often slightly different - each night.
He says: "Avo have done a great job in taking the essence and innate user-friendliness of the Pearl that everyone knows and loves, and moving it up several gears."
Major additions on the Pearl Expert include more submasters, more flash buttons and a lot more power as it's optimised for use on larger and more demanding shows and events such as Weller.
Pearl Expert is powered by the new Intel Core Duo Processor giving an exceptionally high speed button response which is particularly useful for when running in 'Take Over' mode and busking with Timed Palettes. An additional five sub master playback brings the total of 20 - the most of any console in its class - ensuring all types of shows and users have all the playbacks they need instantly accessible.
The console's new 'Colour Picker' - a highly requested feature from the Diamond 4 console - gives instant rapid and intuitive control of CMY and colour mix devices. Weller's set is about two hours in length, sometimes more, which is a long time in terms of keeping the show spontaneous, although Rhodes says that improvising is a far more effective way of achieving this than if he were running a pre-planned show.
A set list is issued about 20 minutes before the show starts. It's different each night, with a huge pool of songs to choose spanning Weller's prolific career dating back to 1977 when he first burst onto the UK music scene with The Jam.
(Chris Henry)
