The Darkness was project managed for HSL by Mike Oates, who comments, "We always look forward to working with Nick and his team at Electric Fly. No job is ever predictable or standard, and the results are always visually spectacular."
This is the first time that Jevons has worked with The Darkness, asked onboard after working with production manager Chris Taplin and The Faces in the summer.
In spite of having just one truck for the whole production and the venues being 'variable size' in every sense of the word, Jevons' ideas - conceived in close collaboration with the band - were based on "rock 'n' roll meets the faded freakshow end of the circus scale".
The backdrop was of striking dirty yellow and black circus tent stripes with a big eyeball in the centre, and the backline - minimal for a loud rock band - was also draped in the same material, made by Hangman.
Jevons' rig was based architecturally on six 8m long 'spine' trusses made from Tomcat 1 lite-beam, rigged slightly off-centre, running upstage / downstage and raked from back (lower) to front.
They proved ultimately flexible. The lengths could be reduced as needed and the way they were rigged modified as required. One of the biggest technical coups of the tour was fitting the entire rig into Nottingham Rock City (using 3m spines) ... and filling Hammersmith Apollo with exactly the same rig - and it looking equally cool in both scenarios as well as for anything in between!
Nick Jevons chose the smallest, lightest brightest fixtures available so he could maximise the amount of lights on the plot - and so Martin Professional MAC 101s and Clay Paky Sharpies became the stars of the lightshow.
There were 24 x 101s and 12 Sharpies, 16 Atomic strobes, 24 x 2-lite Moles, four GLP Impressions plus two Gem hazers in the touring rig. The 'local' production, where provided by HSL, saw the addition of six Robe ColorWash and six ColorSpot 700E AT moving lights, six ETC Source Four profiles, and for Hammersmith, two follow spots.
Jevons used his own Martin M1 console for control. As a large chunk of the budget was consumed on the actual design concept and squeezing absolutely as many fixtures as possible into the rig and truck - there was no leeway for any production rehearsals. Instead, Jevons visualised and pre-programmed a vast amount using Martin Show Designer (MSD), a tool he describes as "Absolutely invaluable", some of it in his own studio and some at HSL.
(Jim Evans)
