The hugely successful 2006 Pops season features a lively megamix of international talent - from James Brown to Pops regulars The Australian Pink Floyd, from Westlife to Whitesnake, from New Order to Simply Red - and numerous others. There's something to sate virtually every flavour of popular music!
The event is again staged in its 4,500 capacity SIX pole Big Top, centrally located along the Dock Road.
As in previous years, the lighting was designed by Dave Hill. The rig maximises the available tent space and caters for a wide variety of band requirements and visiting LDs. For the get in, Entec supplied eight crew including Phil White and Leigh Yeomans, who are now in technicians-in-residence, running the show day-to-day, working closely with production manager Andy Keightley.
The over-stage rig is a raked box truss - 21ft at the rear and 28ft headroom at the front - ensconced into one of the roof voids. It's cross-braced with six upstage/downstage straight trusses, effectively creating an angled, highly dynamic, ceiling of lights above. This provides ideal coverage and versatile lamp focus right across the stage - every inch of the space can be hit by one instrument or another.
The box truss sits on a five leg self-climbing ground support system, also supplied by Entec. The front truss is constructed from customised Tomcat MegaTruss, allowing a span of 58ft with a hefty weight loading taken on two legs. This was commissioned by Entec two years ago specifically for the Summer Pops shows. Event rigger is Sven Knight.
For moving lights this season, Entec is supplying 17 Vari*Lite 2202 Spots and 16 V*L 2402 Wash fixtures for the stage. There's also 44 Martin Professional MAC 300s used as truss toners, both for the overstage trusses and around a massive box truss in the audience. The luminaires fit almost perfectly into the 21.5 inch square trussing framework.
The main stage rig features 33 x 6-lamp bars for multi-purpose use including providing a basic six colour stage wash that has remained one of the constants of the Pops rig since day one. There's also 14 bars of ACLs, 10 x 10 degree Source Four profiles on the front truss, ground rows for the back, three 8-lite Moles and three Atomic strobes. Follow spots are four truss mounted Panis out above the audience.
A generic floor rig is also available, consisting of four VL 2402s, six groundrows and an assortment of floor cans.
Console wise this year, Entec offers a WholeHog II and a Wing and - for the first time - a GrandMA as the standard console set ups - with other brands available on request. Entec has just invested in two of the GrandMA consoles, one of which went straight onto the Pops.
Avolites ART 2000 series dimmers are used- four 48 way racks in the main room and a 72-way for the reception area. Power distribution is via Entec custom units, with two 36-way units covering the main room.
They are running eight universes of DMX as standard, with integral Ethernet capabilities running down the snake which will increase this up to 24 if needed. This year, the system has been set up so it can easily be split for programming across two different consoles.
Lighting power for the whole event runs on two synched 800 KVA gennies supplied by Golden Triangle.
The vast majority of bands brought their own LDs, and all were happy with the available spec. Those without LDs/operators were left in the hands of Phil White.
In the foyer, the Entec team flew a box truss infrastructure off the tent king poles onto which was clamped 16 bars of 6 Pars, four Source Fours and four MAC 500s for sponsors logos including the distinctive 'Liverpool 08' logo signalling the year the City becomes European Capital of Culture
