Creative’s Dave Jackson has just finished touring the country with Culture Club, the fourth time he has toured with them.
Dave’s lighting design for the band’s Greatest Hits Tour was fairly simple yet very effective in the right hands. While there were quite a few fixtures there was not a wide variety – a moving profile, moving wash and a couple of effects.
“They’re not a big strobe act or things like that, rather it’s a lot of mood setting, said Dave. “But I needed fixtures with a punch to get over the video screen.”
Dave chose the Ayrton Eurus for his profile fixture with twenty-one flying and six on the floor, upstage.
“The Eurus is a wonderful fixture,” he commented. “We own quite a few but we also own BMFLs, MAC Vipers and other moving profiles. Simply, I just like the Eurus. It’s very bright and punchy and delivers nice crisp gobo looks which was important for this show. The optics are so much better than our other moving profiles.”
The set-up included two straight trusses over the stage consisting of Eurus and Martin MAC XIP and a front truss of all Martin MAC XIP except for one Eurus centrally hung.
“I chose the MAC XIPs because I wanted a fixture that could deliver an NSP look plus they can do a nice narrow beam. Again, they’re nice and punchy. They’re great for skin tones, especially on the front truss where we weren’t running profiles as the MAC XIPs were used to light the band as profiles.”
Also on the two over-stage trusses were ten GLP JDC-1s that were used as colour floods rather than strobes. Support band Berlin used their strobing capabilities.
Upstage, on the floor, were 21 x GLP X4 Bar 20s for effect looks and a little bit of movement. One Ayton Zonda 9 was located upstage centre, also on the pre-rig truss, to light Boy George coming in over the stairs from behind.
The lighting operator for the tour was Alex Saad operating a Hog 4-18 as well as a Catalyst for video.
“Touring with Culture Club is great,” remarked Dave. “They are such nice people – fun, polite and they remember everybody’s names.”
Dave is now in the USA and Canada until November touring with the American hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan as Production Manager and Show Designer.
