Production managing the event was Mick Kluczynski of MJK Productions. "It was definitely the best MOBO Awards ever - the show has finally grown up, and I really enjoy working with the team. This year we had a new director, Nicky Parsons, and new producer, Lisa Chapman, with a 3,500 live audience. In spite of the events in America, we managed to retain most of the artists - only Luther Vandross pulled out."
Sound contractor Britannia Row decided to take the unusual step of trialling a new system at the event. With the help of Telex/EVI’s Bob Doyle and Paul Barretta from UK EV distributor Shuttlesound, Brit Row was able to put Electro-Voice’s new line array system, X-Line, through its paces on its very first major UK gig. Sound designer and FOH engineer, Derrick Zieba, who has vast experience of such events, confesses to an initial reticence about using the X-Line, as he had previously found line arrays to lack the bottom end required for rock and roll.
However, he was persuaded by Brit Row’s Bryan Grant, who had been running X-Line on a number of large Radio One events over the summer. "We plugged it in, selected the pre-sets on the controllers and fired it up, and I have to say, we were all impressed," added Zieba. "The coverage and level was virtually even from front to back, and the bass, despite my reservations, was as good as anything I’ve heard, which is amazing when you consider all the subs were in the air."
Two Midas Heritage 3000 desks were used for each of FOH and monitors. System processing came from Klark Teknik with the new DN9848, which, according to second FOH engineer Snake Newton, "is far more intuitive and straightforward to use than anything KT have ever produced. I confess I found their previous system processors completely impenetrable, although once set up they worked beautifully."
Once again, Vari-Lite Europe supplied the event’s sizeable lighting rig, specified by LD Eugene O’Connor. "Although we had a reasonable budget, we needed to spec a lot of lighting for the stage and set, which then entailed using a degree of imagination to get the equally large spread of audience lighting needed for TV." His solution for audience lighting was 10 Megalites fitted with Wybron Mega Scrollers, all controlled from an Avolites Pearl desk. "We supplemented those with a wash of VL2C luminaires and bars of ACLs focused onto the tables. It was a cool solution, which gave us a very different audience look."
On stage, a high set was backed by bead curtain walls and set off by three 20ft-high towers, with drape and track specialist Blackout Triple E providing much of the draping and kabuki-style drops. "I like to have as many different levels as possible," comments O’Connor, "and I had the lighting wrapping around the sides as well. So the three 20ft towers carried VL2416 wash lights, along with three VL2202 luminaires, Encapsulite dimmable flourescents and six 2-light Molefays - quite a lot of lights on the towers." Completing the picture were 35 Thomas Duettes, 40 Molefay 4-Lites, 26 with scrollers, used to create an overhead dancefloor effect in the roof for the handheld TV cameras in the pit.
The uprights supporting the circular truss carried VL5Arc wash luminaires, with a further 12 within the circle. The 12 followspots comprised eight Pani HMI1200 and four Super Troupers - the latter on a spot bridge. Also on stage were 128 assorted Vari*Lites, 24 Par 64s, 320 metres of truss, a quartet of single-head Sky-Art searchlights, Molefays with scrollers and 60 Pars. Rounding out the lighting were four-h
