Pet Shop Boys
Neil Tennant resplendent in his in his jacket of straws © Rob Sinclair
important thing about Asia is the headline show at Summer Sonic,” he states. “We skipped Japan on the last couple of tour cycles so demand has built. Plus, Naoki Shimizu at Creativeman is the best promoter on the planet. Summer Sonic was the anchor date to build Asia around. I sat down with [fellow William Morris Endeavor agent] Akiko Rogers and she brought in other shows.” Phil Rodriguez at Miami-based Evenpro agrees with Nash’s approach. “In Latin America it is very important not to overtour. It’s extremely rare for any act to be able to go back to a market year-on-year, so a two-year minimum break is needed to help build demand.” Rodriguez has been working with PSB since the 90s and has taken them to Brazil, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela and Paraguay. “They are very clever in what they present and how they do that,” he says. “Electric is a well laid out and fantastic tour for the road – they manage to create a spectacle without having 19 trucks.”
Testing Times One of the challenges on this current outing is mixing festival appearances with those at smaller venues. Production manager Thomas Stone has worked with the likes of Tom Jones, James, Il Divo, The Hoosiers and Amy Winehouse, but is one of the new faces in the PSB entourage. This is his first tour with the band and he admits production assistant Dani Dowden has helped keep him right, as she has been working with the band since 2009 and “does all the important stuff that everybody else forgets about.” “This is a large-scale show but a very compact production. We’re playing arenas, festivals and theatres so it can be interesting,” Stone tells IQ backstage at the Grand Rex in Paris, which he reports is one of the most difficult venues to shoehorn the show into. “We’re really pushing the boundaries. We use lots of new technology. Electric is not your run-of-the-mill show – it’s heavily content-based and we have lots of different projection surfaces on stage.” One of the most striking of those surfaces is a massive venetian blind that can extend to 8 by 12 metres. “It’s a beast and can be tricky to set-up depending on the venue,” Stone says. With five or six different line ups for projection, one of the most eye-catching involves two vertical beds where the duvets are used as projection screens while the performers are under the covers. Stone contends the production typically takes five or six hours to load in and about 90 minutes to load out, on a good day, with lights and PA supplied locally, as well as local crew and stage hands helping out the 12-strong core crew. Looking back to the start of the tour, he says, “The only thing that lets South America down is the equipment situation. For instance, only one company in Paraguay has automated hoists, so we had people operating manual chain hoists – a nightmare when you consider 70% of the show is flown. But in all fairness, the guys in Paraguay smashed it.” The issues didn’t go unnoticed by the crew in South America, where Electric also visited Luna Park in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Bourbon Conmebol Asunción Convention Hotel, Paraguay; Credicard Hall in São Paulo, Brazil; and the Centro de Eventos Bima in Bogotá, Colombia.
26 | IQ Magazine July 2013
“The frustrations of working in South America still exist, but it gets better each time you go there,” says lighting designer Rob Sinclair. “The band wanted lasers and to go for a banging clubby vibe, so ER Productions were brought in to do that. We use the lasers sparingly in different parts of the show, but it works very well indeed. Chris in particular loves the lasers.” ER’s Marc Webber observes, “South America is not as bad as people might think, but there were certainly some challenges when it came to the likes of power supplies.” Sinclair adds, “Pet Shop Boys are ideal clients – they speak the language of theatre so they know what is possible and have very defined requirements, which makes them a joy to work with.” Another newbie to the tour party is Jack James, from Really Creative Media, who takes charge of the show’s video. “My background is in doing live events for mostly corporate clients,” he says. “In the past, I’ve worked with people like Rihanna and Justin Bieber and I had a few one-day calls from Pet Shop Boys at the back end of their last tour, but this is the first time I’ve taken on an entire tour – it’s an area I’ll be prioritising in the future. I put the equipment in for the shows and provide tech knowledge, but the equipment comes from Creative Technology and the content has been put together by Luke Hall at Treatment.” James adds, “Keeping things working is challenging, especially in South America, where there were issues with power, humidity and preventing equipment getting knocked about, which seems to happen a lot for some reason.” But the environment in the region is definitely improving, according to Holger Schwark, the tour’s sound engineer. “We worked with a German PA system – the D&B J System – at three or four shows in South America and that never used to happen,” he reports. “We don’t carry speakers so we face using different systems and rigs at each venue, but it’s kind of cool to be using something new every day as it’s rewarding when you align it to target.” Sourcing reliable local labour is another key element. Stage manager Matt Gurney comments, “Some local crews