AudioLease PA tours with The Pogues

6 January 2005

UK - The Pogues toured the UK and Ireland in December with the classic '87 to '93 line-up of Shane MacGowan, Spider Stacy, Jem Finer, Philip Chevron, Terry Woods, Andrew Ranken, James Fearnley and Darryl Hunt, which last toured the UK in 2001. Cait O'Riordan, the original bass player from '82 to '86, also joined the band on vocals.

East Anglia-based AudioLease supplied the PA for the nine-date tour, which included Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham, Manchester, London and Dublin. AudioLease used its Lab.gruppen powered Adamson Y-Axis Y10 line array system for all but the Dublin gig, as there was insufficient time to ship it from the previous night's concert.

Steve Sunderland of AudioLease explained the choice of PA, "For dynamic Irish Folk, with a lot of acoustic instruments, The Pogues engineer Paul Scully wanted a PA that was extremely precise, clean and with genuine hi-fi quality. He originally felt there were two possible systems capable of giving the quality he wanted but in the end decided Adamson was the better. The Adamson also gave greater flexibility to accommodate the diverse venues on this tour, which ranged from large clubs to the largest indoor arena in the country in Manchester."

Sunderland went on to explain the requirements and solution for Manchester, "The seating configuration at Manchester for The Pogues gave a 13,500 capacity. To cover this and provide ample level we needed to hire in 16 X Y18 from France, an expensive operation but one that Paul Scully and the management felt worthwhile. The system had to be flown very high, using 25 metre chain motors, and we used 16 cabinet deep arrays, eight Y10s below eight Y18s. The results were simply stunning sound quality with perfect coverage for every seat - easily the best I've heard in this venue."

(Sarah Rushton-Read)