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The Return of the Martian

RG Jones return, once again delivering a cosmically sonic performance celebrating 40 years with Jeff Waynes “The War of The Worlds”.

This has to be one of the most challenging pieces of music to portray accurately in a live setting. The musical elements, consisting of the band, the orchestra, the iconic narration, live acting and singing, playback and surround effects, occupy over 140 input channels, and the audiences rightly expect an unprecedented level of detail. The rest of the production is just as epic, and this makes for a very demanding daily task for the entire crew, working to a very tight schedule with multi trucks of gear to load in and out. For the sound team, set-up times and system tuning opportunities are very limited, and with any system other than Martin Audio MLA it would have been virtually impossible to get the consistently amazing results across a wide range of venues.

Is it actually possible to have too much of a good thing? By the success of the recent UK tour of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds, the answer is an emphatic ‘no’. To celebrate 40 years since the double album was first released, Jeff and his merry band of anti-Martianites set off around the UK’s arenas once more determined to show those tentacled nasties a thing or two in front of several thousand people.

Much has been written about the technical aspects of this epic production – the flying bridge, the descending fighting machine, the huge screen backdrop, and of course the mind-blowing Martin Audio MLA sound system provided by RG Jones Sound Engineering, manned by some of their finest – so much so that to fill these lines with more of the same would perhaps not be quite as gripping as a reader may like.

It is however worth considering some of the aspects of what goes on in the background that rarely get discussed; the things that make a tour as challenging as this flow smoothly, the things that anyone attending the show as a punter would have absolutely no idea about, but which play as much of a part in the delivery of such a spectacle that could and surely would make for an altogether different experience were they not in place. What could possibly be more important than having the finest equipment honed to perfection? Experience, people, and the relationship that binds them. That’s what.

The touring show Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds is put together by Steve Nolan and his company Chromatic Productions, as it has been since 2006 when the show first hit the road. Steve has as much experience as anybody in the world of touring production – he’s been there and done it. RG Jones are honoured to hold such a long history of working with some of the industry’s greatest, striving to provide a reliable sonic result, with minimal fuss.

With this particular outing, a start-studded crew was on hand to deliver a tight, reliable show under often very difficult circumstances. The very nature of the show means that a traditional build schedule is not possible, and there’s a big demand on space and patience. Amongst the 6 strong crew there was only one ‘newbie’ (not for long!), the rest all being more than familiar with each other’s expectations, a fantastic working unit where the job is done, swiftly, accurately and co-operatively with all other departments. The value to the production is easy to quantify – on this tour, getting in everyone else’s way is a matter of course and causes delays which the schedule of load-in, sound check, show and load-out has very little room for. We all knew exactly what had to be done to ensure it all went as smoothly and reliably as possible..

..a shining example of the high standards that RG Jones Sound Engineering adheres to deliver.

TPI – The War of The Worlds 40th Anniversary Tour 2018Open PDF File in new window