LONDON — U.K. pop band JLS completed a five-year chart-topping run with a sold-out U.K. arena tour. The tour, titled, “Goodbye – The Greatest Hits,” featured a lighting design by LD Dave “Bickie” Lee. He used 28 of Robe’s Pointe fixtures.
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Bickie has lit JLS right from the start, when they took off in 2008 after being runners-up on the UK’s X-Factor that year. Since then they became one of the most successful ever boy-bands, and all four members are now going on to pursue their solo careers and other projects.
For the final tour, Bickie wanted the lighting – which he crafted in close collaboration with Artistic Director Beth Honan – to be big, bold, bright and thoroughly memorable for the thousands of fans who flocked to the shows.
He has used Robe’s LEDWash fixtures regularly in his work for the last three years when he first saw the Pointe at a demo at Robe UK in Northampton. He knew that this was the fixture he wanted to use to bring a new and different look to this upcoming JLS tour.
Twenty of the 28 Pointes on the tour were rigged on five 20ft high vertical trussing towers upstage which were flanking four columns of LED screen. The other eight Pointes were on the deck, two each on four band risers – JLS were backed by a 4-piece live band.
Bickie says, “The two killer features for me are the prism and the frost – I have not seen anything like these before in a moving light and they completely change the look of the light and how the fixture can be used”.
He remarks that the prism effect can go in and out so quickly that this function can be used as an effect in its own right, and applying the frost when the prism is in creates another complete transformation.
Other elements impressing him include the overall speed of the fixture, the lightning quick pan / tilt, and the compact size which makes it ideal for fitting into pre-rigged trussing and tower trusses.
“I’ve added The Pointe to my list of great fixtures to use in 2014,” he concludes.
Lighting for JLS’s fourth and final tour was supplied by Blackburn UK based HSL, which has the largest rental stock of Robe fixtures in the UK. HSL’s Project Manager was Mike Oates, and like Bickie, HSL have been involved with JLS’s live career right from the start, together with their live show technical producers, Production North.
