“We didn’t know what to expect,” Those Damn Crows frontman Shane Greenhall told an interviewer about the band’s first ever UK headline show on December14. The answer for Greenhall and everyone else who packed Cardiff’s Utilita Arena was rock roaringly obvious. From the moment Those Damn Crows took the stage and ripped into a full throttle rendition of “Who Did It,” the hometown crowd screamed with delight at the top of their lungs. The crescendo got even more intense as the concert progressed, reaching new heights on the third song “Man On Fire” when pyro effects glowed throughout the stage.

Fresh off their wildly successful EU tour, the Welch rockers from Bridgend were back home, and the celebratory atmosphere couldn’t have been more electric.  Underscoring the energy on stage and reflecting the music was a production and lighting design by Gary Sharpe of Creative Productions Solutions that was run by Adam McNally of Stage I1 Productions. Key to making the immersive production run smooth was a collection of ChamSys products: the MagicQ MQ500M+ Stadium console at FOH, with a MQ500M back up, and a Magic Q MQ250M Stadium Console for side of stage SFX, along with GN10 and GN5 for network.

“This was the band’s first arena show, and we wanted to make it very special,” said Sharpe. “We did this in stellar fashion. Adam did a marvelous job as did Damo Hartshorn our SFX Operator. We were also greatly aided by Zig Zag Lighting Ltd., out main lighting provider. Neil Hunt (owner/founder of ZZ) went above and beyond with all the changes.

“ChamSys made things go smoothly for all of us,” continued Sharpe.  “I first encountered the console on cruise ships, but then picked it back up in 2018 and since then I like to have ChamSys on all my shows. As a very hands-on PM, I like to understand how the programming is coming along. Also, I like to be able to set up calls with the ChamSys technical support team.” Half of the show at Cardiff was time coded. For the half that was not, McNally used the Cue Stack feature on his console with busking elements included, so the show still had a “live feel.”

For McNally, who has been a ChamSys user since the start of his career, the Cardiff show represented a new experience. “This show was run solely on Group Cues,” he said. “All effects were group cued. This was the first time I had ever worked that way. Thanks to ChamSys’s user-friendliness, it worked out very smoothly.” McNally appreciated the value of Group Cues almost as soon as he entered the venue. “Some of the pixels in the fixtures were running backward compared to what we had in the console,” he recalled. “Instead of having to redo a load of cues, we just took the Group Cues, spun things over and were good to go, just like that. Beyond that, ChamSys has a logical layout,” continued McNally. “Plus, the speed and power of consoles gave us so much flexibility to create a very complex show with a lot of interesting elements. Also, the GeNetix nodes made it simple to close off circuits. The new Countdown Timer feature in the Cue Stack variables was especially appreciated by McNally in this show. “This was invaluable to us,” he said. “We greatly depended on the Cue Stack’s countdown timer functionality, to monitor the amount of flame fluid/smoke fluid that had been used during the show.”

Elaborating on that point, McNally noted that much of the time during the show the SFX was timecoded. However, there were points when these effects were trigged manually for some songs. This made it necessary to have a precise and accurate reading on how much fluid was left in the machines. “The Countdown Timer was essential at those moments,” he declared.

Summing up the experience with ChamSys at Cardiff as the Production Manager, Sharpe added that having everything on one network was essential having the timecode section of the show. “Given the significance of this show, we wanted everything to be just right,” he said. Based on the response of the audience and the comments on social media, he and McNally did this in flying colors.

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