Brian Ruggles (Billy Joel)
Billy Joel’s “Last Play At Shea” marked the end of an era of historic concerts at Shea Stadium on Friday, July 18th. Joel’s world tour began in January 2006 and the 2008 North American segment kicked off in Philadelphia on January 26th, finishing up with two shows in Flushing, NY at Shea Stadium.
Sound reinforcement was supplied by Clair Showco, which has had a long relationship with Billy Joel, and FOH engineer Brian Ruggles and production manager Bobby Thrasher have worked with Joel for 33 and 27 years respectively, while monitor engineer Mike Pirich has been with Joel for the past decade.
When looking for a sound console for both FOH and the monitor positions, Clair Showco turned to the Studer Vista 5 SR for its portability, ease of use and sound quality. “The Vista 5 SR is capable of handling a lot of inputs,” said Ruggles. “We’ve tried different digital desks before but I wasn’t really thrilled at the way they sounded – until this one came along. The Vista 5 SR is by far the best sounding digital desk I’ve heard because it’s closest to the sound of an analog desk.”
Pirich noted, “Using the Vistonics interface makes it really easy to see where you are. As far as digital desks go, this is by far the easiest to get comfortable with before a show and to prove it, I only spent a few hours with the Vista 5 SR before we did a show.”
He added, “As far as quality, it sounds spectacular! It’s got lots of gain and no distortion. We have 30 faders in total consisting of three banks of 10 but are in no way limited by the number of inputs and outputs we can handle. We’ve just pushed 100 inputs feeding 18 stereo mixes and 22 mono mixes but really have more available inputs and outputs than we ever hope to use.
Production Manager Bobby Thrasher was extremely pleased with how much easier the Studer consoles make his job. “It’s small, it’s lightweight, it’s portable and not like the 6,000 pounds I used to have to carry around or fly around,” said Thrasher.