Live Sound

Supported By

Tour Profile: “The Energy Never Dies” With The Black Eyed Peas

Fergie, Will.i.am, Taboo and Apl.de.ap are off to see the wizard.

After a few summer festivals, The Black Eyed Peas’ The Energy Never Dies tour began with September shows in Japan and October shows “down under.”

The Peas are riding high from three recent Grammy Awards and the double-barreled success of Boom Boom Pow and I Gotta Feeling, which close the show with obligatory confetti cannons.

The set starts with smoke, green lasers, pop-up appearances and “Let’s Get It Started.”

Ten songs into the set, Apl.de.ap and Taboo have solos, followed by a pop interlude from Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson, and finally, Will.i.am rocks the house with a DJ set played from a platform that rises from mid-arena at the end of the runway, including a free-style rap based on (tour sponsor) Blackberry text messages sent from the crowd scrolled across the ample video screens.

European dates begin in May, with plans to “follow the yellow brick road” to South America and Asia.

At the third U.S. show, I watched Donovan Friedman and Sean Baca fly the stage-right side of the Clair i5 line arrays at Jacksonville’s Veterans Memorial Arena.

The 14-box Clair i5 arrays are powered by Crown Macro-Tech MA- 3600VZ amplifiers, with the companion 14-box i5b low-frequency extension arrays powered by QSC PowerLight 9.0pfc amps. The arena side sections are covered by 8-box i5 and i5b arrays, while the side sections farthest back are reached by 3-box arrays of three-way Clair R4 enclosures.

An ego ramp extends out into the middle of the arena floor. Across the front of the stage on each side of the ramp are 14 dual-18 Clair “Bow Tie” (BT) subwoofers, powered by Powersoft K10 amps. They support P2 frontfills and Showco SRM wedges, all powered by Lab.gruppen PLM10000Q amps.

Four more BT 218 subs are used on each side of the stage, and 6-box arrays of Showco “Blue” Prism enclosures are flown as sidefills, also powered by Crown MA-3600VA amps. Audio services are supplied by Clair Brothers, which had a similar system in the arena four nights earlier for John Mayer.

Early Adopter
Front of House Engineer Dave Haines has been with the Peas for a dozen years – the group’s entire career – and was instrumental with the recording that originally got them signed to Interscope Records. As a Pro Tools veteran, he was an early adopter of the Avid Digidesign Venue console, and has probably logged more hours on it than any other engineer.

Haines uses the original D-Show Venue control surface with a single 16-fader sidecar. His quiet confidence belies the energy he will unleash on 15,000 fans. There’s remarkably little outboard equipment.

Under the console, a rack holds a TASCAM CD-01U CD player, TASCAM CD-RW901 recorder, plus a pair of Shure DFR11EQs for two channels of feedback suppression used on Fergie’s vocals, which Haines says helps considerably.

Live Sound Top Stories