The stars came out on the night that Ocean Colour Scene made a spectacular one-off appearance at the Royal Albert Hall, with the Martin Wavefront Compact system. With notebook and camera, Mark Cunningham was suitably attired for the occasion.

It was mid-February at the Royal Albert Hall, and for the first time in years, Eric Clapton was nowhere in sight. Enough of the champagne and strawberries, it was time to dig the new beer and skittles breed and celebrate the deserved ascension of Ocean Colour Scene whose one-off gig within the great domed auditorium proved to be a genuine special event. The signs were already in evidence before the first note was sounded, when I found myself propping up the backstage bar alongside Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller, mutual friends of the Birmingham band, who are prone to the odd impromptu live jam. Tonight, I discovered, would be no exception.

A seven-man camera team linked to the Manor Mobiles recording truck was in place to capture this concert, a landmark in Ocean Colour Scene's career and one that drew to a close an amazing 12 months during which they supported The Who on their Quadrophenia tour of the States. No one was more surprised than the band members themselves when Moseley Shoals became one of the biggest-selling albums by a British act in recent years. That's persistence for you.

Formed in 1989, they struggled for recognition throughout the early '90s, before guitarist Steve Cradock's sideline association with Paul Weller encouraged fans and record company executives alike to seriously investigate the band's considerable songwriting and live performance qualities. And those qualities made an earth-shattering impact at the Royal Albert Hall, the venue which if I am to believe what the band told me last November was one they had always dreamed of playing... one day. Driving through Knightsbridge, they passed it and reminded manager (and Steve's dad) Chris Cradock. The gig was booked within 24 hours.

Supporting OCS were cellist Rosie Wetters, Liverpool indie veterans The Real People (who at one time were regularly supported by Oasis), and Paul Weller in a rare second billing. Then came the main event. Wearing their late '60s/early '70s influences proudly on their sleeves, OCS ran through a blistering set, which mostly covered the best of Moseley Shoals, including the hits 'The Day We Caught The Train', 'The Circle', 'Riverboat Song', and the Stones soundalike '40 Past Midnight'. 'Debris Road', an infectious new number from their yet to be completed next album, was previewed and judging by the reaction would make an ideal single. With the quasi-psychedelic 'Get Away' completing the main set, Steve Cradock climbed up to the Albert Hall's legendary pipe organ (bet he always wanted to do that!) to accompany singer Simon Fowler on the first encore number, 'Robin Hood'. Then virtual hysteria set in when Weller returned to the stage with Noel Gallagher (fresh out of the bar) to join the Scene for a frenzied finale, which climaxed with The Beatles' 'Day Tripper', the final chord thrust coinciding with a freak sound system power failure. Most other bands use pyrotechnics, but these guys are a law unto themselves.

Providing the PA system and technical backup was the crew from Capital Sound Hire, headed by Keith Davis. Notable for his long-term preference of Martin equipment, Davis decided that rather than use the F2 system, which accompanied the band on their UK tour last autumn, the Albert show might benefit from the use of Martin's latest generation Wavefront 8 Compact PA — the system which scooped the Best New Audio Product accolade in this year's Live! Awards.

Flying high above the stage and driven by Crown 2400 and 3600 amplifiers, the PA cluster consisted of 18 Martin Wavefront 8 Compacts (W8C) and six W8S sub-basses; at ground level were four WSX folded horn sub-woofers and four W8Cs with W2 two-way infills. Davis' instinct proved to be as keen as ever, and many I spoke to after the show agreed that it was one of the cleanest sounding they had heard in the venue.

"My decision was influenced partially because Capital Sound had never used it in this venue," said Davis, "and this was a good opportunity to try it out, because OCS are a great band to work with, and their tour manager Yaron Levy is very understanding. Bands are now beginning to ask for Wavefront; artists using the system so far include Gary Glitter, Worlds Apart, and Crash Test Dummies. We are very pleased to be using a system of this quality with OCS."

SIDESTAGE

Since their last tour, a shift of power in the OCS camp has resulted in Yaron Levy abandoning his dual role of monitor engineer and stage manager to become tour manager and General Overseer Of All Things. In his place, former Town & Country Club (now The Forum) house monitor man Gerry Wilkes has assumed control of the 40-channel Midas XL3 at the side of the stage and has also inherited the stage management responsibility. Having already accumulated experience in both areas for Teenage Fan Club, he is used to the sometimes clashing burdens. "As long as soundchecks and the switching of bands all run to schedule, I'm as cool as a cucumber," he said with a slight twinkle of panic in his eye.

On stage were 16 Martin LE700 monitor wedges (which feature a proprietary 15-inch diameter 4-inch coil bass driver and a 1.4-inch compression driver) and two sidefills consisting of F2B bass cabinets and W8Cs.

The Albert Hall show was the fourth show of the month for OCS, following dates in Galway and Dublin's Olympic Theatre, but Wilkes' association with the band dates back to a year ago. "I actually mixed monitors for OCS before Yaron, around March '96," he says. "They were due to play in Europe but couldn't afford to take me along so I then accepted an offer to do a tour in the States. In the meantime, they had some trouble with a house monitor engineer in Scandinavia, and although I was tied up, I put them in touch with Yaron who quickly sorted them out.

"I'm loving every minute of these dates. Yaron is a very hard act to follow and coming into a job like this when they have been so used to dealing with Yaron would be difficult for anyone, especially without rehearsals as was the case for me. To play things as safely as possible, I'm doing exactly the same as Yaron did in terms of the 11 mixes between the four band members and the various effects that happen from time to time."

OCS have a reputation for rivalling their Oasis buddies at times for on-stage volume, but things appeared reasonably tame at the Albert Hall. Wilkes sent a total of 11 mixes around the stage, and as one might expect, bassist Damon Minchella enjoys a rhythm heavy wedge mix, majoring in kick, snare, and hi-hat. Adjacent to his Ampeg SVT rig [as I write I am turning a vivid shade of green] is one side of Steve Cradock's Marshall JCM 800 stack, which the bass player adjusts in volume to suit his own guitar monitoring requirements. Cradock's own needs are mostly guitar and vocal-orientated mix, and naturally singer Fowler's mix concentrates on his own vocals which, it must be said, are currently among the most powerful this country has to offer. In addition to a wedge, drummer Oscar Harrison received a BSS DPR-402 compressed mix of his backing vocals through his hard-wired Garwood in-ear system, which he used for the first time on the autumn tour.

The stretch Midas console to the left of the XL3 is, I am assured by Wilkes, purely to give Jon Ormisher a number of extra channels when he mixed the support bands' monitors. Effects for monitoring are purposely kept to a minimum, with two Yamaha SPX-990s delivering reverb for Fowler's vocals, and a richer reverb shared by Cradock's Leslie cabinet and drummer Oscar Harrison's backing vocal mic. His kit uses six channels of Drawmer DS201 gates, and a dbx 160 is inserted on Minchella's bass. One outboard item which travels everywhere with Wilkes is his Klark Teknik parametric equaliser, of which he said: "I invested in it a few years ago to help me out particularly if I'm abroad and not using the same system every night. You never know what's going to be in the rack when you arrive at the venue, so it's better to be safe than sorry! At the very least, it helps to achieve some kind of EQ consistency every night."

The secret of being a good and successful monitor engineer lies in being able to provide an intelligent balance of sound across the stage, whilst trying to avoid raising the master volume fader so high that the front-of-house mixer cannot cope with the spill into the mics. A simple enough task, you may think, but add 'difficult' personalities to the equation and a nightmare begins. "You have to develop a pretty hard shell in order to last the course" says Wilkes, "but if things do go disastrously wrong, it can still affect you. There have been one or two occasions when, for some strange reason, I haven't got on with one of the band members, and although I have gone to great lengths to get a good sound on stage for them, they have not been happy. Of course, they do not mind letting you know their feelings in the most colourful ways known to man! That's very hard to deal with."

JAM MAN & EWOK

A mild-mannered grizzly bear is how one member of the crew described OCS guitar tech Dave Liddle, the fellow who 20 years ago found himself doing the same job for Paul Weller in the early days of The Jam. His relationship with the Woking wonder continued until last year when Weller took a break from touring, and OCS offered him 12 weeks on the road. Since then, Liddle has been looking after Simon Fowler's acoustic guitars and Damon Minchella's bass gear.

Liddle commented: "Simon has just started using a Martin D35 with a pick-up in the bridge, along with his Takamine EN-40. As from this year, we are feeding his acoustic via a DI box into a black face Fender Twin, with the tremolo on for two songs, and it works really well. He could use a tremolo pedal, but Boss stopped making them."

Although he prefers the Martin from a traditional construction point of view, Liddle acknowledges the practical live performance benefits of the Takamine. "It actually works on stage a little better than the Martin. It's just a case of getting used to the Martin, which has a great natural sound, but it makes tuning difficult. The Takamine has a built in preamp so you can tune it backstage even when it's noisy. But you're dead on the ground with the Martin, because someone only has to shout and the tuner will pick it up through the guitar. Simon requires a D tuning on that guitar, and it can be a nightmare, because I have to run a mile from the stage to tune it in a quiet corner."

Minchella uses two Jazz basses: his main bass is a 1977 Fender with a maple fingerboard, a Squier model is in reserve. "He has Di Marzio pick-ups in the Fender, and it's a killer sound, probably a bit too powerful for the stage at the moment! The backline level is quite loud out there, even with the acoustic guitar which rings out solidly from the sidefills. Even so, Damon's not quite playing at half the volume capacity of his SVT rig so he has plenty of room to spare if he really wanted to kick in. But we try to keep it down so that the front-of-house engineer has something to do!"

Liddle confesses to feeling a little strange about working at a gig where he is not taking care of Weller's equipment. But old habits die hard — Weller's bass player Marco Nelson collared the tech during the afternoon to ask if he would tune his two vintage basses: a Gibson EB2 and a Gretsch Tennessean, as 'used' by The Monkees! Said Liddle: "I have a standard saying that I don't do support acts, but I suppose I'll have to make an exception for once!"

A regular feature of the OCS set is the appearance of Steve Cradock's guitar tech Kevin 'Ewok' Rowe, who joins the four-piece to play piano on '40 Past Midnight'. At other times during the show, Ewok keeps an eye on Cradock's main guitar, a 1968 re-issue Gibson Les Paul Gold Top, which he played for most of the evening. "It's a real survivor, having been through a flood and God knows what else!" said Ewok. "He also has a green custom Les Paul, which has been constructed from various models and a Gibson SG, which has a dropped D for 'Get Away'. That SG has a nice bite to its sound, which is absolutely perfect for that song. We have a few others out there for him, like a Strat and the Gibson 335 that Paul Weller gave to him, and he may call up for them at any point, but it's all down to the mood he's in. Everything is so spontaneous with this band, and there's so much space for improvisation, unlike a lot of others who will strictly choreograph their set and act like metronomes. Of course, Dave and I have to be prepared for what is going to happen as a result of whatever vibe is going down on stage and in the audience."

Liddle adds: "Simon might just turn around and stop playing his acoustic halfway through a number so that he can play blues harp, and I've got to be on the case otherwise he'll just lay the guitar down on the stage. You've got to have eyes at the back of your head with these guys!"

Cradock employs a simple setup and rather than use copious effects, he chooses to shape his guitar sound from the natural tone of his instrument. "Very few guitarists do that today and instead spend all night tap dancing on their f**kin' monstrous pedal boards!" laughs Ewok. "Steve will only use the occasional effect, literally as an effect to fatten a solo and not as the basis of his entire sound. He has a Small Stone phaser, a wah, a Marshall Blues Breaker, a DD5 delay, and a Yamaha Rev 7 reverb, and everything goes through his Marshall JCM 800 rig. We've played around with the JMP stuff in the studio, but for live work, we still can't find anything to beat the JCM 800s."

FRONT OF HOUSE

After eight years away from the music business, last year Tony Keach was persuaded by OCS to return to his front-of-house engineering role when the band's heightened profile demanded all hands on deck. When discussing the band, he positively reeks of loyalty and maintains that if it were not for them, he would not have come out of retirement.

For this show, Keach was assisted by one of the UK's top engineers, Gary Bradshaw of Pink Floyd's Division Bell tour fame. I asked Keach how the duties split between them. "Gary is assisting me on this gig, mainly because he is used to the Albert Hall and I've never worked here before," he explained. "He has done all the miking up and line checking, as Capital's Dave Bearman did on the last tour, and I come in to work with the band in the soundcheck to re-EQ and get the final mix position. Gary has a hell of a pedigree with his work for Pink Floyd and Eurythmics, and while I can't claim to have a similar track record, we work well together.

"Everyone was telling me that the Albert Hall was going to be a difficult gig from an engineering perspective, but I've been really surprised how relatively easy it has been to get a good sound. I think a lot of that has been down to the Martin Wavefront PA, which has a fantastic crystalline feel to it. Martin equipment was always a favourite with live engineers, but it was always a pain to tour with because of the amount of boxes involved. This system, however, is a whole different ball game."

While the support bands' engineers shared a Yamaha PM4000, Keach got to grips with his favourite Midas XL3 40-channel desk. "I think it's always better to get instruments to sound good at source rather than spending time applying lots of EQ," he commented. "I'm quite a fan of minimalism where EQ is concerned, but I must admit that the Midas EQ is very good, probably the best on a live desk that I've ever come across. It certainly beats the Soundcraft 100 Series board I remember using when I started in this business many moons ago."

One aspect of OCS's live sound, which occupies Keach's mind throughout a show is the faithful re-creation of their recorded material. "It's mainly the guitar effects that we are re-creating. In 'Get Away', there is a 1 second delay on just one snare beat and that has to be inserted at just the right moment. That can sometimes be difficult to catch, especially if the desk is a long way from the stage and there is time delay to consider. There isn't time to put on a pair of headphones, because that snare beat comes at a very busy point of the song where there are lots of things happening with reverbs on the harmonica and guitar.

"I'm also doing a lot of stereo panning with Steve's guitar at that and other points in the set, so I have my hands very full. When we were on tour in America with The Who, their engineer Dave Kob remarked that what I was attempting to do every night was pretty tough work — and he should know! I use a Roland SDE-3000A DDL for that snare delay, and the return signal is also fed to a 12-second reverb so that the repeats sound incredibly cavernous. That re-creates roughly what was done on the album, although it was a Grampian spring reverb in the studio which, of course, would not be a practical choice of equipment in a live situation! Another piece of outboard that is essential is the Eventide H3000SE Ultra Harmonizer, which helps to smooth out the spiky bits in the mix."

Knowing in advance of Keach's agenda, I was poised ready to grill him about what he did to reproduce Fowler's distorted vocal on 'The Day We Caught The Train'. The Law of Sod stepped in... "Oh, we're not bothering to do that live. We did it for the album by plugging a microphone into a Marshall Blues Breaker pedal and took a line out to the desk via a DI box. We could attempt to do it live, but it only lasts for a few bars, and it's not really worth risking the feedback." It would have been interesting though. Maybe next time.

The Woking wonder said of the headlining act: "I'm really pleased that OCS have cracked it after all this time. Damon and Steve have helped me out in the past, and as musicians, they are probably among the most intuitive I've heard in a long, long time. Do I mind being second on the bill to them? Absolutely not! We'll have a great time, just you see."