In May 2015, a small band of Foo Fighters fans from Cesena had tired of waiting for their heroes to add the central Italian state of Romagna to their tour itinerary – they hadn’t vitied since 1997, and had no plans to return.
Led by Fabio Zaffagnini, the friends decided to stage a live performance of the Foo Fighters’ ‘Learn To Fly’ with 1,000 musicians playing simultaneously – and to film the performance, and send the video to the band. ‘If you really want something, you have to be ready to beg,’ Zaffagnini says. ‘It’s better if there are 1,000 people behind you.’
The project succeeded – the video of the performance, which was entirely crowdfunded and carried out by volunteers, received more than 30m YouTube views. Within days, Dave Grohl, the Foo Fighters’ lead singer, had responded on-line, and in November 2015, the Foo Fighters opened their next European tour in Cesena’s Carisport stadium. The 1,000 musicians who participated in the original Rockin’1000 video were allowed in for free.
Inspired by this success, Zaffagnini recently repeated the experience, organising Rockin’1000 – That’s Live, an entire concert of rock music played by another assembly of more than 1,200 musicians at the Dino Manuzzi Stadium to a crowd of 14,000. The event featured 250 drummers, 250 guitarists, 250 bassists, 30 keyboard players, 30 violinists and 30 bagpipe players, playing a selection of hits by David Bowie, AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, the Beatles, the Clash, the White Stripes and Led Zeppelin.
Microphones and amplification for this groundbreaking concert were supplied by Italian technical services company Roadie Music Service, supported by Italian distributor Prase Media Technologies. This called on well over 220 Shure wired and wireless microphones, including the Shure SM58 and SM57 as well as ULX-D wireless microphone systems and Lab.gruppen PLM20K44 amplification.
The sound reinforcement was designed to draw a virtual semi-circle around the musicians to maximise the time alignment and maintenance of the sound levels between the orchestra and PA system. In total, 34 Lab.gruppen PLM20K44 amplifiers were selected to drive loudspeakers while processing and signal management from the FOH mixer was undertaken by Lake processing.
‘The PA system was distributed along three sides of the stadium,’ says Prase Media Technologies PA Manager, Emanuele Luogo. ‘The integration of the Dante networked audio distribution on the PLM+ allowed me to manage 22 PA system inputs with real-time performance monitoring. I simply added to each rack, two switches to control Lake DSP. In this way I reduced the length of the cables used, delivering many technical and logistic advantages.’
Shure microphones were used throughout the event, by all of the musicians, conductor Maestreo Sabiu, the leaders of the individual groups of the musicians, and technical support staff. In total, more than 170 wired mics were used, including SM58, SM57, Beta 52, SM81 and Beta 98 A/C, but because many of the musicians were mobile during the concert, wireless microphones were also used, including 56 channels of Shure ULX-D digital wireless. The Shure AXT600 Axient spectrum manager was used to analyse and monitor the wireless frequencies being used in the stadium during the concert.
Following the success of Rockin'1000 – That’s Live, rumours are rife that Zaffagnini and the Rockin’1000 team are already planning futher volunteer-based events on a similarly grand scale.
