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OT: Rise of Amplifier Volume in Popular Live Music Performance in the early 70's (was ECM guitarists)



Bill Walker wrote:
"Of course Billy Cobham and
Lenny White had a lot to do with ratcheting up the volume. "

True Bill.................I was with you at those exciting and mind 
bending concerts
(we were the ONLY ones at Winterland who were standing up with our 
mouths agape
at the sound of a 3rd bill group,  Mahavishnu,  playing "Inner Mounting 
Flame" two weeks before
they even release it on Columbia records......................what a 
life changing experience that was).....

........but, honestly, I have a different take on the whole ratcheting 
up of the volume controversy.

I don't think it was Cobham and Lenny White (despite their immense power 
and
volume)  who were responsible for ratcheting up the volume in the 
earliest days
of fusion.

Hendrix, the Who and Blue Cheer had ramped up the volume with their 
guitar amps
in the 60's but they were using 50 and 100 watt amplifiers at the time.
I remember hearing the Jefferson Airplane debut 'Surrealistic Pillow"
two weeks before they released that record at Frost Ampitheater at Stanford
with a large collection of Fender Twin Reverbs and a smallish P.A. system
for the vocals and drums and it was deafeningly loud.

Remember that the Beatles played Shea Stadium in New York with a
Bogen P.A. system that amplified the vocals and NOT the guitars or the 
drums.
Go check out the film footage from this era.     The screaming teenage 
girls so drowned
out the music that it made the Beatles give up performing live for good.
Ringo Starr started a whole new school of studio drumming by playing 
fills at weird
times when the screaming would subside a little bit, allowing him to 
actually even
hear his own drum set.

By the early 70's, however,  people were using Fender Dual Showmans and
Marshall stacks and the wattage went through the roof.

Then equipment changed and the volume of modern popular music went
through the roof in the early 70's.

Any acoustic trapset drummer will tell you that when you compete
with a Marshall Stack,  that a guitar is VASTLY louder than an acoustic
un-miced drumset.

I've rehearsed with loud bands where I played a huge Vistalite Ludwig kit
with double 22" inch kicks large sized toms where I was completely drowned
out by the guitarist.   I'd get blisters trying to compete with the volume.

I remember having a huge argument with the first guitarist in Tao 
Chemical where I insisted that
he put his guitar on the side of the stage pointed directly at his ears 
(where I , the drummer
had to sit for years before taking the brunt of his loud trebly sound) 
so that he would turn his volume
down.

I got huge blisters on my hands from playing as hard as I could to compete
and I had no nuance whatsoever in my playing.  It made me stronger 
competing
but certainly not subtler.

*******

Nowaday,  the average kid can spend $300 on a guitar amplifier on sale
that can blow the hell out of the loudest acoustic drummers.  Add to 
this the
incredible reduction in dollar (euro/pound/yen) per watt that has 
occurred in modern sound reinforcement
and the prevalence of huge subwoofers powered by literally thousands of 
Watts
at large venues  and it's the technology that ramped up the volume
NOT the drummer.

LOL,   okay,  that's my drummerly rant about volume for the quarter.
I'll be back with more obnoxious soap boxing about volume in three 
months.......................LOL

Rick
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