Oh yep, this was such a common problem back in the day. Was kind of funny sometimes.
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Things we didn't know or do in the 60's and 70's
- Thread starter Paulabass
- Start date
I have the Howard Sam's book on guitar amplifiers which says my 1964 Fender Bassman had "enough inputs and power for all the instruments in the average combo".
Non polarized cords but that's why the polarity flip switch on the amps...
Funny how columns have made a comeback. My big sister's band, the Pendeltons, had two vocalblaster columns, the 4 channel shure head - 110 W! - and a quartet of EV 664's and were the best geared group in NoVa
Especially when the trucker was setting up a visit with a lot lizard at the next truck stop!
Yep, and the reason is because he shot a bass player who was working with him. Didn't kill him but the name stuck
According to Jerry Lee, he shot his bass player by mistake...twice.
I have a very open mind when it comes to music, I hear some good music being made today but having listened to and played music for over 50 years now my taste has become much more discerning which is as it should be if you grow. Some of the stuff from the 60's that I love had I heard it for the first time today I probably wouldn't be real impressed but because it puts me back in the place I was in when I first heard it I love it. I left behind top 40 music during the late 60's early 70's and still think 95% of it is trash but I don't think that has as much to do with being a boomer as it has to do with the fact it just isn't very good. Thankfully there is recorded music for 100 years available now so I don't think I'll ever run out of new music whether it's from 1940 or 2020. Closed minds do not grow..
A little off topic, but the top power of AM radio stations now is 50,000 watts, during the 30's there was a station with 500,000 watts, WLW Cinncinatti, people that lived near it used to hear it with their teeth fillings among many other ways.
Used to listen to the Reds games on that station back in the 70s... I have mlb.tv now but you can get the audio feed from WLW on there if you wanna listen to that...pretty cool.
We think the music we made when our generation was ascendant is superior.
Yet, maybe it's not just Boomers who are are less than excited about the music being put in rotation now. Our care giver for my wife has a son who is pushing 24 years of age. The young man is very astute, works for Apple Computer, has his own video production company (you think music gear is expensive?), and between himself and his old lady, he knocks down give or take $150,000 a year. All his young friends are basically in the same category. I don't ask these guys and gals about their musical preferences. They immediately volunteer them to me as soon as they learn that I was heavily involved in the music industry. All of them (no exceptions) actively do not listen to the newer music presently being produced and given rotation on the FM stations that promote such a format. They say it all sounds the same to them, and that they don't care for it. They love the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and 80's Rock, etc. In short, all the music I love.
I've asked around within the younger age groups, and the feelings expressed towards a lot of the newer stuff on the radio, anyway, is at best, ambivalence. Yet, pcake put up a video of the Interupters, "She's Kerosene", that totally knocked me out! Big time! Great tune (I think, anyway)! Plus, the video is itself a work of art. Exceptional.
I think there must be a lot of great music being produced these days. It just doesn't seem to get airplay. New groups are not being promoted the way they used to be by record companies. Maybe because there are no big record companies that are active anymore? Here in Vegas on FM, though, there is an "80's Rock" station, a "Classic Rock" station, a "Variety" station (80's Rock, Classic Rock and Oldies), and an "Oldies" station. All these are legacy formats. So its pretty obvious where big media conglomerates think the money is. Also, with certain exceptions, all the big music festivals and concerts here seem to be legacy oriented. it's not likely that's an accident, is it?
Yet, maybe it's not just Boomers who are are less than excited about the music being put in rotation now. Our care giver for my wife has a son who is pushing 24 years of age. The young man is very astute, works for Apple Computer, has his own video production company (you think music gear is expensive?), and between himself and his old lady, he knocks down give or take $150,000 a year. All his young friends are basically in the same category. I don't ask these guys and gals about their musical preferences. They immediately volunteer them to me as soon as they learn that I was heavily involved in the music industry. All of them (no exceptions) actively do not listen to the newer music presently being produced and given rotation on the FM stations that promote such a format. They say it all sounds the same to them, and that they don't care for it. They love the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and 80's Rock, etc. In short, all the music I love.
I've asked around within the younger age groups, and the feelings expressed towards a lot of the newer stuff on the radio, anyway, is at best, ambivalence. Yet, pcake put up a video of the Interupters, "She's Kerosene", that totally knocked me out! Big time! Great tune (I think, anyway)! Plus, the video is itself a work of art. Exceptional.
I think there must be a lot of great music being produced these days. It just doesn't seem to get airplay. New groups are not being promoted the way they used to be by record companies. Maybe because there are no big record companies that are active anymore? Here in Vegas on FM, though, there is an "80's Rock" station, a "Classic Rock" station, a "Variety" station (80's Rock, Classic Rock and Oldies), and an "Oldies" station. All these are legacy formats. So its pretty obvious where big media conglomerates think the money is. Also, with certain exceptions, all the big music festivals and concerts here seem to be legacy oriented. it's not likely that's an accident, is it?
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I was born in 57. A Cali boy all my life. In junior high school, 70-72, there were 2 types of dances. The night time dances, we just called dances. The, right after school, afternoon dances were called soc hops. Yes you took your shoes off. And the most sought after/requested song EVERY TIME. “Crimson and Clover”. Everybody wanted to slow dance! Lol also, yes, they spun records.
Back to the subject of the OP. as previously mentioned, plugging the mic into one of the guitar amps cause nobody had a PA. Also, only one singer in the band cause only one guy actually owned a mic.
It's very interesting to me. When we were young, music came to us from a few outlets and a little later on you sort of chose your radio format and honed in on what you decided you liked. Now there's so much streaming and you can really get a taste of different things by just choosing something weird and streaming Pandora or Spotify.
There's still good music being made. I am not a fan of country music, per se, but I learned a few songs for a New Country band recently and really enjoyed some of what I was learning. Back in my day we would have called that Rock with a country twinge to it. But they're still using guitars and traditional instruments, and not as much soundscaping, as the kiddos like to call it.
But I won't say that's what makes it good. There's good music all over the place. Lots of newer funk bands coming up, too, which I really enjoy. You just have to get proactive about finding some of it.
OK, back to the topic. Sorry about the sidetrack!
Yes, sir! Those were the days! At our high school dances they had it pretty dark, but there was a rule that you had to keep something like 3 or 4 inches between you and the girl you were dancing with. The chaperons (teachers and parents) had flashlights and would shine them on you if you got too close to the girl. We used to run interference for each other by getting between another couple and the chaperons so they couldn't see what was going on. God, that was fun! Both your hands were occupied slow dancing, but if you got close enough to the girl... Well, you get the picture! If you didn't get the flashlight shined on you once in a while it meant the girl you were with wasn't willing, so they didn't get as many dances! Too many violations, though, and you would get kicked out of the dance. I never quite understood the reasoning behind that because you can imagine what happened then, if you had your parent's car!
The Shure Unidyne's were high impedance right out of the box back then so you could plug them into a guitar amp. I remember the day I bought my first microphone so we could add a vocal (yes, one vocal, probably, "Long Tall Texan") to our sets of surf music instrumentals. I really thought I was hot #$%$# now that I had a mic!
Later we made a little bakelite box with four phone jacks wired in parallel. Our three high impedance microphones plugged into three of the phone jacks, and we used a guitar cord plugged into the forth phone jack to go to a Fender Showman head driving two single 15" Fender tone ring cabinets for our PA. Not exactly technically correct, but it seemed to work fine for what it was. We used the bright switch on the Showman to get a little more zing out of the D130F's. Then we put the D130F's on sticks in what essentially was half a Dual Showman for each speaker, something which was ahead of its time back then.
Sometimes we used a pare of University BLC's a friend of mine had. Those actually worked surprisingly well, were a big improvement over the D130F's for vocals and would get pretty dang loud with a Showman head driving them (they were fully horn loaded). They had the advantage of having their own pole mounts and a real tweeter, too! Yahoo!
Eventually we graduated to a Bogan mixer and their 100 watt slave amps. That gear worked real good with A-7's which we would borrow or rent as needed. When we could we would replace the 511b horn that came stock with the A-7's with an Altec Lansing 311-90 sectorial horn and 288c compression driver. That combination had quite a bit more output, and made for a pretty nice little system.
Now, you can put up a pare of high end 12" powered speakers (QSC / JBL / EV, etc.) with subs and totally outclass anything we had back in the day. Amazing. I don't know what's happening at the high school dances or even if they still have them. But I think the kids are doing okay!
We didn't have tuners back in the day in the day, and in the 70s playing clubs we were sometimes impaired by drugs or alcohol so we were just tuning by year
And music stands that fell over......"it's a Hamilton"
He probably thought about it, friendly guy but verrrry picky. I only filled in a few dates - as not really in his band
The answer I believe is that gear doesn't make music, you do.
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