Things we didn't know or do in the 60's and 70's

[charlie monroe]

That's an awesome bill and I love the Tralf! I grew up in the Buffalo area. My Tralf highlight was seeing Hot Tuna there, but that was only about 10 years ago

I was at that show.

If you don’t know Jorma, you don’t know jack...

 

[Stewie26]

If we did so many things wrong, how come we made the best music of the century?

Because we used Coil Cords! Can't make the best music of the century without 'em!
View attachment 3486667

We use to call these Telephone Cords. Great for pulling Mic stands down as you move around the stage.

 

[GretschWretch]

Because we didn't have the Internet.

I built my first speaker using formulas from a book, that turned out to be wrong. It was the only book I could find in the entire library system.

I restored an upright bass with absolutely zero books or guidance, save for a violin making book from a past century.

Some things are better now.

Was it Heron-Allen's book?

 

[fdeck]

There was no vintage basses. We called them used basses.

I remember when a 70s Fender bass was considered to be a basic entry level bass, and a raw material for upgrades. Now the same basses are "vintage."

 

[LBS-bass]

View attachment 3486799

Lol. Someone young always posts this when older people reminisce. Enjoy your youth. Hate to break it to you but it will be gone before you know it.

 

[Richland123]

Learning and playing every Chicago song that came out with a 3 piece guitar, bass, and drum band with no horns or keyboards and not caring how it sounded.

 

[Stewie26]

In the 60s we learned songs off a transistor radio -- something about the size of three cellphones stacked one atop the other.

Yea, but trying to figure out the low bass lines of a favorite song was hard to do with those tiny speakers.

 

[buldog5151bass]

Two words.


Polarity switch.

 

[btmpancake]

I'm quite sure I used a instrument cable for a speaker cable and vice-versa. They looked the same.
I didn't know you weren't suppose to set your beers on top of your amp. Never had a problem with my Peaveys being ash trays either.
I really didn't understand Ohms and impedances-just plug and play, either it works or it don't and the magic blue smoke would let you know somethings wrong.

 

[Richland123]

Being forced to join the musician's union as a high school kid. The union did not like that fact that my band was playing at school, church, and fire hall dances for kids and threatened to black ball us if we did not join the union. We went to a union meeting and they sent us to another room to talk about us and what instruments we played. Then they voted on if they wanted us to join the union, which they did. Interestingly, if a vocalist just sang and did not play an instrument, they could not join the musician's union and were not considered musicians. Those vocalists were permitted to play with union musician's but union musicians were not permitted to play with non-union musicians. If a vocalist played percussion instruments or harmonica, they could join the union.

 

[Stewie26]

I am grateful for the improvement in live sound. Note that: GRATEFUL. So I get really, really aggravated when bandmates or someone in a band I am watching gets all bent out of shape when their monitors are not perfect. "More vocal! Less guitar! More bass" and whatever.

Like many of you I can still recall singing without monitors. Trying to "cheat up" close to the VocalMaster columns. (How did one drummer I played with sing so well without being able to hear himself?) I can even recall the first time I encountered a monitor!

Now it's everyone waving and screaming at the sound man for changes in their individual monitor mixes.

Krikey, be happy you can hear yourself at all.

Yep...no monitors at all. SOP for singers was covering up one ear with one hand and listening to the stage sound with the other ear and doing a balancing mix in your center brain.

 

[SoulReflection]

We didn't know basses needed to be set-up. We just played them.
We assumed intonation had been done at the factory.
We had two cords. We used them interchangeably between speaker and instrument.
We didn't carry a spare bass. If we needed to change a string we had drum solos.
We thought a 15" folded horn could be used full-range. We didn't need anything over 300 Hz. anyway.
We didn't know you couldn't put any speaker in any cab, so we put a JBL or an EV in everything- It didn't matter which model. In 1978 we decided Fender bass cabinets sucked (they did), and we took out the speakers and put them in TL 606 cabs. This was the single biggest improvement in bass sound since the invention of the electric bass.(not including the Fridge, which is still cool)

If we did so many things wrong, how come we made the best music of the century?

Being a dinosaur, this is a subject near and dear to my heart...I will be following this one ...thanks @Paulabass for posting.

 

[GretschWretch]

From the perspective of now, for a lot of us this pretty much could sum it up.

 

[wmhill]

we didn't know that you couldn't play through a non-true-bypass pedal

 

[LBS-bass]

Two words.


Polarity switch.

The antidote to the ground lift adapter!

 

[LBS-bass]

Yep...no monitors at all. SOP for singers was covering up one ear with one hand and listening to the stage sound with the other ear and doing a balancing mix in your center brain.

For some of us that whole no monitors thing extended well into the 90's. Well, I had monitors with bands I was in previous to this, but for whatever reason this band I sang with never rented monitors for these kinds of little shows. CD release party. He has it at 2000 and I think it's more like 1999. Still sounded pretty good.

 

[IamBF]

We didn't have digital tuners, and we couldn't afford a Peterson strobe tuner, so we tuned to each other.

A very important point.

 

[*ToNeS*]

Lol. Someone young always posts this when older people reminisce. Enjoy your youth. Hate to break it to you but it will be gone before you know it.

Friend, I will be 35 in August. I do not understand Xanax rap, nor do I enjoy it on any level whatsoever. But if I _ever_ turn into the musician equivalent of Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino like some of these subaudible misers, I will be taking a whole lot of Xanax.

 

[Haroldo]

Being forced to join the musician's union as a high school kid. The union did not like that fact that my band was playing at school, church, and fire hall dances for kids and threatened to black ball us if we did not join the union. We went to a union meeting and they sent us to another room to talk about us and what instruments we played. Then they voted on if they wanted us to join the union, which they did. Interestingly, if a vocalist just sang and did not play an instrument, they could not join the musician's union and were not considered musicians. Those vocalists were permitted to play with union musician's but union musicians were not permitted to play with non-union musicians. If a vocalist played percussion instruments or harmonica, they could join the union.

Something very similar happened to our high school band as well. I do not remember any of the details, but was favorably disposed towards the Zappa tune 'Rudy Wants to Buy Yez a Drink' as a result.

 

[Richland123]

Our guitar player had a pitch pipe just like this one and we all tuned to it.