You lost

exchemist said:
Blimey, Deep Purple! Do you need ear defenders? I think it was probably Deep Purple Douglas Adams had in mind with Disaster Area, whose “public address system contravened local strategic arms limitation treaties”.
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Yes I use ear defenders to reduce overall DB but also takes off the higher frequency.
Deep Purple for me will always be the ultimate players, no came near them.
Led Zeppelin were the ultimate studio band but live were awful, mainly down to Page and Plant.
Deep Purple Mk 2 with Gillan had the best vocalist, probably of all time, Richie Blackmore who could not only play on a different level but write too.
John Lord who invented Organ Riff, Roger Glover who thought he was shit compared to the others. It is no wonder they were all virtuoso! He was great, his live work on Child in Time, Strange Kind of Woman is amazing.
Finally Ian Paice, the drummer who changed drums for me. I only thought that technique existed in Jazz. The ultimate players.
 
exchemist said:
Didn't realise Floyd were that loud. Do you know who was Hotblack Desiato was modelled on? I know his name is actually taken from an Islington estate agent: https://hotblackdesiato.co.uk/. (I once saw the name on a For Sale sign outside a house and nearly fell over.)
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They were all loud after a certain year and certain area. We played in a pub and everywhere was wood and ceiling was low. The sound was amazing, they did not have to mike me up!
100 people max and one of the best gigs to play for a band member. No ear defenders needed and everyone could hear everything.
 
exchemist said:
Didn't realise Floyd were that loud. Do you know who was Hotblack Desiato was modelled on? I know his name is actually taken from an Islington estate agent: https://hotblackdesiato.co.uk/. (I once saw the name on a For Sale sign outside a house and nearly fell over.)
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No idea about who the character was based on, if any one person in particular, but given that the character once spent a year dead for tax reasons, it was possibly any UK music celebrity from the early 70s (when top-rate income tax was 70%-83%, and investment income reaching 98%!).
Interesting fact about the estate agents: they used to get a lot of calls from fans of the radioshow/book asking how they had the nerve to use the name for their agency! :)
 
Pinball1970 said:
They were all loud after a certain year and certain area. We played in a pub and everywhere was wood and ceiling was low. The sound was amazing, they did not have to mike me up!
100 people max and one of the best gigs to play for a band member. No ear defenders needed and everyone could hear everything.
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Did you ever play in the Half Moon in Putney?
 
exchemist said:
Blimey, Deep Purple! Do you need ear defenders? I think it was probably Deep Purple Douglas Adams had in mind with Disaster Area, whose “public address system contravened local strategic arms limitation treaties”.
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I was once booked to play a totally inappropriate venue somewhere in Latvia--the guy who did the Eastern European booking wasn't wholly familar with some of the places. It was a roughly 800 or 1000 capacity weirdly trashy-fancy place, and the crowd were all basically a bunch of Eastern European--and Finnish--frat-boy, meathead types, which was not really my audience. At least three times during the evening--because, apparently, I don't learn--I rolled a cigarette, then a girl would approach me and ask me for a cigarette, I would make her one, then her meathead boyfriend would get in my face and have to be pulled off or away from me by the staff. Funnily, the staff really liked me despite my propensity for creating chaos.

Anyways. I figured this audience weren't gonna like me no matter what, so I just played into that. Normally, at least with what a was doing at that time, volume wasn't really my thing, but this place had a decent sound system and, funnily, an off-brand old combo organ lying around that they didn't really care all that much about. So I did volume. These guys were sooo furious! It was hilarious.
 
parmalee said:
I was once booked to play a totally inappropriate venue somewhere in Latvia--the guy who did the Eastern European booking wasn't wholly familar with some of the places. It was a roughly 800 or 1000 capacity weirdly trashy-fancy place, and the crowd were all basically a bunch of Eastern European--and Finnish--frat-boy, meathead types, which was not really my audience. At least three times during the evening--because, apparently, I don't learn--I rolled a cigarette, then a girl would approach me and ask me for a cigarette, I would make her one, then her meathead boyfriend would get in my face and have to be pulled off or away from me by the staff. Funnily, the staff really liked me despite my propensity for creating chaos.

Anyways. I figured this audience weren't gonna like me no matter what, so I just played into that. Normally, at least with what a was doing at that time, volume wasn't really my thing, but this place had a decent sound system and, funnily, an off-brand old combo organ lying around that they didn't really care all that much about. So I did volume. These guys were sooo furious! It was hilarious.
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Luckily we only play in places where the people want to see us because they have bought tickets before hand.
Playing our own stuff was a different matter in the 1990s. People would just turn up to see a live band.
We did a gig with two other bands at this venue in Liverpool, "K2" I think.
Loads of people so we were quite exited.
We were on second, first band were local so all the kids knew them and went crazy.
Same crowd we came on and everyone walked off! Give us an effing chance guys, we've only played for ten seconds!
Last band also local the crowd came back.
Scousers, what are you going to do?
 
Pinball1970 said:
Luckily we only play in places where the people want to see us because they have bought tickets before hand.
Playing our own stuff was a different matter in the 1990s. People would just turn up to see a live band.
We did a gig with two other bands at this venue in Liverpool, "K2" I think.
Loads of people so we were quite exited.
We were on second, first band were local so all the kids knew them and went crazy.
Same crowd we came on and everyone walked off! Give us an effing chance guys, we've only played for ten seconds!
Last band also local the crowd came back.
Scousers, what are you going to do?
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I think in the 70s and 80s, extreme responses were much more commonplace. By the 90s, and certainly over the past couple of decades, touring networks throughout the US, the UK, Australia, Europe and Japan have become so well developed that it just doesn't happen much anymore. It's not even genre-related or anything like that--which is largely inapplicable with so much stuff anyway--it comes down to the type of people really. I've played in parts of, say, the Netherlands or Poland (I'm only mentioning these places because of specific experiences--I am in no way suggesting that this is at all more or less common in either place) where there were a lot of, well, skinheads in the area surrounding the venue--but certainly not inside the space. And they didn't strike me as the SKinheads Against Racial Prejudice type!

(OK, I'll be honest: In parts of Europe, I've encountered a LOT of skinheads, and it kind of scares the crap out me. I'm half-kike, but I look like a kike, to be honest. I don't know what the hell is going on that that is just accepted.)

I've known a few people who've spent time within elite improv touring scenes, where you're largely performing at remote homes of European multi-millionaires for a handful of seriously posh and snooty weirdos. They pay extremely well, but most people--at least the ones I know--find everything about it very depressing and gross.
 
parmalee said:
I think in the 70s and 80s, extreme responses were much more commonplace. By the 90s, and certainly over the past couple of decades, touring networks throughout the US, the UK, Australia, Europe and Japan have become so well developed that it just doesn't happen much anymore. It's not even genre-related or anything like that--which is largely inapplicable with so much stuff anyway--it comes down to the type of people really. I've played in parts of, say, the Netherlands or Poland (I'm only mentioning these places because of specific experiences--I am in no way suggesting that this is at all more or less common in either place) where there were a lot of, well, skinheads in the area surrounding the venue--but certainly not inside the space. And they didn't strike me as the SKinheads Against Racial Prejudice type!

(OK, I'll be honest: In parts of Europe, I've encountered a LOT of skinheads, and it kind of scares the crap out me. I'm half-kike, but I look like a kike, to be honest. I don't know what the hell is going on that that is just accepted.)

I've known a few people who've spent time within elite improv touring scenes, where you're largely performing at remote homes of European multi-millionaires for a handful of seriously posh and snooty weirdos. They pay extremely well, but most people--at least the ones I know--find everything about it very depressing and gross.
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We encountered some football hooligan types in Holland in the 1990s, not playing, a holiday.
95% friendly country 5% we encountered in bars, very scary indeed.
We were all a bunch of biggish guys, all Rugby lads and could handle ourselves but not against glass and knives.
We all felt very English and alone and got the hell out of there.
No blood spilt luckily.
Totally friendly in the UK at gigs by comparison, average age is probably 55!
 
Pinball1970 said:
We encountered some football hooligan types in Holland in the 1990s, not playing, a holiday.
95% friendly country 5% we encountered in bars, very scary indeed.
We were all a bunch of biggish guys, all Rugby lads and could handle ourselves but not against glass and knives.
We all felt very English and alone and got the hell out of there.
No blood spilt luckily.
Totally friendly in the UK at gigs by comparison, average age is probably 55!
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It could be that in the US, there is simply a much higher percentage of hostile and unfriendly types overall, but... You know when you're surrounded by dangerous people here, but they don't really have a look--or it's very regional, maybe. In the UK and Europe, they have a look. Whether skinheads, hooligans or whatever, they are almost immediately recognizable. That said, glass and knives are much more common in Europe and the UK--in the US, they just shoot you! I have, actually, had guns pointed at my head multiple times in the US--also in other countries, but they were always soldiers and I never really felt threatened in those situations. (Well, I have accidentally wound up in war zones and places of uprising a couple of times, but I still wasn't the target.)

Both with music and with bicycling, I have wound up in a lot of fairly remote places--well off any established tourist or traveler circuits--and that's where it gets really uncomfortable. You're either all alone, or maybe with a few sympathetic people at best, and everyone else couldn't care less about you or your welfare. Americans largely do not travel, and when they do, they don't do that kind of traveling. No matter where you are in the world, you always know where you can find other Americans. This essentially just reinforces their xenophobic attitudes.
 
On an unrelated note, why are songs that prominently feature that quarter-note cowbell thing invariably rippers? This does not apply for synthesized, sampled or modeled cowbells, of course, as the late Steve Albini keenly pointed out with respect to some stupid Loverboy song, or some such shite.

 
parmalee said:
On an unrelated note, why are songs that prominently feature that quarter-note cowbell thing invariably rippers? This does not apply for synthesized, sampled or modeled cowbells, of course, as the late Steve Albini keenly pointed out with respect to some stupid Loverboy song, or some such shite.

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I would like to guess 1970.
 
Pinball1970 said:
Close 1971, same year as Fireball.
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Some former bandmates and I used to have this thing about 1971. A shit-ton of good albums came out that year, and I think, no matters one's taste, this holds for a lot of types of music. Personally, a bunch of Krautrock stuff--Guru Guru, Can, Kraftwerk, Amon Duul II, plus countless more obscure artists, Euro-stuff generally--Magma, Supersister, et al, and obviously a lot out of the UK. Funnily, '71 wasn't that great in the US--at least for my tastes.
 
(Q) said:
Mr. G is MAGA?? BWAHAHAHAHAHA!! Hot damn, that is the funniest thing I heard today. Were you always that way or became that way from living in Floriduh too long? Or, maybe your neighbors would have you hog tied and hanging from a tree if you admitted to being a Democrat. Or, has dementia finally taken it's toll? Whatever the reason, I find it hard to believe. You're probably just trolling.
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I'm capable of trolling, damn yeah.

Picking on lesser people is not my style. Hell, yeah it is. Same as you.
 
"Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun".

2nd album: Saucer Full of Secrets

My girl-friend at the time introduced me to Meddle.

Later, Dark Side of the Moon did it all for me.

Years later, I made income producing, directing, performing laser light shows off of Dark Side of the Moon.

I was trained by the the stage producers of Santana and Jefferson Starship.

I fell into it, it all supported me for a couple decades.

It's all in the past, before your opinions could have possibly mattered. :D
 
Mr. G said:
"Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun".

2nd album: Saucer Full of Secrets
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The studio version is rather mediocre--the best versions by far are from various performances between 1967 and 1972. Also, Douglas Adams probably had some of these in mind, as they were substantively louder. There are well over 100 hundred recordings to select from, so let's limit this to soundboard, radio broadcast, and Ex or Ex- audience recordings. That still leaves us with over three dozen, so let's maybe narrow the search even further to recordings for which video also exists--now we're down to about ten.

Personally, I'd opt for the Festival Actuel (in Amougies, Belgium) recording from 25 October, 1969. Michael Gira (Swans, Angels of Light) saw this show and was particularly inspired by "Set the Controls..." and "Careful with that axe, Eugene":


This one, from Abbaye de Royaumont, France, 15 June, 1971, is also particularly good, and it also looks rather nice and Rick Wright's Azimuth Coordinator is prominently featured:


If the video is unimportant and one finds VG+ audience recordings acceptable, the Plumpton Race Track, East Sussex, UK recording from 8 August, 1969 is excellent:

 
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