Post by mitchfit on Jul 14, 2024 23:06:08 GMT
many years back, itself related about seeing an amazing concert here @ MM.com that the Who gave at the Cow Palace in San Fransisco over a half century ago. looked back in the archive some, but couldn't recover my original posting. so here goes again--
("Quadrophonic sound"--four channels instead of the two used for "stereo"--was new then, and never really caught on. it's really quite a shame. if you ever heard Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Lucky Man" in quad you'd know why)
it was a bad night from the get-go for Townshend. was the Who's first attempt to play Quadrophenia live. from the stage performer view, speaker A would have been on the right. speaker B would have been forward and to the right. speaker C would have been forward left. D would have been on stage left side.
Pete had started shouting down to the roadies early on, and pointing at speaker C which was making some bad crackling noises when pushed hard. after many more times of this, the roadies were even tearing loose the gaffers tape that fixed the wires for speaker C to the floor of the venue. guessing this was the first time the opposite side of the Palace had a need to hang speakers from the ceiling. at some point in the night, the sound improved some, but was never quite right
had thought before that night the beginning intro for "Don't Get Fooled Again" was some kinda keyboard synth product, not true. Pete had 5 Les Paul guits in stands on the stage, each one had a 6-ish inch tall white numbers stenciled on the front, 1 through 5. one of them, #3 IIRC was wired into an attache case sized box that sat upon a chair on the stage. it must have been programmed to begin the sequence of the intro after he played a 3 fingered open D chord on it and then set it back in the stand. it continued on by itself. even with the bogus C channel speaker it created an amazing new depth of sound.
Keith Moon had obvious equilibrium issues that even the audience in the same shape could easily detect. by the time he finally went over backwards on his drum seat, ole Pete had culo rojo that glowed like a stop light in the dark. same due to all the technical problems the band had encountered before then.
first, he grabbed Moon by the shoulders and shook him. then he started to slap him some. soon he was doing Townshend class "windmills" that did not manage to bring the drummer back around. after a while he was carried off stage by venue staff members.
the rest as they say is history...
when i first told this story here long ago, the silence was deafening. looked a long time afterward for some entertainment media press release as proof. nothing. <zero. could understand the doubting of story from a clown who claimed to go see a concert that wild, yet the story could NOT be verified. easily. would be hard to buy into that on face value alone. likely they had been scrubbed by then in respect for Keith Moon who died in 1978 from a massive drug overdose.
a moral to all this drivel, if one tries very hard to always stick to the truth, the truth will usually find a way to stick by your story. eventually.
NOTE PUBLICATION DATE OF VIDEO @ YOUTUBE from "Stevie's Vinyl Cupboard", two months ago:
mitchfit
("Quadrophonic sound"--four channels instead of the two used for "stereo"--was new then, and never really caught on. it's really quite a shame. if you ever heard Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Lucky Man" in quad you'd know why)
it was a bad night from the get-go for Townshend. was the Who's first attempt to play Quadrophenia live. from the stage performer view, speaker A would have been on the right. speaker B would have been forward and to the right. speaker C would have been forward left. D would have been on stage left side.
Pete had started shouting down to the roadies early on, and pointing at speaker C which was making some bad crackling noises when pushed hard. after many more times of this, the roadies were even tearing loose the gaffers tape that fixed the wires for speaker C to the floor of the venue. guessing this was the first time the opposite side of the Palace had a need to hang speakers from the ceiling. at some point in the night, the sound improved some, but was never quite right
had thought before that night the beginning intro for "Don't Get Fooled Again" was some kinda keyboard synth product, not true. Pete had 5 Les Paul guits in stands on the stage, each one had a 6-ish inch tall white numbers stenciled on the front, 1 through 5. one of them, #3 IIRC was wired into an attache case sized box that sat upon a chair on the stage. it must have been programmed to begin the sequence of the intro after he played a 3 fingered open D chord on it and then set it back in the stand. it continued on by itself. even with the bogus C channel speaker it created an amazing new depth of sound.
Keith Moon had obvious equilibrium issues that even the audience in the same shape could easily detect. by the time he finally went over backwards on his drum seat, ole Pete had culo rojo that glowed like a stop light in the dark. same due to all the technical problems the band had encountered before then.
first, he grabbed Moon by the shoulders and shook him. then he started to slap him some. soon he was doing Townshend class "windmills" that did not manage to bring the drummer back around. after a while he was carried off stage by venue staff members.
the rest as they say is history...
when i first told this story here long ago, the silence was deafening. looked a long time afterward for some entertainment media press release as proof. nothing. <zero. could understand the doubting of story from a clown who claimed to go see a concert that wild, yet the story could NOT be verified. easily. would be hard to buy into that on face value alone. likely they had been scrubbed by then in respect for Keith Moon who died in 1978 from a massive drug overdose.
a moral to all this drivel, if one tries very hard to always stick to the truth, the truth will usually find a way to stick by your story. eventually.
NOTE PUBLICATION DATE OF VIDEO @ YOUTUBE from "Stevie's Vinyl Cupboard", two months ago:
mitchfit
