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[Larry Robbins]

This is a roadie free radio  interview with Bill and  John Kane who has been documenting his work.
https://youtu.be/Lrqx1Achomo

[Rob Spence]

This is a roadie free radio  interview with Bill and  John Kane who has been documenting his work.
https://youtu.be/Lrqx1Achomo

Awesome!

I have met Bill a few times. Thanks for posting.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[Ivan Beaver]

Many people today have no idea how hard it was to put together a system back in those days.

It is VERY easy these days, with much better tools.

[Bob Leonard]

The Balaroo skating rink was very popular, and very old. It's where my parents first met, and where we used to skate in the early 60's, and I remember the organ well.

[Scott Holtzman]

Many people today have no idea how hard it was to put together a system back in those days.

It is VERY easy these days, with much better tools.

Some of us are old enough to remember though I had never heard the term "footlight" monitor before I listened to the interview.

To me Prism was the turning point where you could spec an arena touring grade system and buy into the business.  Before that providers differentiated themselves with their systems.

Pay to play is a new concept.  You do still need skill and experience to operate it.

[Art Welter]

Some of us are old enough to remember though I had never heard the term "footlight" monitor before I listened to the interview.
To me Prism was the turning point where you could spec an arena touring grade system and buy into the business.  Before that providers differentiated themselves with their systems.

Pay to play is a new concept.  You do still need skill and experience to operate it.

Scott,

Funny how popular footlights were, and then seemed to almost vanish from rock and roll once “footlight monitors” took up all the down stage real estate. With in ear monitors more popular, footlights are making there way back.

By the mid 1980’s there were a variety of viable “pay to play” systems available from EAW, JBL, Martin, Meyers, Turbosound, and some others capable of arena touring, though the largest national touring companies  were still using their own proprietary systems.

Don't know if by "Prism" you are referring to ShowCo’s Prism systems, but as far as I know they were proprietary cabinets owned only by ShowCo until Clair bought ShowCo around the turn of last century. At that time Clair had recently developed their own line arrays, and were phasing out of the “S4 era” that had lasted from the 1970s, as the “Line Array Era” ushered in in 1992 by L’ Acoustic’s VDosc systems had already took hold big time along with the preponderance of ever increasing video production.

The 1986+ era Prism systems were the first large scale vertically rigged systems using a variety of different, but same size cabinet types to result in a scalable, more uniform vertical array dispersion with enough horsepower to cover stadiums.

Art

[Scott Holtzman]

Scott,

Funny how popular footlights were, and then seemed to almost vanish from rock and roll once “footlight monitors” took up all the down stage real estate. With in ear monitors more popular, footlights are making there way back.

By the mid 1980’s there were a variety of viable “pay to play” systems available from EAW, JBL, Martin, Meyers, Turbosound, and some others capable of arena touring, though the largest national touring companies  were still using their own proprietary systems.

Don't know if by "Prism" you are referring to ShowCo’s Prism systems, but as far as I know they were proprietary cabinets owned only by ShowCo until Clair bought ShowCo around the turn of last century. At that time Clair had recently developed their own line arrays, and were phasing out of the “S4 era” that had lasted from the 1970s, as the “Line Array Era” ushered in in 1992 by L’ Acoustic’s VDosc systems had already took hold big time along with the preponderance of ever increasing video production.

The 1986+ era Prism systems were the first large scale vertically rigged systems using a variety of different, but same size cabinet types to result in a scalable, more uniform vertical array dispersion with enough horsepower to cover stadiums.

Art

Yes, I should have been more specific and mentioned the Showco boxes.  I thought they sold them to other providers.  I was very young, impressionable and probably inebriated in the mid 80's.  The first time I heard/saw the boxes was for ZZ Top's Eliminator show.  That would have been more like 84.

In an odd turn of events I ended up meeting JC  last year, ZZ Top's engineer in that era (early 80's) while he was out with another artist.  Thankfully he remembered the tour and had some great stories from the Showco hay days.

[Dave Pluke]

Yes, I should have been more specific and mentioned the Showco boxes.  I thought they sold them to other providers.  I was very young, impressionable and probably inebriated in the mid 80's.  The first time I heard/saw the boxes was for ZZ Top's Eliminator show.  That would have been more like 84.

Well, if you ever get nostalgic, here you go!

https://clairusedgear.com/collections/speaker-cabinets/products/showco-prism-blue

Dave

[Scott Holtzman]

Well, if you ever get nostalgic, here you go!

https://clairusedgear.com/collections/speaker-cabinets/products/showco-prism-blue

Dave

I think I would be divorced if I bought those.  The multipin's on the back of the cabinets would not survive two riggings with my current crew.  How many tons of cable did you have to carry on a large deployment?

On the good side Clair understands their market.  Thanks for the web link as they have t-shirts in fat guy sizes.  I ordered one!