Some low-light concert moments:

Miles Davis early 70's at Masonic Temple in Detroit - much anticipated show from the late Bitches Brew/On The Corner period. The band was hot but Miles was so drunk he could barely stand up. They did three songs and left the stage to a chorus of boos and derision from the audience. They returned for an "encore" without the percussionist, who flatly refused to come back on stage (Miles had staggered over to him just before the end of the third song, tried to give him the bro' handslap that was popular at the time, which he refused, and promptly walked off for the night). During the encore, Miles' pants actually started to fall down and it was touch & go whether or not he was gonna expose himself to the entire audience. The excuse in the paper the following day said something about him mixing painkillers with alcohol.

Big Brother and the Holding Company, late 60's at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit - As powerful and soulful as was Janis's performance, the band was as lame as I've ever seen - tempos that were all over the place, unbelievably out-of-tune guitars the entire night (I mean like quartertones off - imagine chewing aluminum foil for 60 minutes with a mouth full of cavities), and an all-over-the-map disjointedness as a group; the antithesis of ensemble playing.

There's loud and then there's distortion loud - the more distortion, the more it grates the ears/body/mind. Three shows that were loud beyond reason were:

1) The Electric Prunes at the Grande Ballroom in the late 60's (they used a wall of Acoustic 260s with those horrible high frequency horns that were nothing more than cheap, outdoor public address system components - with the transistorized amps treble settings on "10" for every instrument);

2) Blue Cheer at the Grande Ballroom (they apologized for not being able to fit all of their Marshall amplifier stacks on stage - this is the band that was so loud they had to record their album on an outdoor pier in San Francisco) and

3) Sonic's Rendezvous Band at the 5th Dimension in Ann Arbor in 1979 (Fred Sonic Smith's post MC5 project featuring the local legend Scott Morgan of Rationals fame on vocals/guitar/flute and Scott Asheton of The Stooges on drums - this was a club gig and their P.A. was so loud in the bottom end it was giving me heart palpitations!).

Clark Pardee

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