Fred Thomas <vafred@erols.com> asked:
Why clubs as well as promotors have to BLAST out all that loud rock music
at car shows ? What does loud music have to do with showing nice cars with
a lot of nice people to talk to about all of our cars?
Dear Fred.
As a car show promoter for well over 25 years, I can say that music is a
integral part of what we do. I also have a Masters in Radio/TV/Sound
recording/communications from San Francisco State and learned a bit about
programing as well.
Music adds excitement, kind of a carnival atnosphere and fills in the dead
spots. Over the years, I have learned a few things that are not being done
by people who have more recently got into the game.
1) NEVER blast out music. Try to keep it low enough so people can hear
themselves think! I try to keep the sound system at one end of the field
where the stage or staging area is and set the level so that the music
fades away about four rows of cars back. We still occationally get
complaints but I usually can explain away the ruckus or will allow the
complainer to reposition his car in another place on the field.
2)Older folks lose the ability to completely hear both higher and lower
frequency tones and music can actually cause all of the midrange sounds to
blurr into an unintelligible rumble. At 49, this is starting to happen to
me. For this reason, I try not to send too much sound into the vendor
areas. It can be confusing and annoying.
3) The choice of music is critical. Part of this is catering to people's
taste and part of it is trying to match the music to the ambiance or tone
of the event. The blasting rock music is a product of the "Oldies but
Goodies" formats that are blasted into American old car events as the
promotors are usually looking for that American Grafitti/Happy Daze feeling
that most of their participants wish that they were still experiencing. Rod
and Race car shows seem to be fond of the Heavy Metal Light that often
backgrounds race track PA systems and is used in Speedvision and ESPN
racing programs. This is to appeal to the "young folks."
I'm often asked about "British Music" and answer that the only thing that
comes to mind is Sixties oldies as this was mostly British, even here in
the US. The Beatles are great but not all day and the Stones and the Kinks(
or my favourites Long John Bauldry and Ian Drury ) get the same response as
hard rock from the oldsters.
I usually try to approximate the sounds of the fifties and early sixties
that American owners of British cars would have enjoyed - namely jazz from
the Earl Gardner, Count Basie, Stan Getz, and Dave Brubeck eras or light
classical and chamber music. It might be a bit presumptious but this
musical fare gets lots of compliments and few loudness complaints. I might
blend in light folk, blues or alternative country like Lyle Lovet, Boz
Scaggs or Cheryl Crowe later in the afternoon but this will get the old
timers going a bit.
4) I also try to hire a live band to cover at least three hours of the
show. We tried a string quartet from the San Francisco Conservatory of
Music at Palo Alto for a few years but it was drowned out by the British
exhaust blaat. Strings also sound terrible when electronicly amplified and
piped through speakers outdoors. We have had some really cool jazz bands
like an all star group from the Jazz Workshop in SF featuring Herb Gibson,
Michael Howell, and Richie Goldberg and a few swing era big bands with girl
singers and slide trombones. Tres COOL!
5) Keep it simple. Brassy, brash, jazz can be more annoying than hard rock
and overblown, full orchestration classical can cause short term memory
loss (as in the last sentence). Opera is only to be used at Italian car
meets and only as a joke!
I'm sure that there are a few of you out there that will disagree, but this
is what works for me.
See you all on the Funway! Rick Feibusch - Venice, CA
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