Beaten Purple in the Purple People Seater
By Barry Bozeman
The phone rang loudly at 11pm on a Friday night in my suite in the Eden Roc on Miami Beach. The road manager for the Oak Ridge Boys was on the other end of the line. "Our sound system blew up at the Daytona Speedway this afternoon and I've been trying to reach you all day" he screamed. "We have a gig in Lake City, Florida tomorrow night and I'm going to cancel if I can't get your system there by noon tomorrow."
Mountain Sound had been speaking with the Oaks since the Knoxville Fair that fall about taking over their sound production but they had remained loyal to their original sound provider up to that point. This was in the Fall of 1980 or 81. It seems that some genius at Daytona had plugged in the Sudecom Sound? (not sure of that name) amp racks to 220 and the result was 40 fried Crown DC amplifiers and some melted coils.
I felt badly for the Sudecom guy but a gig is a gig and we wanted the Oak Ridge Boys tour to grow our company.
"Man our system is in Knoxville and it's a minimum 20 hours before we can get it down to Lake City and we can't even rent and load a truck until Monday morning" I said "When is the next gig after that?"
"We don't play again till Wednesday in Sarasota with the Gatlin Brothers" he replied, "Are you sure you can't help us out in Lake City?"
"Hang on. I've got one idea and I will call you back in an hour and let you know what I can do." I replied. "We can definitely be in Sarasota on Wednesday and we can handle the rest of your 13 date tour from there."
I remembered meeting a sound company owner in Fort Lauderdale the previous year. I tried to find the number for JM Sound and got the wife who told me they would be arriving back at the shop around 1am from that night's gig. We climbed into my rental car and drove north just in time to catch them pulling into the warehouse with the loaded truck.
"Don't unload that truck" I called and after a brief negotiation we turned the truck and rental car toward Lake City after I reached the Oaks manager and told him he didn't have to cancel anything.
The gig in Lake City went well and the Oak's manager was pleased. Our guys in Knoxville were getting prepped to leave for Sarasota on Tuesday so we would be set for the gig at the:
THE PURPLE PEOPLE SEATER
3 nights later we had a Mountain Sound system set up for the Oak Ridge Boys at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Auditorium in Sarasota. The Van Wezel's website claims:
"The Van Wezel strives to ensure that all people, regardless of ability, can enjoy our ... with a hearing loss of up to 75% to hear a program from any seat in the auditorium." and that is absolutely true.
The Oak Ridge Boys were booked into the Van Wezel as part of a season long series of shows featuring people like Guy Lombardo and Joan Rivers with a few musical's thrown in. I guess they thought the Oaks were a vocal quartet singing at barbershop volume, but they had morphed into a country rock band with some fairly serious amplification. OK so the Oak Ridge Boys were not what we would call Southern Rock but they were not some unamplified vocal group.
Like the QE2 story earlier this crowd was almost all retirees and octogenarians, who entered the auditorium slowly on scooters or with walkers and canes.
By the middle of the first softer set the only thing coming through the sound system was the vocals and it was still quite loud for the acoustically perfect auditorium. The crowd was getting restless and we heard cries of "Too Loud" or "Turn it down".
I was back at the mixing console with the Oaks soundman when we were approached by an elderly red faced patron waving a rather stout cane with a metal head. "Turn the damn sound down" he yelled and commenced to wailing away at my head with his cane. I took a nice blow on the left shoulder that left and ugly bruise before I told him "Hey we are the lighting guys and we just control the lights!!!".
What was I going to do? Punch out a great-grandfather in a house full of great-grandfathers?
The crowd thinned pretty rapidly and it was a less that comfortable beginning for our first tour with the Oak Ridge Boys. Luckily we did not encounter another booking like that on the tour.
By the way I never saw anything like the line of women outside the hotel rooms of the Oak Ridge Boys bass singer. I swear they were taking numbers and lining up.
Barry Bozeman - part owner and President of Mountain Sound - on the Oak Ridge Boys in Florida in 1980 -81
Barry Bozeman
