Bands played at every conceivable opportunity: weddings, Legions, dance halls, malls, rodeos and fairs. If you watch “Walk the Line” and “The Buddy Holly Story” you’ll see that bands even played in bowling alleys and roller rinks. When I used to hang around the hall (McDougall Hall to be precise) early to help pack in equipment I would watch the revelers show up in every conceivable conveyance from dad’s Studebaker to jalopies. Later, as many guys quit school to go to work, the cars became newer and more powerful. Motorcycles were few and far between although a “chainsaw on wheels” called a Honda was making inroads and pushing away the Italian Vespa as the mode of transportation for the automobile-challenged few. (The people that rode on these were, as my father used to call them, “Beatniks.”) So the parking lot of the mid-60’s was a potpourri of automotive technologies.

Once I did stay late because the bouncer let me hide in the cloak room to watch the band. Your see the Mounties checked these dances on a regular basis and my being 13 would have constituted a major faux pas and put put a blight on future dances. After the music ended I walked out with the multitude into the glare of headlights and thrashing bodies and the inevitable sweeping cherry-red beam of the Mountie’s car. The fights had started. The fact that the combatants had taken it outside was as a direct result of the reputation of the doorman, who never tolerated such action inside.

The sound still had not caught up with the music and bands used everything from a spare amplifier to bull horns for vocal amplification. But no one expected to hear hi-fidelity. As long as the band threw in the odd slow song like “Hey Joe” for “bum-clutching” the night went well.

Except for the guitar players’ trebly addition it was a bass player’s game all the way. Because of the laws of physics - especially to do with lower frequencies - the bass was the loudest. It rumbled the floors of the old wooden band halls turning whole buildings into shaking bass bins. There were, in some cases, duels between the bass and the guitar players and they both would turn up their amps in response to each other’s sound. Soon the vocals were completely lost and the un-miked drummers could only hammer mercilessly on their chrome snares and smash their cymbals to provide some semblance of a beat. Sometimes, in rare occasions, the drums and bass were out of sync because the drummer was guessing and the bass player, usually a novice, had not learned the fine art of following the drummers’ bass drum - or kick - beat.

The only other noticeable sound from a dance of this sort was feedback. Most of the PA stuff - anything that a microphone was plugged into - was behind the singer which caused the annoying audio loop and the resulting noise even had the bass player shaking. Also, a yelp from whomever was singing usually meant that his mike was not grounded and his lips were a good conduit for a nice smack of DC from the amp. Depending on the power of the amplifier the singer could end up on his back on the stage. Flipping the ground switch on the back of the amp usually solved this.