The biggest venue I ever sang in was the Pontiac Silverdome - where the Detroit Lions used to play. We had a connection to the promotions director for the Detroit Pistons, who used to play at the Silverdome, where they basically curtained off a corner of the football field, brought in some temporary seating (nice and cushioned, unlike the rest of the seats) and laid down the floor there. Pistons played there at least 10 years. Here's what it looked like: http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/multimedia/photo_gallery/0901/history.jan29/images/detroit-pistons.jpg

Anyhow, we had a halftime song and post-game concert. In the image above, you can see the curtain as the large black squares in the left side of the image. We set up behind that.

We brought our own gear which was sized for church sanctuaries that held maybe a max of 300 people, and here we were in a stadium that seats 80,000. Let's just say we were underpowered. Our mains consisted of two sets of Bose 80x speakers, one set with the wood cases and another with the injection molded cases. Good ol Peavey amps - can't remember the models.

To get the sound off of the floor and up perhaps 10 rows so scaffolding had been erected and folks from the Silverdome placed those 801/802 (not sure about the model numbers) on top of the scaffolding resting on the pole mounts, so the speakers angled up a little farther.

We were kids in high school. We are on the floor of the Silverdome where the Lions played. Do you think someone brought a football to that gig? Of course.

Someone goes long, catches a pass, and bumps into the scaffolding.

Now, the 801 is way front heavy because of it being loaded with 8 very heavy 4" diameter speakers on it's face - kind of a small line array in a box. http://www.musicmagic.biz/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Bose-801-after.jpg

It starts rocking - nobody sees this of course. A few seconds later, it plummets to the stadium floor and explodes into about a million pieces. This was the injection molded case version. I can tell you that the magnets in the speakers remained intact and we had 8 really strong magnets to mess around with after that.

Why the stadium guys didn't strap those down, I'll never know. But someone could have easily gotten killed by that. Those 801s weighed probably 40-50lb each.

We never sang there again. Promotions guy went on to be the TV production guy for the Pistons at the Palace, a purpose built arena with a killer built-in drop from the ceiling stage. We never sang there either (the choir is STILL going after all these years).

Last edited by rockstar_not; 05/06/14 06:42 AM.
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