Painting Pictures On A Wall Of Noise

I was met with skepticism and some annoyance when Craig took me to his first practice with the new band. He and Randy were recruited by an existing band when their lead guitarist/ primary vocalist quit the business because... wait for it... he was losing his hearing. These guys didn't understand why Craig insisted on a sound man out front. They'd never had one before. Well, according to Craig, they sounded like crap before, and he wasn't willing to sound like crap along with them. They agreed because Craig wouldn't do it otherwise - or so he said. Suddenly I was in charge of bringing out the vocals and instrumental solos so that they could be heard over a thick wall of noise that started with Dave's booming drums (not a finesse player) Holt's 80s Van Halen style guitar licks, Jimmy's bass, cranked up to be heard over the aforementioned, and Randy's organ, cranked up even more. I had a twelve-channel mixing board with which I could minimize subordinate noise and maximize what was important to hear. I insisted on coming to rehearsals to learn the songs from my perspective while they were learning to perform them. After hearing Craig talk about them before, I was expecting something really awful. Truth is, they were okay - not at all excellent, but okay.

We practiced in an acoustically augmented garage at Jimmy's house. The former High Tide guys taught Craig and Randy a bunch of stuff High Tide had been playing for years. At one point, Craig stopped the music. "That isn't right," he said. He played the section of the song the way is was supposed to be. Jimmy lept to the defense. "We learned it right off the record," he said. Evidently, there was a skip in the record, and they learned the skip. Hmmmm. Then, Craig and Randy taught Dave, Jimmy and Holt some Doobie Brothers, some Springsteen, some Christopher Cross... and this was much more time-consuming. Craig would be ready to move on, and the High Tide boys were still in the weeds. Holt said,"Can we go through that one more time before we forget it?" Craig retorted, "Why don't we forget it now and save time."

In a few weeks the new band, named "Streettalk" was ready to test its wings. High Tide had had an intermittent gig at The Causeway Lounge in Vero Beach. Streettalk was ready to pick up where High Tide had left off. So, one Sunday afternoon in September we hauled all of the instruments and PA equipment into the Causeway and began setting up. My mixer was in the back corner, with a sixteen-cable "snake" running to the stage. Each musician set up his own vocal mic and whatever else - Dave's drums, Holt's fancy amp, Craig's regular amp and Jimmy's bass amp all had microphones on them to carry the sound to the mains - huge speakers run through a fancy main amplifier and equalizer - all owned by rich kid Holt. I was looking forward to a sound check so I could equalize the sound, but rich kid Holt had a fancier technology than crappy old human ears. He had a thing that shot pink noise, a full-frequency hiss, through the mains, and an electronic doohickey that received the noise and told him how to set the equalizer. The noise had to be REALLY LOUD, like a jet engine, and it had to go on for like fifteen or twenty minutes. Very annoying. Then they could turn on all of the microphones and do a sound check. It would sound okay. The first time out I tried to bump up the upper mid range, but Holt stopped me. The doohickey said it was right, he believed the doohickey, he owned the equalizer. I learned to live with it.

Most of our gigs were at the Causeway. We had a devoted following, some of whom showed up wherever we played - well, not usually at weddings - but we were considered the House Band at the Causeway. Jimmy was the star of the show, with his dick nose and glasses, his double entendre jokes and other classy stuff. His bass playing was pretty good, and he sang well enough. The most memorable song he sang was one he wrote called Arkansas Woman, which became even more memorable four years later when I married an Arkansas Woman.


Dave considered himself leader of the band. He was a mediocre drummer at best, loud and a bit erratic. There were five or six songs where you could just expect him to drop a beat or add one in. Craig described him as "one beat off." Craig does not have a reputation for being nice.


Randy was lazy. He was lead singer on maybe fifteen songs when we started out. By the time I left the band, ten months later, he was down to about two a night. He played his keyboard sporadically, and most of the time he just stood there looking bored.

Craig hated being in this band, being identified with them - but he loves to play guitar and he loves to sing. I got bored listening to most of their stuff, but when Craig played and sang Layla, it all seemed worth it somehow. He liked having me there because I got his humor. Sometimes it was a word change in a song; sometimes it was a comment between songs; sometimes it was a guitar lick. He would look out at me, I'd be laughing, and he'd know that at least one person in the room paid attention and got the joke.

The wall of noise became apparent to me one night at the Causeway when their first song of the night was some raucus number, but all I could hear was loud, just incredibly, paralyzingly loud. I had no control of vocals or instruments. I ran to the front and tried to listen to the mains, but I couldn't really hear anything distinctly above the loud. Then Holt had a light bulb light up over his head. He turned to his left and hit the switch to the main amplifier. Suddenly, the sound was much better. Even louder, but much better. What I had been hearing had been unamplified drums, and the individual amps of the bass and two guitars on stage. Vocals and organ were only audible from the onstage monitors for them to hear themselves and each other - which is why they didn't realize the mains weren't on. I realized just how freakin' loud they were: durn loud.

We played one gig at a health club. We were supposed to play outside, but it started raining as we were setting up. We moved inside to a smallish room with mirrors all around the walls. I believe that if there hadn't been fifty people in there to absorb some of the sound, we would have blown the mirrors off the walls. That sound was ridiculously horrendously loud and completely uncontrollable.

One of my favorite weeks at the Causeway was the week Craig had laryngitis. He felt well enough to stand up there and play the guitar, but he had absolutely no voice. He sang lead on a lot of the songs, sure, but he sang harmony parts on ALL of the songs. He sings in my range, so I plugged his vocal mic into the board back in my corner and sang all of his harmony parts all week. That was great fun. The guys were almost willing to risk trying me out to sing lead on a few songs, but chickened out. It was weird to think about a song being sung from the back of the room. But then, weeks later I wrote a song called "Dem Sound Man Blues" one night when they were just jamming around some blues licks for fun. After that, "Dem Sound Man Blues" was usually included sometime during the week.

It was always assumed back in '82 that the band members were druggies. Once, on a break out back of the Causeway, a scruffy-looking kid sidled up to Craig and said, "Hey, Man, you wanna buy a bag of buds?" Craig, with a sly smile, said, "No, thanks, I don't drink."

At about the same time that we joined Streettalk, Craig and I went to my dad and inquired as to whether Craig could join the staff of Emerson Art Service. So for about ten months, Craig and I worked together from 9:00 am until 1:00 am. Craig stayed with EAS until the business was sold in '88, and stayed on with the new owner for a while after that. I haven't seen him since the early double-naught years. Sometimes I miss that boy. He's a very funny guy.

After I left, Mike from the theatre handled sound for a while. Then I think they just flew without a sound person. They played the Elks Club on New Year's Eve 1983. The geezers in there hated it. They said it was too loud! They were just sitting there looking miserable for four hours. The guys in the band hated playing to an unresponsive and even hostile audience. After it was over the guy that hired them paid them. "Wow, that was great!" he said. "I'd like to go ahead and book you for next year." This came as quite a shock. "Gee, I don't think so," they said. "I'll pay you a thousand dollars more than this!" he said. What could they say? "Okay." The next year the Elks hated them just as much, and the guys were sure it was their last Elks New Year's Eve. But the same guy did the same thing - begged them to come back for even more money. Finally, they had to dissolve the band to get out of playing for the Elks.