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A wall of fake Marshall amps? Please...


surferbeto

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Apparently KISS used to (still does?) play in front of a wall of empty, fake Marshall cabinets. To look cool. I guess I knew they were doing that in their stadium rock days, but apparently they were doing it back in their early bar days too. I know they've made a million times more money in rock n roll than I ever will, but that still seems awfully lame to me.

 

What do you think?

 

I recently saw a Youtube video of Detroit Rock City that reminded me of part of their schtick from back in the day. At the end of the song there's a fake car crash sound and the wall of fake Marshalls have a fake explosion where the faceplates pop off and various gizmos dangle down. It was kind of funny, but looked really lame.

 

Would you ever do that?

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Honestly, it's one of the least pathetically cheesy things Kiss ever did to market themselves.

 

We're a blues band, so walls of Marshall stacks on the backline isn't exactly our speed. For a metal band, however, that is marketing a big macho image it may be a necessity. You don't look very macho playing into a rack-effect unit or a Fender DRRI...

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I've seen Kiss roadies toss them bucket brigade style during load out, and I think that they admitted to it a long time ago. Seems to me that Marshall made empty cabs for them. Hey, it's a backdrop, and Kiss is musical theater, like Alice Cooper, who had more in common with Broadway, than rock and roll.

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I have a friend that does that for his metal bar band. Two full stacks with lucite panels covering three speakers in each cab, with the fourth speakers miced. The only functional part of either stack is the red power light on the head. Well, not quite, the cabs are fully functional, but the heads are dummies. His actual stage sound comes from a miced pair of Peavey Bandits that sit offstage. It's metal. Gotta have the look. And they do well enough to have roadies to move them. One thing to keep in mind; it's show business.

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Kiss is musical theater, like Alice Cooper, who had more in common with Broadway, than rock and roll.

 

 

KISS are/were comic book characters (Simmons was a big comic book fan as a teen and has admitted that was a major influence on the act).

 

Alice has discussed having roots in vaudeville and burlesque theater traditions. Yet another reason why I admire Alice way more than KISS. Anyone else catch his interview with Terri Gross on Fresh Air last year? Fascinating.

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Lots of bands have done/do this. I roadied for Y&T years ago, and their backline had 3 high by 3 wide cabinets (with the Y&T logo instead of Marshall, purportedly made by Dave Meniketti himself) on each side of the stage. Of those 9 cabs, two on each side were functional: one for Dave, one for Joey.

 

Besides....do you think all of Eddie's cabinets are on?

 

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Mike Portnoy admits in the last Dream Theater DVD that Petrucci does this too. I'd assume that most big bands that have a wall of amps do this. There's simply no need these days for a rig that big.

 

 

Even though I'm not much of a Rush fan, I admire Geddy Lee's sense of humor. "So you want to see an impressive backline eh? I"ll give you something to talk aboot. How aboot a washer and dryer, eh? Maybe a chicken rotisserie. Hell, I'll even mic 'em up for you."

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ROFLMAO!!! I'd love to see it. Clever guy, Geddy is.

 

 

 

Even though I'm not much of a Rush fan, I admire Geddy Lee's sense of humor. "So you want to see an impressive backline eh? I"ll give you something to talk aboot. How aboot a washer and dryer, eh? Maybe a chicken rotisserie. Hell, I'll even mic 'em up for you."

 

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That's pretty funny. Maybe he did it for all the little light bulbs (speaker cabs don't have 'em).


Who is that?

 

 

I think he did it for the advertising consideration from Dr Z amps. I seriously doubt that any more than two or three of them are even functional. That many tube amps in a roadshow would be a maintenance nightmare. Not to mention the unnecessary weight from all of those iron transformers involved.

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Who is that?

 

 

 

 

Brad Paisley.

 

 

He was in a recent Guitar Player interview and admitted they were props.

 

But we all know all of those backlines are props.

 

 

 

 

Speaking of Ged, I bought the latest DVD for the Snakes and Arrows tour. During the second set a dude dressed as a chicken came out and was basting the chickens during one song. Neil was laughing at him while playing through it.

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I saw a pic of a major hard metal band - it was either Megadeth or Slayer if I remember it right. You could clearly see the cones in some of the cabinets from the angle of the lighting - and clearly see that others were totally empty. Not different cones, etc - empty.

 

I'm positive you'd never convince most fans of that. I'm also positive that's why we have so many guitarists with full stacks in clubs.

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