Sound man recognized for 70's wizardy

[mikebake]

http://www.columbusdispatch.com/features-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/06/08/20060608-B4-00.html

[BMWCCA]

Hey! I must have been there that "fateful night":

Heil can pinpoint the date he made it in rock ’n’ roll. It was a fateful night in 1970 when he found himself on the opposite end of a phone line with Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia.

The psychedelic rock band had arrived in St. Louis without its sound equipment and was desperately looking for something to borrow for a show.I heard the Dead play several times in St. Louis during that period. As far as I know every time they came. I can remember one show at Webster College in a gym with folding bleachers where there may have been only 200 in the audience. Another at Washington University in the quadrangle behind Brookings Hall (headquarters building for the 1904 World's Fair). The Dead were under the small bandshell, the sparse crowd was under the huge trees and a blanket of stars. Dark Star that night was particularly beautiful and I'll never forget it.

Any way to find out at exactly which concert Heil first supplied The Dead? Venue? Date? Pretty interesting stuff. Certainly effected my musical appreciation back then.

Edit: Allow me to answer my own question. It was the Fox Theater! St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/87DB149F75234E9C86257168001B9643?OpenDocument)
More here (http://www.eqmag.com/story.asp?sectioncode=36&storycode=14087) including some JBL content.
I gets even more interesting here (http://db.etree.org/shninfo_detail.php?shnid=17809) where speculation is that the speakers were JBL.

[boputnam]

Intersting links - thanks. I've got a few board tapes from early 70's at The Fox, but not that 1970 show (for obvious reasons...).

Enjoyed reading his comments on pioneering work with stage monitors. I'd swear we used a Heil console in about 1979-80. Rented it from a place in ABQ. No-one had ever seen one before, and it was by-far the best gear we had stumbled onto - even had a (one) monitor send! We used it for an outdoor festival where I was running sound at FOH and was lead-singer! Nightmare... Anyway, I borrowed the manual a few days before and got some ideas. I routed the monitor send back to stage and into my Pioneer SX-9100 to two little Altec Corona (bookshelf) speakers and we had our first monitors!! Took some pretty funky cabling, but it worked. You can see the monitors in these old pics...

[morbo!]

Id like too hear from someone
Who was hit by one of the renagade mics launched by daultry!

[sdaniel]

LOL