Oasis v The Rolling Stones
Oasis are more often compared to the Beatles, but my comparison is with live stadium rock events.
I saw the Rolling Stones liveat Wembley Stadium on 7th July 1990. It was their Steel Wheels / Urban Jungle tour. The Stones were great but I wasn’t impressed with the sound quality.
It was very loud, and any subtleties in their music was lost by the sound blast. My impression was that the acoustics were rubbish because of the open air stadium; the sound was escaping into the sky.
As a long standing Beatles fan, I have always liked Oasis. And when I realised they were playing at the Coventry City football stadium on my birthday, I enquired about tickets.
I could only get tickets for standing on the pitch for £50 each. As this was my 55th birthday I did not fancy standing for hours on end, and quickly discarded the notion of going. I also remembered that stadium rock had a terrible sound quality anyway.
Then the day before my birthday my girlfriend phoned to say she could get two seated tickets, did I want to go? Did I ever!
Oasis were brilliant, and finished with a tribute to the Beatles playing a great version of ‘I am the walrus’.
(Click Here) for Oasis playing \’I am the Walrus\’, live at Berlin 2002
I noticed that the sound quality was excellent, and wondered whether the improved acoustics was because of the stadium design?
Coventry’s Ricoh stadium has a partial roof encircling the whole pitch. I was under the roof, so the sound was coming from the stage, and also bouncing back down onto me from the roof and walls.
Or has technology and speaker design improved substantially over the last 19 years?
Perhaps it is a combination of both? But if there are any other live music fans who has a theory? I would be glad to hear your comments.
No theories, I’m afraid, John, but I enjoyed the post, thanks. I sing in churches and cathedrals around the country and we are always commenting on the difference in both sound, and how difficult it is to perform, in certain settings, so I certainly agree that not only the design of a building, but the material used to create it, does indeed affect accoustics.
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
That's very interesting Mandy. Your choir is always the same, but different buildings effect the sound quality. It was probably the new Ricoh Stadium design that made the difference, and not improved speakers. I can sleep at night now.
John[Reply]