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The Coasters

Classic Rock 'n Roll

Technical Stuff

The only information I had about this show the day before was the fact that it was 5 singers and a band. We knew approximately what time they were supposed to show up. Well, since this was the second show the Coasters were doing the same day, they were at the mercy of traffic. The band showed up first with their instruments. Drums, keyboards, bass and guitar backed up the vocals. Once all the members of the band had set up their instruments, we got to do about 3 minutes of checking the sound. There was 1 monitor mix allocated to the band members, and a separate mix for the singers.

We set up direct inputs for bass and keyboard, and mikes for the guitar amp and drums. Five wireless mikes were set up for the vocalists. We had no chance to do a sound check with the vocals, so we had to wing it.  This is typical of the "festival" type events.

Review

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 people showed up for this concert. It's possible that the size of the crowd was in part due to the fact that the concert was free. It's also possible that many people showed up for the fireworks after the show. But, from the reaction of the crowd to the performance, nobody ignored The Coasters.

They put on a fantastic show. It's a good thing that we used the wireless mikes, since the lead singer decided to spend a good portion of the show wandering around in the crowd. We never really got to speak to them before they went on, or after the show started, but it seemed as though they were having a great time performing. The energy level was through the roof!

The longest sojourn into the audience was during "Searchin'". They must have repeated the chorus about 10 times because the trip through the audience was taking so long. He was stopping to kiss, hug, and have his picture taken with hundreds of people. It really got the audience NUTS.

They continued to do all of the great Coasters hits, and a bunch of others. They did "Yakkity yak", "Charlie Brown", and all of the other favorites. Even people who weren't around in the Coasters' heyday were having a good time. They were on stage for about 90 minutes, then left as abruptly as they appeared.

This was a perfect example of the "leave them wanting more" approach. The audience LOVED it.

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