Programme Audio was housed in the Main Street Music building at 102 East Main Street, Greenfield, IN.  Their specialty was bluegrass & country shows, from the smallest to the largest.  P.A. worked in CO, CT, and most every state in between.  1978 and '79 were the "big" years.

Bluegrass Festival of the United States, Louisville, KY.  It was held on the public plaza atop the Gault House Hotel's sizable parking garage.   Attendance was estimated to be over twenty thousand people at any one time, and well over one-hundred thousand during the course of the three day event.  All the guys looked forward to this one.  The first year P.A. did the BFotUS, Saturday night was closed out by Norman Blake on violin, and his wife Nancy on cello.  Now, over twenty years later, it still ranks as the most amazing set of music I have ever heard.

(The sort-of-line array pictured above worked quite well.  The boss thought it looked cool - he didn't know he was a pioneer.)

This early morning photo shows that although it is likely the most famous of bluegrass festivals, the late Bill Monroe's Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival differs from most others only in the number of name artists who perform there.

See the Bean Blossom story at the bottom of this page.  And they say that rock'n'roll fans are derelicts.  Sheesh.

P.A. did this show in partnership with another local firm (now one of the most successful in the country), always setting up the night before.  One year the boss disappeared at around sundown.  He finally returned, having driven about 75 miles round trip to go back to the store for the Space Invaders arcade game.  Kids.

P.A.'s festival contracts called for the promoter to supply two small sets of scaffolding for the speaker stacks.  As most festivals were run on a shoestring budget, this "scaffolding" was usually two picnic tables.   On a "big ticket" festival, there would be real scaffolding, but most always without foot plates.  So, a couple of the legs would sink into the ground if there was much rainfall.  At one festival two pair of 55 gallon oil drums were considered to be scaffolding.

Security?  The soundguys are it, usually we camped out on the stage.  Have you ever: Tried to fall asleep at 1am to the sound of an upright bass thumping across a campground from a hill 150 yards away?  Been rousted from a sound sleep at 3am by a drunk blowing snot rockets off the side of the stage?  Had to dodge incoming Fourth of July bottle rockets?   Awakened surrounded by baked beans?  Rolled over in the morning to find that several dozen folks in lawn chairs were looking at you - well over an hour before show time?

One of the nice things about the Bean Blossom festival was that instead of the usual overflowing port-o-lets, there was a good old fashioned outhouse with a pit of near infinite capacity.  This outhouse was divided by a wall down the middle, forming an "eight hole-er" on each side (if memory serves), with the rows of seats back-to-back against the central dividing wall.  The fiberglass roof let in plenty of light, making it easy to see if your chosen seat was clean.  There was a downside to this however.  The wall that divided the men's side from the ladies' side did not drop fully into the pit - it continued only a little below seat level.  Boys of auto-erectile age noticed that the light shone down to the "water" below, giving those on the gents side a reflected silhouette view of those areas of a gal's anatomy that even "Daisy Duke" cutoffs did not reveal.  Boys who were too young to be interested in such things found that throwing a large rock into the pit from the men's side would splash the "water" upon the posteriors of the ladies seated on the other side.  The resultant wails of female horror were most always followed by some young fellow(s) getting a well deserved country style ass whuppin.

The topper may have been a festival in Ronceverte, West Virginia.  It was in a natural bowl, with a very high stage.  When we asked why the stage was surrounded by wire fencing, the promoter said "to keep the ying-yangs off the stage".  Swell.  Highlights of the weekend were a guy who showed up extremely drunk or stoned and dressed in only a blanket, word of an ear-ectomy the previous night, and a truckload of empty booze bottles at the front of the stage by the end of the festival.