The Fonz Foot Wedge

A "tactile transducer" is a loudspeaker that you feel instead of hear. It's basically a speaker driver that attaches to your chair to give you the feeling of extreme low frequency vibrations. This is very useful in the studio when a drummer can't get the level of his kick drum loud enough. The engineer places a device called a Bass Shaker (made by Aura) on the drum throne and suddenly the drummer can feel the kick drum and suddenly it seems a lot louder than it really is.

It's a cool device that really does work, since the mind is tricked into thinking everything sounds bigger than it is because you can feel the vibrations.

I'm not sure if this is a real product or not, but Dave Mathews Band bassist Stefen Lessard is using an interesting twist on the idea called a Fonz Foot Wedge on the current DMB tour. This is the same idea as the bass shaker on the drum seat, but it's connected to a board that you can put your foot on to feel the vibration. In the case of Lessard, he's getting the vibrations from just the kick drum.

In this case, it's not so much to fooling the brain into thinking the kick is louder as it is to stay in the groove with the drummer. A trick of many studio bass players is to put their foot up against the kick drum to feel it, which helps to fall into the groove a little easier. The Foot Wedge seems to be just the ticket for this purpose.

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Some Major Tours Hurting This Summer

As posted here recently, concert attendance for the year is down about 22% so far, but summer is when the major money is made. Now preliminary reports say that sales for the Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction, Dave Mathews Band and Aerosmith tours are shaping up as soft.

But the word is that the reformed Creed tour is a disaster while both The Fray and Yanni are only a bit better. In general, up-front ticket sales are way down so promoters are really pushing walk-up ticket sales.

It's a bit too early to say just how sales will end up, but we'll probably know by the 4rth of July. One thing's for sure, ticket prices are way too high, consumers are nearing a revolt over service charges, and many artists are over-saturated in the markets they're visiting. Consumers are tired of seeing the same old thing. Now if ticket prices were $20, sales might be a completely different story, but the chances of that are slim.

Yet sales spiked by a factor of 6 after LiveNation's "No Fee Wednesdays" was announced last week, which shows that price really is an issue (even though parking and facility's fees were not part of the promotion). What we could be seeing is a turning point in a part of the music business that sorely needs one.