Largest acceptable number of people on a stage playing music.

(I suppose this is a sort of ILM question, but I'm not looking for serious musical / critical answers, so this seems more appropriate.)

I think the largest number of people I've appeared on stage with was close to 300. This was a big chorus with full orchestra, though, so I'm not certain it counts. The BSO tour I just got back from had something like 220 people travelling around Europe.

There really is an obvious place to go for Spirit info, Nitsuh. But if you want an unserious answer, because they were all freaky hippies except for the bald guy at back.

The deal with Spirit is that they were a trio: Randy California, his stepfather Ed Cassidy and Jay Ferguson. The ppl = passers-by (?)

The original spirit was a 5-piece (randy california, the bald guy, who was randy's father in law BTW, Jay Ferguson, John Locke, er and someone else) Their first 4 albums Spirit, Clear, The Family That Plays Together and 12 Dreams of Dr Sardonicus are about as good as music gets, and IMO they were far, far ahead of ANY sixties psych band on these releases. Listening to the fancy Sony reissues, their sound anticipated Led Zep (listen to IIRC "taurus" off their first album - consider that ver zep supported Spirit on their 1st US tour) Roxy Music, Van Der Graaf Generator and Popol Vuh off the top of my head. The later stuff is v hit & miss in my experience.

As far as thee origina question goes, the largest allowable no of musicians allowable onstage is HOWEVER MANY PARLIAMENT/FUNKADELIC had.

xoxo

Nitsuh's descrip brings to mind Santana rather than Spirit...

Sun Ra and Duke Ellington seemed to know what they were up to when they crammed the stage w/musicians. And Spiritualized do the whole orchestral orgasmic electrical mindfuck thing pretty well (esp. at the Albert Hall w/balloons!)

Ha, ha, Ned. I want to know what the people say, man, not what some ivory-tower egghead up in Michigan says. Man. Oh wait -- nevermind.

I should mention that I draw some mental distinction between large groups that are sort of regimented (choirs, string sections, etc.) and large groups where thousands of people are just individually banging away at something. And for some reason I don't count jazz (in my own head), as I want to tell myself that there's some inner regimentation there. That's completely uncorrect, I suppose, but I'm going to cling to my differentiation so as not to reveal my scant knowledge of jazz.

AMG entry for Spirit of 84 (whence the video I saw) lists 8 guitar players, 8 vocalists, 7 percussionists, and 2 keyboard players. You'd assume that they were spread all across the album, but I can now vouch from experience that every single one of them appeared on the title track.

Methinks maybe there were just too many technically-skilled musicians in this vein during the mid-sixties, and so the only way to keep everyone employed was this kind of crap. Sorry to be so uninformed- ly judgemental about large bands, but once more than 10 people are playing individual bits, my head just shuts off. Apparently I like to focus on clearly discernable elements. Or else I was right when I said I had the worst taste on ILM.

Ask sundar.

sorry - to elaborate, sundar played early this summer onstage with 99 other guitarists at the World Trade Center for a new Glenn Granca symphony. The most startling thing to me was how quiet 100 amps can be. I think indoors the drone would have been a little more nuanced and shimmery.