Ayone know the wattage used at a Rock concert?

Swampwalker...so true...they always seemed to have their sound dialed in perfectly...and I didn't get to see them until 1987 for my first time...I can only imagine what they were running then as the wall of sound was from the early 70's.

I remember doing shows with as little as 1000 watts, and that's including the monitors !!! Most "good sized" venues will be running somewhere between 2500 - 6000 watts rms of amplification. On a big tour of big halls, 10K is nothing at all. Most all of it sounds like crap though because the guys working the boards are clueless and so are the guys designing the PA cabinets. When you start playing outdoors and want to generate "thunder" you've got to have REALLY big power.

As far as the Grateful Dead sound system being discussed here, John Curl designed much of that. They used Macintosh amps the system was too costly to transport due to size and weight, so it didn't last as long as most of the fans would have wanted it to.

Part of the reason why this sounded as good as it did was that they actually used midrange drivers. Most PA systems are built around large woofers crossing over to horns. Trying to get natural sounding mids / upper mids out of a large woofer is ridiculous to say the least. Cone break up and dispersion are facts of life that we have to deal with, yet most PA designers / operators aren't aware of the laws of physics or that things could sound a WHOLE lot better. Sean
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Spinal Tap had amps that went to 11 rather than 10 just for that added something

Its been a long time, but if I recall correctly The Who was running 76,000 Watts when they set the Guiness Record as the World's Loudest Band at a stadium venue, maybe Shea in NY.
AC/DC was running 45,000 Watts on the For Those About To Rock Tour. I saw them indoors at the Meadowlands in NJ, the place used to be called the Brendan Byrne Arena.

I believe "Manowar" holds the current world record for the loudest concert. 129 Decibels, I think. I would guess tens of thousands of watts, or maybe even hundreds of thousands.

I got very up close to Pink Floyds setup several years back. The amps stacks were absolutely massive. Dozens and dozens of amplifiers.