A historical perspective might be in order.
MANY years ago, when The Doobie Brothers were in their original incarnation, Guitar Player magazine reported in an interview that they got tired of the volume on stage and switched from big amps in a back-line to small amps in front of them, tipped back to allow easy monitoring and miking. I think that was something that Jeff Baxter suggested. The band said they were really happy with the control and quality of the sound.
Big amps and cabinets came about because the P.A. systems of the day were not capable of handling the instruments and vocals at the same time, so vocals were amplified and the instruments had to supply their own equivalent volume. Townsend, Clapton and The Beatles and Hendrix were playing big spaces and wanted to be heard, it was a necessity then. Now FOH systems are hundreds of times more powerful than they were and are more than capable of handling everything but people still think the back line needs to run at 110+db.
Many people, bands, and musicians, look at big amps and loud volume as a macho thing, akin to big loud 4x4 pickups with gun-racks, it’s their right to swing their… parts… however they want of course, but there’s a very happy middle ground on stages.
The formula in a venue is
happy_venue_owner = (100*happy_customers)+band_opinion
In other words, the venue owner is going to listen to what the customers say a lot more often and a lot more closely and the band’s opinion means little. If the customers like the volume, the venue will allow loud music. That’s within limits though, because customers and staff who can’t be heard don’t find it easy to order or receive orders for drinks and meals, and that pisses off the owner.
The attitude that bands can be as loud as they want because it’s an artistic expression is what lead to the silent stage mandate. A more reasonable approach was the Doobie Brothers attitude of keeping the stage volume under control and letting the FOH sound engineer, who is in the audience, control the overall volume. Modelers and IEM systems fit into all situations and the owners are happy with reasonable to no volume more often, so that’s why we’re seeing the situation more and more often.
There’s handwriting on the wall that’s worth paying attention to. Not being willing to work with the audience and the venue on controlling the volume results in bands being replaced with recorded music and the bands being legends in their own basements and garages.