Does it ruin a live show for you when the singer reads the song words *

Fluffed lyrics are more likely to ruin a show for me, so anything that helps singers to avoid that is fine by me.

 

....and now he uses them too. what a drag it is getting old.

 

All those LEDs in the stage look like they'd be distracting for the musicians.

 

Paul has been performing with thousands of screaming women and hundreds of flash bulbs going off in his face for over 50 years. He can handle it.

 

Or barfs three feet from you during the opening act...happened to me once.

 

When you've found a good spot where it is not too busy and a tall guy is suddenly standing in front of you and somehow keeps standing in front of you the rest of the concert because the good spot you found became crowdy

 

What amazed me was seeing Difford and Tilbrook the other night and seeing Glenn play "Love's Crashing Waves" from memory when, according to him, he hasn't played it in over 20 years.

 

And one of Bruce's teleprompter.



Back in the 70s, my wife saw him forget the words to "Born To Run," which I think would be awesome. LOL I'd love to see that. He admitted in a 1988 interview that this happened now and again, specifically with "BTR." In this particular interview, he said he'd been working really hard on perfecting the story he was using to introduce it on that tour, and his mind was still on the story when the song started. Makes total sense to me. He puts everything into everything, including his stories, so if something as simple as a reminder of the lyrics can help keep the whole thing on the rails, more power to him.

Turns out that there was widespread consternation about Bruce using a teleprompter in 2011, including AN EDITORIAL in the Washington Post!!! And again in 2012, when Bruce using a teleprompter kicked off this here thread: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...rtists-using-teleprompters-in-concert.282062/

I've seen bunches of others use prompters with varying degrees of subtlety, and not. Leon Russell had a big ol' MacBook on top of the piano, for example. My favorite was Michael Stipe using "The End of the World As We Know It" as an encore, with the words on a stack of sheets of paper on a music stand. Each page only had a line or two on it, and as he got to the end of each one, he threw it in the air with a flourish. I'm thinking he had some "prop" pages too, because right before the big finish, he threw a bunch of 'em in the air. I absolutely loved it.

Dylan is the first to admit that his ability with this is freakish. His tale of the accidental discovery of it is one of my favorite parts of Chronicles.

 

It doesn't bother me to see bands reading lyrics. As long as they aren't standing there incessantly staring at it with a stone face through the entire concert.

At my gigs, I have to use a lyric sheet for certain tunes. For some strange reason I can't seem to memorize particular verses. I usually only need to see the first few words to each line and I am OK. However, it never ceases to amaze me that I can remember every last nook and cranny in "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald", "Tangled Up In Blue" and "American Pie" but I always flub something like the two-verse "Knocking On Heaven's Door". Drives me bananas.

Aside from drunken/drugged up/rowdy imbeciles in the audience, I loathe when bands/singers go on political tirades. It's always from a certain viewpoint too. Yeah. We get it. You're cool. You are pretentiously rebellious and above everyone else. The establishment sucks and all that you represent is the answer to the world's problems. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

 

Bob Weir hAs been using an iPad clamped to a mic stand for a while now

 

Wait- John Lydon can read?

 

I saw Public Image Ltd. on this tour and Lydon's use of a notebook didn't bother me at all. It gave the show a bizarre sort of angry beat-poetry feel that served the music well. Besides, PiL's set is an hour-and-a-half or so of non-stop lyrics; it'd be a hell of a feat to memorize them all without sacrificing the performance.

 

Nils Lofgren wrote a reply to The Washington Post:

"Your teleprompter article left out some important points. Last E Street tour, (”Working On A Dream”) we played 192 different songs on that tour alone. Dozens of those songs were from audience-request signs Bruce would collect and dump in front of the drum riser. He would then rifle through them, sailing them around him until he found a song to attempt — much like the college kid rummaging through the pile of dirty laundry in search of one clean shirt. Many songs were covers we had never performed live. EVER! He would show us the sign and then immediately “frisbee” it down the stairs to the teleprompter crew to surf the net and find the lyrics while we all talked up a quick arrangement at his microphone, knowing he’d be counting it off in 20 seconds. Many of those audibles were Bruce songs unrehearsed or played in years or decades. With our collective musical memory, hand signals and teleprompter, it allows for those ambitious, ad lib moments and an inspired, musical recklessness I believe is unique to our shows. These points might have brought some additional perspective to your article. In our case, the teleprompter has a much more ambitious use and purpose than your article indicates."

 

Artists encouraged sing-along are a close second ......

 

Happened to me at the Gorge during an awful Dylan show in the late 80s, George, Washington.

 

...or starts laying into some guy in the row in front for no reason. Peter Gabriel show in Glasgow, 2003 or '04. Shocking.

 

Lydon had a music stand on this early PIL TV performance. It was a pretty unusual stance back then.

 

Yeah, it kinda does. I saw PIL on Jools Holland a couple of weeks ago and was struck by the same thing. Sorta distracts from the "anger is an energy" vibe a bit, doesn't it? He didn't have a music stand twenty years ago. Night & day comparison from George Clinton & Tom Petty, two other elder statesmen I've seen in the last year or so that didn't need to be reminded of the words they wrote that meant so much to them (and their fans by proxy.)

 

That's pretty cool, actually. Good for Nils for responding to the article.

Lydon had a binder and was flicking through the pages as the show went on. As I get more responses to my post, I realize this is more common than I thought. I've never seen it before live, so I was a bit thrown.

 

I get the feeling he is so comfortable these days (living in Malibu and all), that he just doesn't put much effort into the gigs as he might have. C'mon, I mean he's writing songs bitching about the plumber.

 

Didn't know that. I get the part about getting old though. I have to sail notes across the room when I get up for something so I'll know what I was going after when I get there.

 

I'm sure he uses it as a backup and certainly HAS knowledge of the songs, though.

I saw this lead singer in a cover band who wore sunglasses to hide the fact that he was looking only at the iPad and not the audience.
It was BAD, like the kid in school who is cheating on a test and thinks no one can see him.


Dan

 

No, not really, as long as he sings them in tune.

 

as long as the artist does a good job I don't care what form they use to remember the words....

any annoyance come from the audience...

 

so he didn't 20 years ago, but he did 35 years ago -- does that factor into your judgment at all?