The State of Live Concerts

There have been various threads talking about our experiences at concerts, and they often touch on the subject of this thread. I was then watching an interview with Roger Taylor of Queen and Jim Cregan of various bands and they touched on some things I thought were interesting.

Now, for context, I grew up some time ago, and my main concert going years started in the early 1970's. Shows always felt like big events, something to get excited about. That said, I often saw bands in glorified pubs (bars) and halls. For example, I caught Judas Priest in a small venue (the Kursall, Southend) back in the day. These were nationwide tours, but they felt really personal because there was little to no grandeur. We didn't know how the band would look, with only the backs of album covers to guide us, we didn't know what songs they were playing, or sometimes you'd turn up and be surprised by a personnel change!

Judas Priest were on their Sad Wings of Destiny tour at the time, and my memories are of being very close to the stage and Halford He was in a torn costume that had clearly seen better days, and had a mike stand covered in little mirrors like one of those disco balls. Except a lot of the mirrors had fallen off. He wore scuffed shoes, and the guitars were marked up. In short, it was all very REAL, spit and sawdust stuff.

Things got a little more grandiose when you went to say, The Hammersmith Odean, but not by much. Of course, back then, I was young and impressionable, and I was suckered in by the performances that made me feel like I was at a once in a lifetime show. When Pat Travers shouted from the stage that we were the best audience ever, it actually made me feel good! Yep, we believed all that stuff.

Modern times have whittled away at the concert experience, I think. We never knew what we were going to get. Today you can hop on to Youtube and likely catch part, or all, of a show from recent times. You can watch different shows in different venues, exposing the fact that most shows are pretty much the same, even with the same banter. The magic of it has gone somewhat - we're able to peer behind the curtain, as it were. I was once naive, but not so much now. Setlists are easily shared, stage props known etc.

I've thought about that, and honestly a show that feels like an "act" isn't anywhere near as appealing to me. I'm not excited about being just another date on a tour, even though I know it wasn't so different back in the day. I've often wondered why bands don't go back to the way it was. Judas Priest essentially didn't have a stage show when I saw them. There were a few colored lights, but it was very very basic. I sometimes wonder what today's audiences would have thought of those shows, or other shows I saw back then - they were so stripped back. Look at bands like Led Zep, for example, or Deep Purple. Heck, Sabbath who also played The Kursall, where it was essentially the band, their instruments, and some speakers. That's it. Sometimes the sound was good, sometimes not.

Then of course, we have the modern phenomena of using backing tracks live, or even singers miming, something I found reprehensible. But before you think I'm all black and white about it, I accept it to a point. For example, Queen couldn't play Bohemian Rhapsody live back in the day. There were parts of it that simply required they use a backing tape (the operatic parts, for example). Those moments were obvious at the time, and the band didn't pretend it was anything other than backing tape.

The kings of this debate are probably Kiss and the various rumors and examples of Paul Stanley miming, and the use of click tracks and ear monitors giving directions. It's just another case where the illusion is being stripped away. For a good part, modern audiences don't seem to care and are very accepting of such things.

So why don't bands go back to doing more improv's, changing up the set list, and just getting on with playing music? Well, as I read things and watch some videos, it starts to become clearer.

I wanted to highlight an interview I just watched with Taylor and Cregan. In it they talk about a lot of things (the whole interview is fun) but the two things that stuck in my mind was a segment at 20:00 where they briefly talk about being restricted on what they can do on stage - lengthen solo's, improv, or change the set list - because of the extravagant light shows and associated computer systems which they rely on. In essence, the systems aren't flexible once programmed.

At 21:12 or so, Cregan then suggests there should be a warning on every ticket noting whether backing tracks are used or not. I can't see that ever happening, because you're asking an industry to inform paying attendee's that they're getting, sort of, less for their cash. What, other than a law, would encourage them to essentially denigrate their own product/artist?

Anyway, I thought this was good because it helped me understand a little better why things are as they are, what constraints performers were under, and some of the complexity behind what seems to us, on the night, as simply a band/performer getting up on stage and playing music. If I think of say, Roger Water's shows with his huge screens - well, it simply HAS to run to a strict script, otherwise it all falls apart. That these wildly expensive shows have begun to filter down through lesser bands isn't too surprising, it's the way of things.

Finally, I also saw an interview recently with a composer of classical music, and he was talking about the history of performance. One of his points was that the advent of recorded music made things more difficult. He referenced that some people were disappointed when they first went to see an orchestra perform, because they don't necessarily sound as full or detailed as expected. In essence, people expect to hear something that sounds like the recordings, but the recordings are done under very different circumstances, and live orchestra's simply don't sound that way. Of course, they all strive for perfection, but they're always chasing audience expectation. There's an expectation gap.

Anyhow here is the interview. What say you?