Live shows: Bands vs. Soundman

I think most non-professional/internet/offhand reviews do.

When I see live shows I usually rate the following: Club atmosphere, soundman's skills, band's live skills, band's songwriting abilities. In order for a show to be fantastic for me, all four have to be good. BUt I wouldn't go on line and say that Belle & Sebastian were awful @ the albert hall, because they weren't --- the sound (acoustics + soundman) was.

Seeing the Clientele play Toronto was a bad experience, only because the soundman and venue acoustics were crap, and also that Toronto indie-kids (used affectionately) talk talk talk during shows. I think this dismayed the band so much that there was no way they even wanted to make an effort to compensate. Every other show they played was fantastic according to popular opinion.

Some bands just don't gel live... maybe they don't rehearse enough. Sometimes the audience just won't shut up. Sometimes the band plays well but doesn't have any songwriting talent (pub bands?). Sometimes, the soundguy bites the big one.

It makes me not want to go to live shows. When did live rock music turn into such a mess? And do other genres have similar problems?

One of punk's unfortunate legacies was that anybody can move from the garage to the stage with no rehearsal. If they also have no wit, presence, or inventiveness, well that's egalitarianism. Also, it should be noted that in London at least, bands playing clubs are treated by club staff and promoters slightly worse than vermin infestations - understandable enough, due to the fact that band nights never make any money (why should they, going to gigs IS torture, concurring with marianna's final statement), and venues are choked by an insane amount of regulation by local councils - noise, parking, loading, opening hours, etc. If you really want to save live music then tell all the public-spirited residents associations to stick their decibel monitors up their asses, if they want peace and quiet they can move to the countryside.

I think the quality of a show has way more to do with the band's sound in the conceptual / organizational sense than we tend to think about while watching them perform. Much of my pleasure in watching shows has to do with observing how bands navigate around translating their recorded presentation into a live one: Stereolab, for example, have repeatedly blown me away by managing to sound, on stage, not like Stereolab, but like a band playing Stereolab songs. That's an inadequate description of what I'm trying to get at, but perhaps you'll see where I'm headed.

The experience that the Clientele offer is particularly suited for small, quiet audiences in small quiet clubs, which I suppose will be both a blessing and curse. They could play the exact same tight and flawless show to a large and a small audience, and I get the feeling the small crowd would go home thinking the show was fantastic, and the large crowd would go home thinking their feet hurt and they were bored. But it's much like acting for the stage -- if you want to play to a large audience, you have to make your gestures broader, and the Clientele are not, as of now, a band of broad gestures.

Oh, to answer your question more directly, Marianna:

I think that rock bands (or indie bands, anyway) over the past 5-10 years have taken to solving the problem of Doing Something New in directions that don't have to do with performance -- a lot of the periods great records are great because of something having more to do with the way the band is recorded than with the way they're playing. More use of technology for editing, processing, sampling, etc.; more focus on arrangements of elements that can't necessarily be carted around on tour; more situations in which music is written and goes straight into the recording/assembling process, instead of spending years inbetween being rehearsed and performed. All of which has had some really positive effects on the quality of recorded music, but makes for a lot of bands who haven't yet figured out how to get their sound across on stage.

I think I agree w/dave: "Sometimes the audience just won't shut up" = the band is powerless to make them pay attention. I agree that sometimes the PA isn't loud enuf, or the mix is muddy and uninteresting. But that's ultimately up to the band as well - either bring in your own guy/pay off the one that's there, and do a soundcheck, or stop complaining.

I totally agree with you Nitsuh that right now we're in a period where the really interesting stuff is being done on record and can't necessarily be replicated live (also had this epiphany while watching stereolab- trying to play xylophone parts on an electric guitar just doesn't work for some reason). Personally, I get bored seeing the same thing in the same situation over and over again- guitar bands in clubs/theaters on a stage w/ lighting and shit sound and the rest. I think it'd be great to see music performed in more unconventional spaces, like Belle and Sebastian's idea when they started out to only play libraries (shame they haven't followed thru on that). Or if people insist on talking over the band, why doesn't the band adapt by making music meant to be talked over, a la Music for Airports?

In other words, if the factors marianna is talking about consistently get in the way of a good performance, why not remove those, or turn them into strengths?

Did anybody read the NME review of the Charlatans' warm-up show in LA... it was a pretty bad review, but at least the writer flung most of the blame at the soundman... however, with even horrible sound, a good band can pull it off... "A craftsman never blames his tools..."

Chzza: You didn't enjoy Stereolab? I saw them somewhere between Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Dots and Loops, and found them stripped-down, tight, and groovy in a way I wasn't quite expecting. I think I've mentioned before that I love further discovering that a band's interesting sound has more to do with composition than studio presentation, and a live show like this one is the ultimate proof: each individual instrument in the performance sounded relatively conventional, but the parts being played and the way they were organized turned it into What Stereolab Sounds Like, without recourse to well-groomed Moog burbles or combed-over string interludes.

All of which is to say: they played like a jazz combo.

Nitsuh: I did enjoy them. I guess I just missed the sonic variety of their records. I was disappointed by how conventional they sounded on stage. But the groovy version of 'Metronomic Underground' was fab. Your comment about them playing like a jazz ensemble is interesting, but highlights for me why I don't listen to much jazz: the palate(sp?) is too limited.