Intelligent Life On Planet Rock
Big crowds, big gestures and big budgets
I'd like to follow on from Mr Drayton's thread about the new U2 spectacular that will be rockin' the world's stadia over the next few months.
It's got me thinking about the nature of watching a band in a stadium or arena and whether the increasingly spectacular staging one finds at such concerts is a necessary part of that experience.
A genuinely great performer and communicator can make a stadium show seem nearly as intimate a club gig without the need for ultra-extravagant sets and light shows. The late, great Frederick Mercury could get a huge crowd to do his bidding with one swish of his cut-down microphone, and yet Queen's shows were pretty basic affairs by modern standards. Similarly Bruce Springsteen is masterful when it comes to forging a rapport with his audience, and I don't recall him feeling the need to rely on fancy lighting rigs.
Big gestures is a different matter. A band would be ill-advised to shuffle onstage in a stadium and shoegaze like Slowdive. Projection is all important. But even singers with the charisma of Bono or Mick Jagger seem reluctant to simply do what comes naturally to them and perform. They have to prance around within a stage construction that looks like something out of Blade Runner. I remember Keith Richards used to get the hump with Jagger because from the mid-1970s onwards he always had to have an inflatable phallus to play with onstage or some other prop.
He argued that a performer as good as him had no need for such cheap devices.
Perhaps audiences have grown so accustomed to watching acts on TV that the live music experience in stadia increasingly mimics its visual conventions...
So what do you feel? Does the technoflash of the modern stadium show simply add to the audience's pleasure or is it a way for bands to mask their ordinariness with its 'wow factor'?
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For those who use "technoflash".....
its the latter.Springsteens stunning show at Hyde Park had zero gimmicks.Plain stage set, no flashy lighting effects, just the Diamond Vision screens that are necessary for a big outdoor gig.
I wonder if the U2 tour would be a success with such a set-up. I think not.
Bruce
I'm looking forward to seeing Bruce Springteen in Glasgow, a week on Tuesday; the man certainly needs no extra frills for his show. I may throw a Scotch Pie onto the stage at some point for extra excitement, but doubt if I will need too.
The last big show I saw was U2's Pop Show at Roundhay Park a few years back and while the giant lemon and big screens were impressive, they held no lasting memory for me.Mind you, neither did much of the music.
Pink Floyd on the other hand, had their music enhanced by their clever stage effects. If punters had turned up to see them play on their last Pulse Tour and the stage had just been light up by one solitary light bulb, I think many would have been annoyed.Visuals and stage effects were expected of the late Pink Floyd.
I think Chris Rea was once encouraged to do a visual type stage show after the success of his Road To Hell Album, it didn't work well as he vanished from the stage in a puff of smoke.
Peter Gabriel's Secret World Tour found the balance visually I think, without being over the top. At the end of the last song, the band all walked into a big suitcase, which Peter carried off stage . That's magic.
P.S.
Talking of magic, how did you wrap the text around your picture? I've never been able to master this miracle of thread presentation.
I sent Fraser an e-mail and he kindly told me how...
You enter the HTML as you would for uploading an image up to the point when you've pasted in the image address. Then you add...
" align="left"/>
and hey presto, text is wrapped around image. He's a clever one that Fraser...
Technical Hitch
Here goes, it looks easy but....
Houston, we seem to have a problem, the end of a beautiful lap top. Nevermind, always hated Windows Vista.
I think that's worked...
try it again but enter a lot more text.
Scale or Theme?
I tend to think that shows that are built around a concept or theme tend to be vaguely risible and I have shied away from them.
If I want opera - I'll go see opera - rather than the wow heavy imaginings of a bunch of pop herberts.
Sometimes size does matter though. There is something about being part of a giant throng singing along to a Best Ever Anthems Ever type of anthem.
And somehow these things seem to make more sense in US - Bruce, Tom Petty, U2 - are the three I've seen there - and they were all great shows.
A year or so back I saw Foy Vance in a pub in Balham - and that is my perfect kind of gig. I'd never heard of him before - and it was really good. Good songs well sung in a cosy setting and cold Kronie on tap
A Few Years back
I saw the technological marvel that was a Destinys Child gig, all staging, stairs and video screens. It was good, but was surpassed by Green Day with a neon sign and a Mariachi band. Just a band filling the room with their talent.