Entertainment For Lively Minds
Encore! Encore!
I went to see The Manic Street Preachers on Tuesday evening. The music and lighting was excellent and there was a good bit of local rapport with the crowd reminiscing about previous visits to Hull.
However, I don't think the gig ever really "took off", they finished the set with "A Design for Life" and off they went with no encore. To be fair there didn't seem to be much enthusiasm for one which made me think perhaps the Manics never do an encore so one wasn't expected from the diehard fans.
The Wedding Present never do encores (usually announcing the fact) so it got me thinking, what is the point of an encore? Is it an ego thing? An appreciation from both sides for a good gig? Or an unecessary end to the evening preventing you getting last orders in?
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The answer is the fake encore
This is how the Supersuckers do it
I used to follow the Manics
I used to follow the Manics about 15 years ago. Saw them loads of times. They never did encores then.
It's one of the MSP's "policies"
At one point they had a B-sides compilation scheduled for release called "No Encores, No Adverts, No Fanclubs", which tells its own story.
Apparently they very occasionally do encores abroad, but never in the UK.
It's an ego thing
And why not.
If my job was to stand on stage while loads of people were happy for me to be there I would milk it for all it's worth.
When I DJed I would get whole dance floors yelling 'one more' and this would turn out to be such a wonderful moment. The care I would take picking out that tune..
and it was ALWAYS this...?
Close
but no cigar.
It was, more often than not, this:
Whisky
Saw the MSP's in 1992 at the Whisky-a-go-go on Sunset Strip - presumably their first US tour. There weren't many there and the reception wasn't great from those that were. The band came over as a bit cross and the set ended with them cutting open a feather pillow and shaking it out.
Certainly no encore then.
Coincidence
I've just been reading about that very gig in Everything by Simon Price.
Way back when,
it was a spontaneous thing - a sign that the audience had really enjoyed the gig and wanted more. Nowadays, it's more of a planned / expected thing and the band will save a couple of their most popular songs for the encore to send everyone away on a high. Indeed, they're probably saving them for the encore so they can be reasonably sure the audience will call for one! Personally, I'd be happy with a well-paced show culminating in a big showpiece end and then it's lights up and home we go.
Apparently, Elvis never did encores.
Think they only did an encore once
Their Millennium Eve show in Cardiff?
The number of actual spontaneous encores I've seen is very, very few.
I think encores
have a number of possible functions, of which many or just one may be the case for a given performance;
1) Breather/shirt change/nose-ningle break/scream at the drummer for fucking up the break after the second chorus
2) Allows obvious change in dynamics of set between the moody, artistic stuff that you really have to listen to hard to get, maaaan and the bouncy ones you can scream along to, which would otherwise give you the musical equivalent of the bends
3) An opportunity to slope off if the show's not going well
4) To reward the audience
The Doobie brothers
Once saw them and the last of the brothers were still trooping off as the first were coming back on
Two of the best live shows
I've seen were NIN in 96 and Fever Ray last month, both artistes played for approx 1hr. 25 and that was it, off stage lights up.
They had said all they had to say, outstanding performances both and didn't outstay their welcome.
I saw REM give a final encore 20 minutes after the house lights
had come up. Hammersmith Odeon, 1987, when they were flogging Document. They came back on again and did a screaming 'Radio Free Europe', and there was much rejoicing.
That was of course when they were any good. Nowadays I'd pay them good money to go away.
Bill Bailey's Big 4
Bill Bailey returned 4 times in his Dublin gig last week, including one to a stunned few hundred stragglers filtering out under the house lights. Think he was genuinely enjoying himself.
He did much the same thing
He did much the same thing in Oxford last year; by the end, it seemed that he was locked in a struggle with the front of house staff, who had decided the show was officially over, even though he kept reappearing on stage for one last number.
Prince, too...
... during his stint at the O2 a few years back, apparently surprised the cleaning staff and final stragglers at a few gigs by coming out and doing a number on the edge of the stage with an acoustic guitar. Not on the night I saw him, though!