Entertainment For Lively Minds
Laura Leaves Us Wanting
Great gig for La Marling last Friday - see My Night Out With... - but Laura's leaving left a lot to be desired.
She announced that there would be no encore - fair enough.
But as the last strains of the last song rang through York Minster - and believe me, that's a lot of ringing - she left the stage at speed.
The audience were, one by one, rising to their feet in appreciation. That's a bona fide standing ovation. But everybody found that, having gained the upright position, there was nobody left on stage to accept their tribute.
Her stage-fright and awkwardness with between-song banter are well known, but shyness surely can be overcome long enough to stand still for a minute or two to let the people who enjoyed the performance let you know it, through the medium of prolonged applause, with occasional whooping?
Or, having given of her best, is she entitled to exit venue stage right, job done?
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Even Brian Wilson
the most nervous performer I've ever seen, goes stage front and gets his band to take a bow at the end, but once that's done he shows the stage a clean pair of heels and woe betide any stray keyboard player or bassoonist who gets in his way.
Get it while you can
I'd settle for an XTC gig where they sing all the songs and then run for it. It might seem a bit odd but it's better than nothing which is the case for XTC and presumably would be for Laura Marling as well.
Forsooth.
While there may not be a contractual obligation for an artist to play an encore we all know that it's part of it. For an artist to announce to her audience that there will be no encore and this is what you get deserves a hailstorm of lobbed rotten tomatoes from the upper circle if you ask me. Are things that bad that you can't play one more song for a hall of people that are applauding you? It's a strange way to treat paying fans. Party pooperish.
Whatever Happened To Encores Being .....
..as a reaction to a great night and not part of a the programme. I used to like an audienece getting into a frenzy of clapping when they thought the band weren't going to come back. The times I've seen a band - and its a long time ago - come out and say "we've played all the songs we know so here's one we've already done."
Encores have become an expectation
Instead of being recognition of an exceptional performance, it's become a norm. Fans feel cheated if they didn't get the extra songs. Bands become complicit by holding back the crowd pleasing hit, so they can finish on a high. It's got to the point where some barely shuffle off stage long before coming back for another.
No doubt it's my age, but I'd much rather bands played their set, and then we all went home.
Encores
are the "bonus tracks" of live performance. They're a tedious convention, pretending to be "something extra", when, often as not, they consist of The Song, the one everybody's been waiting for them to play. So - obviously - you know they're going to do an encore, whether you want one or not, because it's The Song, and they're not going home without playing The Song. Hell, I've even been at gigs where a support act has died on its feet, left the stage at the end of the set, and been chased back onstage by the promoter saying "oh, I think you've got time for one more song", to audience groans.
Stupid, pointless tradition - ditch it.
Indeed, the set should contain everything
the band want to play and, if applicable, it should contain The Hit as well.
An encore should be a bonus, an extra treat for the audience and not just a part of the set. I'd much rather a band come back on and say "that's all we'd rehearsed, so here's some covers we like to jam on in the soundcheck" or "Here's a new one but it's not really finished yet" or even just do a 12-bar jam.
If the band or the audience aren't enthused enough to do an encore then call it a night.
The mighty Zepp
I saw Zeppelin play in 1971 - between III and IV. And it was the first time they played 'Stairway To Heaven' live. They played 2 encores and left the stage for what was apparently the last time. The lights went on and the roadies came on to unplug the guitars. The audience continued to give the band a standing ovation and refused to leave the hall. Zeppelin came back on, plugged everything back in again and gave us a third encore - a memorable night!
I quite Like The Reverse Idea...
..were a band is their own support band unannounced. Greenday came on as the band they released an album of songs under between the last two major releases. Most of the audience didn't know who they were and by the time they'd worked it out they'd left the stage.
Likewise Will Oldham/Bonnie Prince Billy supported himself in the USA as The Babblers - doing the whole of Kevin Coyne's Babble album.
There was a period when The Grateful Dead 'self-supported'
There were various combinations of GD spin-offs such The New Riders Of The Purple Sage, Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, and Old And In The Way which played support sets during the 1970s and 80s.