Live concerts that are just like the record

OK I like a good debate and I'm bored so I'll bite. Personally I am the opposite it doesn't have to be exactly liek the record but pretty close that's what got me there in the first place not some hope they'd do something wildly different live.

But that's not the whole story either alot of times the music is just so over produced and layered that it's pretty much impossible to recreate those sounds live and it's a disappointment, well to me it is.

Personally I guess I'm a creature of habit. I like my steaks cooked a certin way I don't go into a restaraunt hoping they'll do something different to my steak every time and I don't go to concerts to see them "experiment" on stage when I am paying good money to see them.

Why go then? It's the vibe of the live show, the energy you get when you hear a favorite song and 10,000 other people are in the same place that's what a live show for me is more of a social interaction with kicka@@ music.

I have been burned more than once going to see an artist I really like experiment with different arrangements. Of course I can totally understand an artist getting tired of doing the same ol song over and over.

:P Ahh the controversial Honeyboy returns - you totally abandoned your "difference between a guitarist and a musician" thread btw go see the fun were having in there.

So should things be different?

I think you should keep the main parts of the songs in tact .... the riffs the style of it, doing improvised solos can be good however sometimes - with certain bands - the solos are as they should be on record with no need to change it - some people make solos that are singalong as the rest of the song. A lot of a bands who "change it" live still try to stick somewhere close to the original solo rather than completely starting a fresh - Pink Floyd's David Gilmour being one such person and I think that works really nice - a bit of both.

It's horses for courses, isn't it.

You wouldn't bother to go see Britney or Cheryl Cole because what you hear is the record, with them pretending to sing.

But you look at Rush, or Slash, or Kings of Leon in concert and you get a peformance that's very close to the recorded version. Works for me.

We all listen with musician's ears, and that isn't the same as the general public. And there aren't enough of us to fill a stadium.

Personally, there are some songs I'd like to hear close to the recording and others I'd like to hear something different.

But then, I don't go to pop concerts anymore. I go to symphonies, and of course the notes are going to be the same as the once the composers put on paper, but tempo, expression, dynamics, and dozens of other fine points will change from conductor to conductor and even performance to performance. Sometimes I approve, sometimes I don't.

On a similar note:

Why? Because they like it. And that answer is good enough.

If I knew why the public was going to like any specific thing, I'd go into the consulting business and make some serious money.

Notes

Never been to any live concert. However, watched many.

Usually, I would prefer improvised performances. :D

I think some bands go too far in how they change songs too.......

One example - I saw The Smashing Pumpkins in 2000 - my friend was with me and he was just as big a fan as me - he whispered to me "what song is this?" and I said "I dont know, I think its porcelina"

Surely that shouldn't happen should it? When neither of us are even sure what song it's meant to be. :lol:

As a person who plays music for a living, the main thing I know is that most people want to hear memories. Of course there are exceptions, and many musicians are probably in that group. But people don't go to a concert to hear anyone's latest variation of their hit songs. The more you realize this, the more bookings you will get.

A star performer can get away with changing someone else's song, but should be very careful about changing one of their own.

The "like the record" concerts are there for people who want to hear it like the record. The fact that they are successful shows that there is a market for that.

Insights and incites by Notes

Well there you go and I thought I was crazy. OK I probably am but I think people in general want to hear the artist's play them like they heard them on the record.

That is the memory Notes is describing. You may have been with somone or something special when you first heard the riff or solo or what ever you fell in love with, and that's what you want to hear when you go see them and be transported back to a place is all warm an fuzzy. Just think about that and being at a concert and that moment strikes your mind starts reminising about some past events and just when the solo starts they turn into something totally different...Bazinga your whole memory has just been blown.

If you are a major label successful artist I'm sure you have more latitude but you still need to remember your audience and understand what they want to hear.

It's probably a result of early training, but I've always taken the jazz approach to covering and playing songs - even my own.

Start together
Play the hook/head
Variation of the head
Play the hook/head
End together.

Make the covers YOURS. Especially if it's your own stuff.

Moon by definition how can your own song be a cover?

Noun 1. cover song - a recording of a song that was first recorded or made popular by somebody else;

Moon by definition how can your own song be a cover?

Noun 1. cover song - a recording of a song that was first recorded or made popular by somebody else;

Because I'm not the same person I was when I recorded it!

"I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

I've got recordings of the same song covered by three different bands - all of which I was a member of.

I remember many years ago when I saw Led Zeppelin for the 3rd time, they did "Dazed And Confused" and Jimmy Page didn't get the violin bow out and didn't play the signature riff of the song. They did an entirely different treatment. Even I was disappointed -- and I generally don't mind, especially if the new version is interesting to my ears. But as I said before, I listen with musician's ears, the general public does not.

It's easier for the public to accept someone else doing a song with an entirely different treatment from the famous recording than an artist who made that song famous.

We do a swing, 'cool school' jazz version of Stevie Wonder's "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" and our audience accepts it very well. Most show appreciation, and the 'regulars' tend to like it a lot. However, if Stevie did our version in a concert, the majority of the audience wouldn't like it. They want to hear it like the record.

Jazz is different, it's not supposed to be the same every time, and gets a different category of listeners. If I went to see Eliane Elias, Ken Peplowski, Gary Burton, Herbie Hancock, Pete Christlieb, etc., I wouldn't want to hear them play their recordings almost note-for-note. That would disappoint me. But jazz audiences are generally much smaller than pop audiences, because most people want to hear memories.

Years ago, when I was a regular a weekly jazz jam, the audience didn't want to hear cover versions. The jazz jam was great, and because of the guitarist's connections, famous people like Ira Sullivan and Duffy Jackson sat in. But the jazz band worked on Sunday afternoons and the cover band worked 6 nights.

So often we musicians make our judgments using trained, musician's ears. This is fine, we are supposed to do that, but on the other hand, we have to also be able to switch from that to the general public's ears if we want to be successful. And those ears depend on the genre we perform.

The French Chef who goes to a rural small town in the Midwest USA, opens a restaurant, and doesn't want to serve Fried Chicken and Hamburgers is asking to have an empty dining room.

Know your audience, and play to your audience if you want to keep gigging, especially if you want to make it your career.

The "Play it like the record" is a successful field, not one I find myself in, but for those who do, I'm sure it's rewarding, and for the audience, it obviously works.

Insights and incites by Notes

Almost seems like I'm the odd guy out here. I am not a fan of crowds. If I want to listen to the recorded song I'd sit at home and listen.. I get totally stoked when I go to a show, and the performer swapps things up and redoes a song a different way, or style. I guess that's why I like acoustic gigs... you get to hear the songs a little " fresh" with different arrangements.

I'm not a fan of crowds either. Especially pop music crowds. The only concerts I go to now are Symphonies. The audience is much more civilized and the live orchestra sounds much better in person than it does recreated on speakers.

The most respectful and civilized audience I ever experienced was in Budapest Hungary. We attended a concert by the Budapest Philharmonic (Budapesti Filharmóniai Társaság Zenekara) at the Hungarian State Opera House downtown. The audience did not talk, shuffle papers, unwrap candy, rattle their programs, or make any unnecessary sound during the music, instead they (we) all listened intensely, and did not start leaving the theater until the last musician left the stage.

Next time I'm in Europe, I plan to try to attend more symphony concerts.

Notes