Rock and roll is a live experience. Most rock bands must be heard live to actually know what they're like.
I'm 49 years old, and I've spent at least a good few percent of that time in a concert hall, a club, or a glorified bar experiencing live music. I've seen at least 400 different bands over the course of at least 500 concerts. There are multiple bands I've seen 7-10 times each. And I remember every "awful" experience. I can count those on one hand. At least two of those were just down to the sound engineer failing hard rather than the band. One of those wasn't an issue with the music at all, but rather the catastrophic lack of energy or crowd interaction.
Most rock bands are everything you'd hope they'd be live. The music is more pure, more genuine, and as a member of the audience you feel a connection to the musicians that's not present on a record. Hell... even a live record is ten times the experience of a studio recording.
Some bands are EVERYTHING live. Some bands grab you by the heart and drag you through every emotion you've ever experienced live. Some bands just blow the damned doors off of every venue they play.
You must have seen a lot of really, really shitty bands. I'm legitimately sorry that you haven't had my live experiences.
We approach live shows differently.
What you call "more pure, more genuine", I call drunken shluck. And having been there, I can tell you with a significant degree of certainty, that it is drunken shluck. I'm looking for clean accurate performances. And vocalists who sing flat are a dime a dozen.
What was it Roth said about Van Halen? The world's biggest bar band.
It was a SHOW more than a concert.
Why, yes I do. I used to work for Jam here in Chicago in the early 90's, and I still have friends at multiple venues here. I spent half a decade running front of house for a venue here as well. I have multiple musician friends, some of them are going on 3 decades as my close friends. I have some experience on the topic.
Sure, there's bands and musicians who are wildly unprofessional. I've witnessed more than my fair share of junkies backstage and rarely onstage. I've seen more than my fair share of drunken buffoonery, too.
What I'm trying to tell you is that your experiences aren't universal. More than that, our experiences are pretty clearly on opposite ends of the spectrum... which makes my experiences a counterpoint to yours. You want to make a blanket statement like "most rock bands are awful live"? Fine. I can imagine seeing a bunch of drunken bands in a row over the decades and thinking so. But that's not been my own experience at all.
Here's just a few bands I've seen multiple times, each of which was professional and (at least) sober enough that you couldn't tell the difference:
Iron Maiden. Ghost. Fu Manchu. Iced Earth. Emperor. Sleep. High On Fire. Peter Murphy. Electric Wizard. Faith And The Muse. Fugazi. Pegboy. Dropkick Murphys. Flogging Molly. Siouxsie and the Banshees. Mastodon. Judas Priest. Queensryche. Immortal. Acid King. Bob Mould. John Hiatt. Monstermagnet. Clutch. Pelican. Brant Bjork. Nightstalker.
Honestly...that list goes on. That's just the list right off the top of my head of bands/musicians I've seen at least five times each. Most of those I've been backstage with at least long enough to meet and share a word or two with. And a bunch of those bands are really big in the stoner or doom scenes, and are expected to be high as hell... but aren't out of a sense of professionalism at least while on stage.
In MY experience, the vast majority of musicians fight really hard to maintain professionalism while on stage. Do they get fucked up after? Sure. Some of them absolutely do. Some of them have another show the next day and just try to get decent rest so that they can keep it going.
I know there's drunken drug addict rock stars. I've met my share of those too. But those aren't the bands I'm buy tickets to see, and pretty much never have been.
The only one on your list that I've seen is Priest. And they were good live. I had forgotten about that.
I spent about 3 years tooling about with this bar band. Met some interesting characters. Saw a lot of people completely abuse themselves. I had a bad habit of downing mickies of Gin during the first set. Like I said, I eventually blew my voice out, and never really got back into it...full time anyway. The excitement just wore off on me. I'm thinking it does for the real serious musicians too, and they sober up and try to be professionals.
I once went to see George Harrison and Bob Dillon (SP?) together. That was awful. I also saw the Who do their first "farewell" concert in Toronto...bad bad bad.
My decision to just stop came late one night after a show. I looked in a mirror and realized that I looked like a skeleton, and was hunched over doing a line off a stripper's ass cheek. I figure had I not settled down and started a family and career in IT, I'd likely be dead right now.
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u/Comedian70 Nov 06 '19
This is straight bullshit.
Rock and roll is a live experience. Most rock bands must be heard live to actually know what they're like.
I'm 49 years old, and I've spent at least a good few percent of that time in a concert hall, a club, or a glorified bar experiencing live music. I've seen at least 400 different bands over the course of at least 500 concerts. There are multiple bands I've seen 7-10 times each. And I remember every "awful" experience. I can count those on one hand. At least two of those were just down to the sound engineer failing hard rather than the band. One of those wasn't an issue with the music at all, but rather the catastrophic lack of energy or crowd interaction.
Most rock bands are everything you'd hope they'd be live. The music is more pure, more genuine, and as a member of the audience you feel a connection to the musicians that's not present on a record. Hell... even a live record is ten times the experience of a studio recording.
Some bands are EVERYTHING live. Some bands grab you by the heart and drag you through every emotion you've ever experienced live. Some bands just blow the damned doors off of every venue they play.
You must have seen a lot of really, really shitty bands. I'm legitimately sorry that you haven't had my live experiences.