Once upon a time, a great concert was your favorite band stepping out on the stage -- no huss, no fuss -- and killing it with new material and old favorites. That was expected, and that was enough. But with media consumption enveloping much of a band's artistic output, live shows have had to become special events that can't be replicated. Now, bands are pushing for more and more concert concepts that create unique experiences. Sometimes, though, these concert concepts are unique for all the wrong reasons.
1. Yo La Tengo
This past weekend, indie godparents Yo La Tengo did a great bit of anti-music performance: acting out "The Chinese Restaurant" episode of Seinfeld -- which is a kind of anti-sitcom in itself -- wherein Jerry, George and Elaine linger in the existential hell of waiting for a table. That's the kind of whimsy and tease that comes from YLT's set-list concept, which allows random audience members to spin a wheel for random choices. The joke wore on, and Yo La Tengo performed the entire fucking episode. (To be fair, though, there couldn't be a better episode of classic television to tease audiences with.)
Yo La Tengo is no stranger to chance and randomness. The band has also been known to participate in a write-the-night bid, where ticket holders vote for their set list. There are pros and cons to this democracy of fate approach to building a two-hour set: for bands like YLT with a huge catalog of great tunes. The process can cull songs from all eras of the band's existence in a seemingly fair manner, but on the other hand, audience members can be forced to watch absurd, anti-music performances that might kill the joy of seeing a band perform live.
2. Elvis Costello
Yo La Tengo may be borrowing its spinning concept from Elvis Costello, who famously made a Wheel of Fortune-style tour in 1986 where audience members would spin the song that he would play next. Twenty-five years since that experiment, Costello has revived his Spectacular Spinning Songbook for his new tour. Again, this process allows for a democratic, observantly fair way of spanning an artist's entire body of work. YLT and Elvis Costello are fine practitioners of irony, with albums that are deep and sentimental enough to resist their creators' muddled attempts at unique concert experiences. But this process can seem cold and irreverent to works that have deep meaning to both the audience and the artist.
3. Classic Album Performances
Not many bands can claim that they have a classic, canon-worthy album. Album retrospectives used to be festival treats made by well-established bands in recognition of the eternal status of one their enduring masterpieces. Sonic Youth performing Daydream Nation in full: amazing. Public Enemy reviving It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back live: incredible (even though Chuck D had concerns about performing the album in full). Roger Walter putting The Wall on tour: a fine, fine experience.
But now, that whole-album performance has become a lucrative trend, and less important albums by less important bands are getting the treatment. Reportedly Styx played two albums live -- Grand Illusion and Pieces of 8 -- in full last year. Megadeth did the whole-album-live thing. As did My Morning Jacket. As did Weezer. As did Hanson?
The benefit of this live-performance concept is that it allows younger audience members, who have come to love classic albums, a chance to experience something that may have been created before they were born. The classic-album performance emphasizes the concert as special, a once (or twice) in a lifetime moment.
The downside: Shittier and shittier albums are getting raised prematurely to canonical status. The quality of the album is in the ear of the beholder, obviously. (Hence, the lucrativeness of these kinds of performances with built-in audiences that would jump at the chance to see their favorite Styx or MMJ album performed live.)
The other downside is the opposite of the freewheeling (har, har) song-spin process. Full-album performances are inherently constrictive, especially if the album in question isn't quite up to snuff. It's a rote hammering of music that the band is already (or should be) tired of.
4. NoDeachunter (No Age, Dan Deacon, Deerhunter)
A standard tour from this blog-beloved trio of great indie artists -- No Age, Dan Deacon, and Deerhunter -- would be great by itself, bringing together each band's differing audiences. In 2009, though, the three bands did tour together -- albeit in a bizarre round- robin mash-up tour, where each band played in three different areas in the venue, trading off songs, and sometimes playing together. Give 'em credit for being inventive. As some of the clips show, the super-group performance worked quite well for a few songs. However, general reaction was mixed; apparently, the audiences didn't exactly blend well together, and many of the song trade-offs didn't exactly work in this new context.
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