The Day the Concert Stood Still

The nature of a concert varies by musical genre and the individual performers. Nevertheless, we all admire a thumping sound system at a concert; that bass drum the kicks you in the gut, that guitar solo cutting through the air like a sonic razor. A concert, in many ways, is a spiritual connection between the artist and audience, through music or more specifically, emotion. With some dough, one has the opportunity to be in the presence of an admired musician or musicians and to feel them for who they are. So, why then would artists destroy this special interaction with lip-syncing, overpowered visuals, and album replicas? Corporate media has taken control over artists, and because of that, artists gain evil power or lack thereof on as well as off-stage. There was a time when bands like The Beetles, or artists like Nick Drake relied solely on their own raw talent. Today, for the most part, is a different story.

Lip-synching is a commonly-used shortcut in live music, but also considered to be controversial. As more elaborate shows came into place in the 1990s, lip-synching was introduced as a tool to dance, sing, etc. simultaneously and accurately. For example, Michael Jackson has performed complex dance routines while lip-syncing and live singing on stage. Unfortunately, artists like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and the like of them have taken extreme advantage of this tool to fool-proof their entire shows. According to The New York Times, the increased use of lip-syncing has made legislators in New York and New Jersey irritated, and suggests informing concert-goers that they are essentially paying for a non-live live concert.

Name any band or artist in mainstream pop culture—they are guaranteed to be satans of the lip-syncing machine. Music making is becoming too easy in this generation to the point where power, creativity and raw energy have trivially fluttered out the window in exchange of the power of purgatory perfection. In today’s brainwashed culture, concert-goers expect nothing less than perfection and any off-note or mess-up is deemed unacceptable. The difference between Cat Power and Kesha is paranormal advertising empowerment. Kesha is an image that has been stripped from her humanity to become a product—the pressure for perfectionism is greater here. However, better isn’t always good; more isn’t always beneficial.

Whether it’s Britney Spears in a 2009 Australian show, Luciano Pavarotti at the 2006 Winter Olympics or Ashlee Simpson on Saturday Night Live in 2004, lip-syncing has undeniably created a bad and non-credible image in which people nevertheless blindly eat up. Therefore, the process repeats itself until the very definition of a live show becomes the very definition of a digital download of the album.

So that begs the question: What are we actually paying for if the concert we’re viewing is a hoax? The answer is the artist brand. Every artist/band has a brand and hype surrounding that brand. This is why Madonna’s concerts are $300+ and Devendra Banhart’s are $40, if that. Tactlessly, the fact that one is a real musician/singer and the other is a performer who uses fake means to get by is completely irrelevant when it comes to branding and revenue. It’s a sad, yet unnecessary truth in the music industry. Plainly, authentic artists are not popular, which garners more fake imitators to merge into the music industry.

The ‘80s, 70s, and even earlier years were fundamental times in concert history: the popularity of experimentation and improvisation. The goal and purpose for a concert back then was not to mimic songs in the exact deliverance of a record or cassette tape, but rather create an atmosphere of emotion and humanistic connection. Music is a living, breathing entity, and when played live, songs change in shifting rhythm and details of instrumental performance—whatever the mood may strike at a certain time. A great part of Hendrix’s popularity came from his pure vigor and improvisation on stage. It was this that made fans yearning for a personal assembly for something fresh, real and animalistic. Jazz has been implementing these stage characteristics since the 1950s. Free Jazz, in particular, was a response to the dissatisfaction on the limitations on already established 1940s jazz. Come 1980s, freestyle made its way to modern settings, introducing rap battles and beat boxing. The craft of freestyle rap is improvising rhymes on the spot, and the art still exists today.

There has been a great speed of careless emergence of technology from the ’90s up until now. For better or worse, technology makes situations easier and more convenient. Consequently, media culture grabbed technology by the throat and altered the outlook on the process of human life, and specifically how concerts were to be executed. Enter the music industry. Alongside lip-syncing, Auto-Tune and scarce instrumentation in songs cultivates faster than The Spice Girls receiving their first record deal. In response to the decline of revenue from experimentalism and popularity of widely accessible generic pop, rock, etc., managers and major record labels placed artists into predetermined boxes, employing an apparent middle finger between creativity and music. Concerts became structured and although experimentalism still existed, the feeling was quickly forgotten by the large majority due to the role of the sheep in an overly produced world.

Furthermore, I should point out there is a vital difference between experimentalism and simply creating clutter. Discerning how much processing occurs on an album in comparison to the live show is incredibly easy to pinpoint. The Black Eyed Peas is a superior example of a band who are 100 times worse on stage than their actual recordings present (and this is during the technological age). They are filled with so much ego that they focus on sales rather than talent and skill.

Speaking of skills, many people today who have played an instrument for about a decade might easily become divorced from it. The main reason behind this is due to never instilling the instrument as part of his or her emotional being, but rather primarily learned as a mechanical device to be operated, not a living process in which to invest thoughts and feelings. Because of this notion, we see musicians taking more shortcuts than ever before into stardom, and concerts do not differ. It’s a story of the cookie cutter.

Today, artists are essentially slaves driven by egoism. There is no soul, no presence, no anything. An event that once drew the public to a whole new universe, is a puppet-show run by corporate media. That’s not to say all bands and artists are awful live. However, to find them we must delve underground. Animal Collective is just one band that stands apart from the rest by entrancing a group of fans into an all-night psychedelic euphoria. They are not corrupted by media and stay true to their genuine selves. Their live shows are heavily experimented and use visuals as a supplement to their outlandish songs. The point being, there is still hope in the world for honest shows. Underground bands are the role models for change, and are increasingly being discovered and uncovered by its shrouds. However, in a way, I'd prefer the underground bands to remain as such so as to prevent another musical homicide.

© Ajay Patel