Thursday, January 28, 2010

BDO Live

I just finished watching Channel V's live coverage of the Sydney Big Day Out. I'd recorded it last weekend and had been looking forward to sitting down and having a look/listen. About halfway through the coverage, I was feeling a little disappointed by the performances of many of the bands on show. Flat, off-key, out of sync. Artists with great albums that I myself have been flogging over the past 12-18 months. Temper Trap, Ladyhawke, Passion Pit, and Midnight Juggernauts are the ones that spring to mind. All very dull on stage. But then there were more seasoned bands who sounded brilliant. Muse, obviously, but also Eskimo Joe (who I'm no massive fan of) really seemed to nail the few songs that were aired.


But back to those ordinary performances. I'm just wondering, is it because everything is automated nowadays that these younger artists are being exposed live? It might sound great on your iPod, but in the flesh? Meh. I don't have much of an idea of what goes into the engineering of an album, but I feel like there's much more room for error now than might have been back in the sixties, seventies, eighties even. "Less natural talent." I hear it from my parents all the time and I tend to agree. I still play the timeless stuff from the Stones, Doors, etc. more than anything else released recently. Seems like they were musicians first, icons second. But right now, it all feels a bit backwards to me. I'm just not convinced kids will be playing Ladyhawke (or the like) in thirty years time after what I watched today. At least not a live album.

Here's Jay-Z with Death of Auto-Tune, a song which I'm now thinking should have ranked a lot higher than the lowly 89th spot that it received in Triple J's Hottest 100.

No comments: