The dying concept of live entertainment

By: Insiya Syed

I’ve been in line since morning

Now guess who’s going

I want to go to a rock show tonight

You’ve got fine and I’ve got crazy

Let’s go out and find things we can’t buy

Stand up front so we can’t hear

Sing along with words that aren’t right

I want to go to a rock show tonight

— Dragonfly, Rock Show

One Friday night, I fell asleep with my ears buzzing into my pillow like there was a dead radio hissing underneath the bed. The adrenaline from the preceding hours had dissolved and I drifted into sleep with the tiny bones in my skull responsible for translating air movement to sound still vibrating on and on. I have Munchkins to thank for that temporary deafness. Their show at a donut joint earlier that evening was powerful, intense and energetic, and I left that hang-out into the neon night, wide awake and wishing I could pick up a guitar myself. It was a show good enough to inspire. I should note that I am addicted to concerts. Live rock shows are 100 per cent genuine for me. I’m hooked for life.

As an art, as a profession, and as entertainment, music is often spoken of as a ‘universal language.’ But this was not always so. For the greater part of its history in the West, music was regarded as a secondary art form. But logically speaking, music can exist only in performance be it in a recording studio (some of our dear superstars don’t even play live in the recording studio anymore, relying heavily on software like Acid Pro or Fruity Loops) or on a stage in front of a live audience making it a theatrical art and not DAT (Digital Audio Tape) art.

When Goethe said, “in comparison with the eye, the ear is a dumb sense,” he was expressing the universal reliance on the visible as opposed to the audible, ‘hearsay,’ and echoing the generally accepted preference for ‘seeing is believing.’ As one result of the ear’s inferior rank and the mistrust of its perceptions of what are, after all, momentary phenomena, music has existed until today in the shadow of the visual arts.

To put it simply, a concert is a performance of music before an audience. The word concert originally meant a combination of performers rather than the performance itself, and the term did not acquire its present meaning until the 17th century. Around that time due to the development of opera, however, art music for the first time became a public institution. The earliest public concerts on record, supported by admission fees, were inaugurated in London around 1672, whereas the first rock music event was held 41 years ago in Cleveland, Ohio.

As far as the Pakistani pop music industry and playing live gigs is concerned, the times are changing fast and furiously for the worse. Selling image, music, albums, videos and getting featured on in-your-face-billboards is the new hot game that all musicians wish to play. The concept of performing in a small club or a grand stage with an audience consisting of no one else but the prizewinning fans is quickly fading out. Nearly all performances — on television or stage — are playing DAT with musicians ‘playing’ their un-plugged electric guitars. Sadly, bands would be often heard saying that this is a phenomenon that is prevalent even in the international concert arenas. Hence, this writer decided on acquiring an international point of view regarding live performances in other parts of the world from musician Pete Lockett.

One of the most respected drummers in the UK, Pete has recorded and/or toured with: (our own) Mekaal Hassan Band, Bjork, Robert Plant, Nitin Sawhney, the Pet Shop Boys, A.R. Rahman, Sinead O’Connor to name just a few. He says that, “Lip-sync internationally is most common when there are multiple acts playing a couple of tunes or a short set. This situation is for TV shows in particular where there is simply not enough time to sound check a lot of bands. But it is more in the pop area that you come across this miming and lip-sync scenario. The show Later with Jools is the example here. The playing is totally live, unlike Top of The Pops that has never been played live apart from selected groups. In terms of being broadcast live, the shows are often delayed relay or pre-recorded a few days before. People get on their high horse too much about lip sync/miming on TV. It is totally understandable (in some circumstances) for TV.”

Concerts have turned into an interesting puzzle for organizers and soda corporate giants for tickets to such events seem to be in excess demand almost always. What these organizers and musicians playing these shows fail to understand is that the audience adds an important input to the experience. A rock concert in a venue full of screaming and yelling fans allows the fanatics a first hand chance to sing along with their favourite bands, and maybe even gossip a bit with the like-minded. It’s only when music lovers are jam-packed in a room or a stadium sweating together that the tale of a song unfolds, the quiet lonesomeness of the music or the high energy gathers everyone into one of those moments of pure concentration you can almost touch.

So why did the concept of providing genuine music listeners with good solid live performances never really catch on in our country? The only reason is that it’s an administrative nightmare to set several instruments with microphones and the other vital requirements whereas it’s much simpler to handle software and press one button to produce pre-recorded music. Unless a live band really has control of their sound they can sound weaker in sonic impact, so many take the safe and cheap option of miming.

In the rest of the world an ideal concert experience depends on flash pots, lasers and fabulous costumes. We are still far behind in this department. Let alone the laser show, we can’t even manage to deliver no-frills, straight-ahead rock’n’roll played with good humour and passion. Our local bands don’t realize that one of the notable features in live performances is the opportunity to improvise. It allows them to experiment and get an immediate response — be it good or bad — from the audience. Fawad, who is 22 and attends concerts frequently, feels that “When there is too much backing then for me the situation becomes emotionally dead. There is a balance where you can use some pre-recorded material to support what you do live, even in the way of triggering samples etc.”

Another university student who is a part of an underground band and wishes to remain anonymous narrates an interesting story: “We had to play a gig and on the very day our bassist fell sick. We had two options; either we give the money back to the organizers or we take another friend and let him ‘pretend’ that he is playing bass since we were supposed to lip-sync. Not only did we get through it but not a soul realized that the bassist wasn’t even holding the guitar properly. That performance generated great reviews for us and the organizers were very pleased.”

There is an on-going debate of weather we can call our pop-rock music ‘community’ an industry, but little do we realize that we’ve got a long, long way to go. Let playing live music be the ‘rock concert movement number one’ and we can only be successful if biggies such as Junoon, Strings and Fuzon can say no to recorded music and yes to a much brighter future, musically speaking.

As an end note, Pete Lockett talks about the importance of live performance in general: “Live performance of any kind is about directly influencing the dynamics and emotion of the situation and environment. It is not a functional moment but one of communication and spirit. With that taken away, the equivalent would be like knowing Shakespeare by heart but not having any emotions of your own.”

First Published in DAWN, Images - Sunday, June 26, 2005.