Backing Tracks at Live Performances

Prerecorded music at live performances isn’t a new thing: in the 1970s, Queen used a recording of the operatic middle section of “Bohemian Rhapsody” when playing live, The Who played to the sequenced synth tracks for “Baby O’Reilly” and “We Won’t Get Fooled Again” and Rush triggered recordings for the openings of “2112” and “Cygnus X-1.”  But for the most part, the rest of the shows were 100% live.

Today, live performances are often the reverse, with a good chunk of it being played to backing tracks. I’m sure we’ve all been to shows where you heard brass and keyboards, only to find that no one on stage was actually blowing a horn or playing a keyboard.

Last month I attended a concert by the female-fronted New Zealand band, The Beths, and they were terrific. All four band members know their instruments, and they sounded great. Unfortunately, they sang to prerecorded backing vocals and harmony vocals, played to backing keyboard tracks on a few songs, and added massive amounts of reverb and prerecorded ambient noise that filled the performance with a rumbling bed of sound. It was so unnecessary. It’s not like these aren’t great musicians. They could have played everything live and done a terrific show, but something compels The Beths and other bands to have their live performances sound exactly like their studio recordings.

What all this leads to is a lack of spontaneity, preventing something surprising and exciting from happening. Yes, you’ll hear a good reproduction of the music you’ve been accustomed to hearing, but what you won’t hear is a happy accident, a band that extends the jam and spontaneously starts playing a different song. You won’t get Led Zeppelin taking a song like “Dazed and Confused” and turning into a 20-minute venture that leads to…well, to who knows where? And sure, the self-indulgences associated with the 70s sometimes led to laborious performances, but they also led to amazing discoveries. I’m not a Grateful Dead guy, but from what I understand, each of their performances were unique, with songs morphing into others and outros extending into monster jams. The band might not have been my jam, but I appreciate the philosophy of keeping live performances loose and open to discovery rather than highly choreographed, each identical to the next.  

There are still bands that allow for live exploration. Khruangbin did so last month in Chicago, as did Jason Isbell and Molly Tuttle at Red Rocks last spring. Truly live music still exists, but little of it is in the more mainstream pop and rock arena, which is one reason why I’m likely going to be more selective in what I see in the future. I’d rather see a 100% live show that isn’t my favorite music than a show of a band I really dig who’s playing to backing tracks. I just don’t see the point.

So much of our human experience has degraded into something artificial. Give me something authentic, even if imperfect.

Tripping on the (Prerecorded) Wire

Watching two bands perform last night at Evantson’s SPACE – a splendid venue, by the way – I noticed how dependent live performance has become on prerecorded tracks.  This is nothing new, of course, as even bands with reputations for being authentic – whatever that means – have enhanced their shows with the extra hands that sequencing and loops provide.  The band Rush has been relying on prerecorded tracks for decades.  Geddy Lee sings a lead vocal, and suddenly two more Geddys join him in the background.  And watch closely when he plays the keyboards and you’ll notice that often he’ll press one note on the keyboard that triggers a more elaborate arrangement.  Modern cover bands often employ the same tactics – backup vocals sound especially impressive when they’re dubbed over a layer of lush, prerecorded voices. 

Neither band I saw last night – headliner A Silent Film and opener Hands – relied so heavily on prerecorded tracks that it diminished the talent or energy displayed on stage (both bands were excellent), but it doesn’t take much for live performance to become predictable, and this is exactly what playing to prerecorded tracks demands: predictability.

Back in the day, recordings were meant to capture live performing, but along the way that method was turned on its head; soon, live performing was meant to emulate the recording.  Some bands – The Cars come to mind, but almost any top 40 band could be an example – performed their songs exactly as they sounded on the record.  Others – The Who and Led Zeppelin, for example – managed to perform a high wire act that took listeners on a journey that could either flop or mesmerize but never bore, as they played songs that were contradictorily both recognizable and an exploration of new territory.

There’s room enough in the world for both strategies, but more and more it seems that bands are relying so heavily on pre-sequenced material that any hope to elevate a performance to transcendental levels is squashed from the outset. 

And this is a problem.  In an era when the recordings have become disposable and live performing has become the one think keeping both listeners and performers invested and interested, the need for spontaneous performances has never been greater.

Sure, Hands did a fine job last night, and there’s no question that the band has talent and live chops (particularly drummer Sean Hess), but the songs relied so heavily on Geoff Halliday’s sequenced synth tracks, that each song was undoubtedly performed exactly the way it had been performed the day before and the day before that.  There’s simply no room for improvising.  No possibility of a happy accident.  If a particularly inspired groove or guitar solo happens to develop, there will be opportunity for it to flourish.

Hell, even The Who can’t be spontaneous with songs like Baba O’Riley or We Won’t Get Fooled Again, since they have to rely on the synth tracks Pete recorded over forty years ago.  Luckily for The Who, back in the day these songs were the exception to an otherwise spontaneous performance.

A Silent Film, which relied much less on prerecorded tracks than their opening act, announced a few songs into the set last night that they were going to perform without a set list, insinuating that this was A Big Deal.  Perhaps these days that’s what passes for spontaneity – playing songs exactly like the record, but in a different order.

But will it keep audiences coming back?  Will it breathe life into a faltering industry?