I saw some concerts at an outdoor festival recently. With well-known performers, the audience seems to be waiting for one or two familiar hit songs and, in the meantime, they chat or look at their phones while the artists run through the rest of their repertoire. Then they play the familiar hit and suddenly I can’t see the stage anymore – there is a sea of phones being held in the air, recording short video clips presumably to post on social media or to send to friends; I imagine which is motivated by a desire to show that you were there. After the first minute or so of the hit, the phones go down. Then there is some dancing, some singing along and waving of hands during the chorus or the hook. Familiarity seems to be key. During one of these moments, I found myself thinking about ELF’s “The Manual” which shared a formula for writing a hit and it seems to still be more or less the case; in fact hits are increasingly simplistic and formulaic, familiar melodies, samples, strong beats or simple ballads. I notice several differences to the concerts I went to many years ago. Of course the rise of social media following the invention of the mobile phone, a camera and video camera in your pocket, is a big part of this. Another difference is that bands used to play live versions of their music which were different to the recording studio versions. Nowadays, bands generally try to exactly reproduce their hits as faithfully as possible, another nod to the dumming down of audience expectations – play your hits exactly like the record (often live auto-tuned) so that I can make a short video recording to prove I was there and so that my online contacts can recognise your hit even recorded using a small mobile phone microphone. The filming technique is also bizarre. I notice that at bigger concerts with giant video screens, many people film the giant screens, even when they have a clear view of the nearby stage. They watch a small screen recording a large screen instead of looking directly at what is going on. The younger people usually film in portrait mode, like Tik-Tok, and the older people often film in landscape mode, although there are few exceptions to this.
All this is bizarre to me, growing up, as I did, with live music which sounded entertainingly different to recorded albums and singles, and when film cameras and recording were not allowed at concerts – a few illicitly taken printed photographs (now weirdly referred to as “analogue” photography) would be sold on the black market for teenagers to pin on their bedroom walls and when being at a concert meant being present and in the moment, the crowd mentally and emotionally merging together, jumping around and sweating all over each other. One thing which hasn’t really changed is that many people get really drunk at concerts. I never was into that. When I was young, I was usually completely sober at concerts, savouring the moment, nothing dulling it down, Straight Edge it used to be called. I used to prefer smaller concerts and that hasn’t changed for me; I still don’t really like stadium concerts and large concerts. Some of the best concerts I have seen in my life have been with very small audiences. Overall I still like going to concerts and discovering new music. Despite what every generations says, music did not used to be good and now it is bad – every moment in time has good and bad music, good and bad musicians – and discovering and enjoying their music always brings me pleasure.
Liam Mor's Blog