"We're taking a short break" is not the same as "thank you Poughkeepsie, you've been great, that's it for us, we're done now"
and then some time later
"oh, wow, you guys made so much noise that we totally changed our minds about the concert being over, looks like we know a couple more songs that we are now going to play, though we had not planned to do these particular songs on this particular evening."
― they see me lollin' (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 17:09 (four years ago) link
Audiences should stay completely silent and see what happens
― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 17:17 (four years ago) link
a couple times in my life I've been lucky enough to see bands just offstage visibly disagreeing with each other about whether to go back out for an encore, which is extremely funny to me.
― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 17:26 (four years ago) link
Man, the number of times I've seen a big show and the act broadcasts some bullshit like "oh, we're just getting started!" or "I don't know if you have somewhere else to be, because we're going to be here all night!" or some shit, *inevitably* a song or two before the break and encore (which itself is *inevitably* some combination of a quieter song from the new album, a louder song, and then the big hit). I just assume most people don't understand the concept of a curfew, and certainly don't realize that if the band goes over its more or less pre-determined end time they're going to start paying piles of extra cash to the union.
The exceptions to the rule are like Pearl Jam, which have a relationship with this city and/or venues like Wrigley Field, so get a tiny bit more wiggle room. But, for example, when Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen came out to do an encore together in Hyde Park in London a few years back, the city eventually pulled the plug.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 17:30 (four years ago) link
Bryan Ferry, when I saw him a couple years ago, knows how to do it imo. After a lengthy set of Roxy and solo hits and deep cuts:
ENCORE 1:Let’s Stick Together (Wilbert Harrison cover)What Goes On (Velvet Underground cover)Jealous Guy (John Lennon cover)
ENCORE 2:Editions of You
― A breezy pop-rock feel fairly typical of the mid-'80s (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 17:38 (four years ago) link
lol @ complaining about the interactive theater of live performances
xps
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 17:43 (four years ago) link
The only legitimate encores I remember — that is, where the band actually seemed to be done and weren’t just going through the encore motions — were Neil Young & Crazy Horse in 1991, where he did his second encore after the house lights came up; and Otis Rush in 1987, who was opening for Los Lobos, and remains the only opener I’ve ever seen who got an encore.
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 17:52 (four years ago) link
My only contribution:
Shows should start at 4:30, end by 5:30-5:45, just in time for dinner and drinks.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 17:56 (four years ago) link
All shows should be in escape rooms, and each song is a clue.
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 18:00 (four years ago) link
xp: Sometimes you just got to take a piss or get a quick bite/drink.
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 18:02 (four years ago) link
xxpost Who's complaining? I love that shit.
Best/worst encore I (almost) saw was Prince. The last time I saw him play a big place, when he barely played guitar and had the useless 13-piece horn section, was pretty underwhelming. Show ends and people keep clapping. Maybe ten minutes pass, lights go up and people start leaving. It's been maybe 15 minutes, and I say, fuck it, I'm seeming him later at like 3 in the morning, I want to go home and rest. Which I do. And then learn after maybe 25 minutes with the house lights up and the place emptying, Prince and is band supposedly came out to a 90% empty arena and played another 20 minutes or so.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 18:02 (four years ago) link
I saw Sleater-Kinney last month. It was on Corn's birthday, so they'd been bantering a little more than normal (Corin said at one point it was the most she'd talked about her birthday on her birthday ever), so when they reached the end of the first encore, Carrie told the audience, "Normally we'd be walking off again for a few minutes, but, y'know, life is short and we're having fun, so let's just stay out here..." and then she took an audience poll about did we want "a slow one and a fast one", or "two fast ones" for the rest of the set (we ended up with a slow one AND two fast ones BTW).
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 19:08 (four years ago) link
Sometimes I see acts who make such a mockery of the encore process that I think (and this is probably true) that a lot of them are contractually bound to perform an "encore," which means the pantomime of walking off the stage and coming back, even if they don't want to or feel the need to.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 19:13 (four years ago) link
The best approach to the perfunctory encore I ever saw was at a Metric show several years back. They just put a timer up on a screen that counted down the five minutes until they came back out. That struck me as perfect, because it was completely transparent about it being a pre-arranged break rather than something spontaneous, didn't obligate the audience to carry on clapping and cheering for some indefinite amount of time, and allowed the excitement for the "encore" portion of the show to build and peak at just the right time.
― JRN, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 19:40 (four years ago) link
I accompanied a friend to a 2004 Decemberists show at some tiny venue; there were five members and enough instruments on stage that the band couldn't leave the stage without removing it all, so just told us to pretend they left, and chatted with each other for a few minutes before doing the encore.
― blatherskite, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 20:16 (four years ago) link
Doesn't all of this depend on the act? Unless they were laying down a couple of hour-long choogles in there al la Rallizes or Endless Boogie or whatever I can't imagine wanting to sit through three live hours of CCR...there's just not enough variety in what they did to pull that off.
Comparing CCR to Zep in this regard is kinda dumb
― Suggest Banshee (Hadrian VIII), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 20:44 (four years ago) link
I can't think of any band I would want to hear perform for three hours, Zep definitely included. Maybe P-Funk, but there was a fair amount of widdling between the gems in their shows too.
― A breezy pop-rock feel fairly typical of the mid-'80s (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 20:54 (four years ago) link
I've only ever seen two bands play for more than two hours - the Mars Volta in 2005 (no opening act and I feel like they were up there for about 3 hours) and King Sunny Ade (played from 8 PM to 4 AM). In both cases there was definitely a "it's all one song" feeling, and I wouldn't want to listen back to recordings of either show but I had a blast while I was there. I agree with Hadrian that Creedence, or any band playing one discrete song after another for three hours, would be intolerable for me after 90 minutes or so.
― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 20:59 (four years ago) link
Heh, I was curious, so did the math, and the sum total of the first five CCR album runs just under three hours.
Every time I've seen Springsteen he's gone on for around 3 hours, and it's never seemed too long ... or too short. I'm trying to think who else I've seen who goes three hours. Even Rush I think stopped around 2.5.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:12 (four years ago) link
Fwiw, btw, those epic Zeppelin sets were like half drum/guitar/organ solos. Basically "Dazed and Confused" and "Moby Dick" and "No Quarter."
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:14 (four years ago) link
I've always wondered about this. I've read books about Led Zeppelin where they describe concerts and it's like "and then John Paul Jones took a 40-minute organ solo before 'No Quarter'" and I think, who the fuck would even stick around for that? But at the same time, I'd kinda like to hear even one bootleg just to see how unendurable it really is.
― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:23 (four years ago) link
"Man, I ain’t believing that shit about Bonham’s one hour drum solo, man. I mean one hour of drums, you couldn’t handle that shit on strong acid, man."
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:27 (four years ago) link
vampire weekend went 2 hrs 45 when i saw them at msg earlier this year lol
― jacquees, full of cobras (voodoo chili), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:28 (four years ago) link
All I know is that, as a huge Zeppelin fan, I've never felt compelled to listen to any of their bootlegs for that very reason (plus others). But Springsteen, otoh, I can easily listen to a 3.5 hour show by him. Once I picked up a friend when I was listening to a Bruce show (during a Sirius promo), took him to a real concert, and the Bruce show was still on for the ride home.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:30 (four years ago) link
How The West Was Won is a great live document and you don't have to try to track down weird bootlegs
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:54 (four years ago) link
The '69 live show on the expanded Zep I is great too--They were absolute hungry beasts onstage then.
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 21:58 (four years ago) link
Some of those 77 Presence tour Zep shows are insane: guitar player all strung out, sounding like a shreds vid part of the time & part of the time like the greatest guitar player ever, singer seemingly bemused/befuddled by the whole thing, No Quarter devolving in a boogie-woogie piano scales exercise, all going on for 3 fucking hours, sometimes brilliant, sometimes stupid, always 100% Led Zep.
All bands should play 20 minutes MAXIMUM
― chr1sb3singer, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:00 (four years ago) link
My uncle ditched my sister's 3rd birthday party to go see Zep in 77 in Chicago. She thinks he made the right choice.
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:08 (four years ago) link
i feel like i saw the allman bros approach the 3 hour mark in the late 90s(?) but it's very possible i'm misremembering
― A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Chooglin (will), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:08 (four years ago) link
xpost Yeah, the official futzed with live Zeppelin document is pretty awesome, especially the DVD version. But that seems kind of an outlier. whereas there are probably 5-10 Springsteen bootlegs I listen to as often as the albums themselves.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:12 (four years ago) link
CCR!!!
― Peaceful Warrior I Poser (Karl Malone), Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:21 (four years ago) link
I saw Public Enemy go at least 3.5 hours... in Columbia, Mo.... on a weeknight.
Even being 19, I had to throw in the towel around 2 a.m.
― pplains, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:42 (four years ago) link
And before anyone asks, no, there was no 40-minute Terminator X scratch solo.
― pplains, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:43 (four years ago) link
One of the best shows I've ever seen was a four hour Prince show in 2011. Somewhere in encore 4, we realized that we were already at the afterparty and we jumped down to the floor of the Forum to dance along with the remaining audience who stayed behind. You don't leave until Prince leaves.
― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 3 December 2019 22:48 (four years ago) link
One other thing CCR had going on that I want to say a lot of rock acts had abandoned was an allegiance to the country side of early rock and roll, not just soul or the blues but rockabilly. Did many other bands dip into rockabilly between CCR's end until the late '70s/early '80s revival?
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:03 (four years ago) link
Flamin' Groovies.
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:06 (four years ago) link
Same city!
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:07 (four years ago) link
Only bands I saw do more than two hours were the Who, whose set was around 3 hours in 1989; and George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars a few weeks later, who played a solid 4-hour show that did not let up AT ALL. I didn’t even know much of their material at the time, and was transfixed.To bring it back to CCR and encores, at one of those ‘89 Who shows, they played “Born On The Bayou,” introduced by Daltrey as “the only thing I remember about Woodstock.”
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:19 (four years ago) link
Nice to see some love for P-Funk’s marathon sets, none of which involved 40-minute drum solos
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:24 (four years ago) link
― Suggest Banshee (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:35 (four years ago) link
In the UK at least glam def reached back to early r’n’r/rockabilly
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 00:52 (four years ago) link
To bring it back to CCR and encores, at one of those ‘89 Who shows, they played “Born On The Bayou,” introduced by Daltrey as “the only thing I remember about Woodstock.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjrIb1WdOVg
― pplains, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 01:39 (four years ago) link
― Elvis Telecom
Oh yeah I've got a bootleg of that one. Definitely one of the hottest shows I've heard Prince do, which is, uh, a significant compliment.
There are some pretty excruciating Zep shows from '75 and '77. There's one from Seattle '75 (there's a video of this I'm told) where Jimmy stretches out "Dazed and Confused" for _45 minutes_. It's absolutely unbearable, total torture (and I'll rep hard for the 26 minute Dazed and Confused from Offenburg two years earlier!) Then by '77 there's the infamous Tempe gig.. the "Achilles Last Stand" from that gig is one of the biggest trainwrecks I've ever heard, probably still terrible even if you find a tape running at the right speed (which most of them don't). Of course the flip side is that Page could play that completely terrible and nobody would fucking care. 100% arena ennui. A lot of it is, I think, down to the sound systems of the time... they probably sounded terrible for similar reasons to those that made the Beatles sound terrible - it wasn't the fans per se, it was the technology wasn't there to allow them to sound good!
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 02:46 (four years ago) link
I saw Public Enemy go at least 3.5 hours... in Columbia, Mo.... on a weeknight..
― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 03:20 (four years ago) link
I dunno, PAs had come a very long way by ‘77, and a number of bands designed, developed, and lugged around their own PAs as a means of avoiding being stuck with inadequate house systems. It seems weird that Zep either a) didn’t use their own system, or b) that they designed and used a crappy one.But apart from maybe ‘68-‘69, Zep just wasn’t a great live act. They’d have great moments, but then ruin everything with 90 minutes of “LOOK AT THIS VIOLIN BOW.” It’s telling that How The West Was Won is compiled from multiple shows, sometimes within a single song (“Stairway” alone has bits from three shows). They couldn’t find one Zep show that was decent from beginning to end?xp
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 03:31 (four years ago) link
this discussion sent me to the extras on the 2009 reissues of Bayou Country through Cosmo's, but also to the songs I was not familiar with from Pendulum: and man, "Sailor's Lament," "Chameleon," "Hideaway," and "It's Just a Thought" are really really bad. JF really ran outta gas at the same time that he wanted to expand the sound of the band, although I admire the chutzpah of "Rude Awakening" which is so bizarre and ill conceived that I'm glad he put it on the record. "Born to Move" and "Molina" are okay, but no patch on "Hey Tonight" or "have you ever"; that last one still the least of his hot streak.
― veronica moser, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 21:22 (four years ago) link
Hard disagree about those Pendulum tracks
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 21:34 (four years ago) link
I call Pendulum the Organ Album. Fogerty took to it hard. Sometimes the songs exist as excuses for organ grooves ("Sailor's Lament"). But "It's Just a Thought" is a better bit of rumination than "Have You Ever..." -- my least favorite of CCR's singles, I'll agree.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 21:46 (four years ago) link
Something's gotta be last, right?
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 21:54 (four years ago) link
Hard agree with your hard disagreement. "Hideaway" and "It's Just a Thought" are great!
― I've Got A Ron Wood Solo Album To Listen To (Tom D.), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 22:45 (four years ago) link