Your Ideal Music Listening Experience - Club, Gig or Bedroom?

Yeah, and Coal has kind of hit on something else which I dislike about the whole live gig thing. I used to really love the ritual of it - especially back in the days when it was really important for me to get to the front, and kind of camping out in the queue all day, talking to other fans was a big deal. But now the thought of all that faff just makes me feel tense. The stop-start, applause, thank you ritual. And yeah, that you have to sustain your attention for an hour and a half or whatever - I don't go to movies in the theatre any more, either, I can't stand having to commit to that long a chunk of time without being able to get up and do something else. (Though I will happily read a book for 4 hours straight, because it's my choice how long I spend doing it, not someone else forcing me to stay in my seat until an intermission.)

there was def a time in history when communal singing was the dominant, if not only, model of music listening. it is telling tho that in 2012 maybe it seems like something totally different from these other more modern forms.

Yeah, I was thinking about that, oddly enough, on my morning jog today. But more about songwriting and the folk tradition, about how it was far more normal to take a song, change it/personalise it, then just pass it on, than what we think about as songwriting and copyright and ownership and all that. But the participatory nature of music listening probably had a lot to do with that, as well, rather than this dichotomy into performers and listeners.

I went to a house concert last night where a guy has installed a very elaborate mini stage and PA in the basement of his (very swanky) abode. He built the place with primo acoustics in mind. Seeing a show with 30-35 very chill and musically attentive people, punch and cookies (many brought their own wine/beer) and no bar chatter/cash register noise etc. was totally awesome and I want to do more of this.

I have many ideal experiences. Although I spent almost two hours a day with headphones on, I thrill to that moment in the car you're all familiar with: when a good song suddenly becomes great on the third or fourth play. Also, I look forward to dancing.

I must say, seeing an act live might be the least transcendent means of experiencing them. I've seen many wonderful performances over the years but none quite like the intangible, evanescent bond between song on car radio and me, or iPod and me.

It's the physicality of the live experience that makes for its transcendence. And I don't just mean the thrill of seeing your favourite artist! onstage! in front of you! I mean, that the kind of volume and presence that one can get, live, where you can actually feel the music - very few home listening environments can do that. Sure, the emotional and chemical thrill of hearing your favourite song can have a transcendence of its own. But I'm thinking of things like, the holocaust section in My Bloody Valentine gigs. The way that seeing an orchestra, live, in front of you, the volume and physical presence of sound that is created by listening to 100 people playing at once, you just don't get on a record in quite the same way. It's a different thrill. Listening to something on headphones is immersive, in that the rest of the world *disappears* in a way that you can't forget the annoying bits of the world when you're at a concert and there is someone standing next to you is making your enjoyment impossible. It's just different.

you have to sustain your attention for an hour and a half or whatever

i dont have a problem with that - its more that it abruptly starts at a particular time and abruptly ends at a particular time and there is nothing before or after - i can easily lose self in music in a club for longer stretches than that, its more that i like the idea of music just being kind of continuous and just kind of coming in and out as and when

That said, there are a number of times I've been standing, squashed between a meat cushion and the hairball from hell thinking "Christ, I wish I was listening to this at home".

Did I really write this?

It was a more innocent time...

Yeah, I got what you meant, Coal, it's not the length, it's the arbitrary nature of that length, that you don't get to set how long you're intrigued by it.

Arguably good performers should get you intrigued from the start though? But I sort of feel it's really easy for people to get bogged down in the London gig circuit thing, like people go to gigs just because it's what they do, instead of going to the pub or whatever, and bands just cater to this semi-interested crowd a lot of the time and don't really try, or just aren't that good at the performative aspect in the first place.

depends how much interest you have in performativity

You've never enjoyed a gig?

Unsurprisingly I like listening at home most, usually on my own but not always. The kind of clubs I've been exposed to are, I imagine, a million miles removed from the ones you guys get to go to, so they've never held much appeal, and gigs are normally too loud, too crowded, too long, and so on and so forth, although I still go and see bands quite regularly (probably more so in the last 18 months than in the previous ten years, actually). (Interestingly the most disinterested crowds I've encountered have been in Birmingham, not London.)

So yeah, good headphones or good speakers, clear sound, time to soak it all up.

And albums over varied mix tapes generally, unless I'm in the car or the office, where I don't mind the radio. Though we do keep an iPod in a dock which has loads of themed playlists just to fill aural space when we can't be arced to choose music otherwise.

"Some other option" - some kind of club, something communal, good sound system, good environment, good drinks, but without needing to dance, or get hype, tho it's an option. certain kinds of performances cd also be like this but i've very little interest in staring at a trad onstage gig from amidst a jostly crowd.

btw i enjoy a good hymn but most communal singing is horrendous to me

the worst thing about radio is easily HUMAN SPEECH INTRUDING ON THE MUSIC ugh just STFU STFU STFU ALL RADIO PRESENTERS EVER

i think half of the reason i started listening to Radio 3 a lot was it had the least amount of scum presenter blather.

For actually listening to a record, the car.

To make up my mind about whether I like a band or not, a small gig. At the gig I know I won't have to put the kids to bed, be interrupted by wife wanting to watch TV, by my mum calling up ...

Definitely live. I'm very interested in how a performer chooses to present their music. As far as bands go, a lot can be gleaned about their music by how they present it, like the difference between a band that starts their songs with a count off, or whether it starts with the rhythm section establishing a groove which then falls into the song. What part of their music do they think is the most telling? Which songs did they think would work best live? How are they different? Who's in control? Are they looking to the singer or the guitarist when for the cues? Do they play around with a chord progression and see where it goes, or are they trying to keep the energy up and everyone dancing until the next breakdown?

I worry I keep music in my head too much, so I keep an eye on how a crowd reacts. I know what I'm getting from something but what is everyone else hearing? What are they getting out of it? Of course, for some it's nothing much to do with the music. But I like how for some people it's sitting politely on the floor for an indie act, and others slam dancing to hardcore and those unique reactions, like whatever that ridiculous thing people in three quarter length pants do when Madness plays or the triangle for Jay-z. What is it about a certain pop act that connects to people that don't treat music as cultural capital? How, say, are older acts like U2 or Madonna going to decide to repackage their catalog to present as an hour of entertainment, and for which generation?

And a bunch of it is about context and certain acts flourish in different contexts. I'd never sit down and listen to a Two Door Cinema Club album but seeing them at a festival, you can kinda see the appeal of spending forty minutes on a sunny Saturday afternoon listening to songs that feel easy and sound much the same. Some acts have the one beaten down amp and a shitty guitar they're making the best out of and some like Miike Snow has the most expensive gear on the planet and no idea what to do with it. As far as DJs go, I love listening to when they are playing around just for themselves when nobody is there at the start of the night and at the end of a long one, and how they choose which songs will talk to each other. Plus, dancing feels pretty essential.

The absolute worst way to listen to music is when you find yourself in one of those common people type impoverished hipster share houses where nobody seems to own anything except expensive apple laptops and an internet connection and all they do is sit there play clips off youtube.

It totally depends... on lots of factors. Voted 'other'.

I think DC is perhaps touching on what one of my problems with the whole live thing is.

That I perhaps burned out on seeing too many artists live, to the point where it stopped being special. Now that I see a gig maybe once a month instead of 3 in one week, it's a lot easier to savour the ones that I do see. Because living in London, it's so easy to get burned out on live music. There's just too much of it.

And when the stars align, and it's the perfect combination of amazing performers and perfect venue and perfect companions, a gig can be the most transcendent and amazing experience. But most of the time, those things don't align, and it's really quite ordinary. And listening to an album is just a far more reliable experience for producing happiness, though it will never quite reach the heights that a really good gig will get to, most gigs are not really good.

I know that all seems super-duh basic now I've typed it out.

Still OTM though.

I think my "avg" back in the day was once a month, although I did manage about 3pm for a while.

When I first moved to London, I would sometimes go to 2 or 3 gigs in a night. And do that all weekend. It was nuts. It wasn't as if there weren't gigs in NYC, but London was just on another level for live music availability.

Yeah, that's Ldn 4u. Being Rdg based, 3gpn would mean you visiting all the live venues in Rdg, then going to a mates house for a bedroom gig as well...

Try Exeter...

I'm having to do a 180-mile round trip to see Orbital. Petrol on top of £28 for a ticket.

Petrol? They still goin?

And listening to an album is just a far more reliable experience for producing happiness, though it will never quite reach the heights that a really good gig will get to, most gigs are not really good

I would agree with this I reckon. It's largely down to the performers but also things like venue and crowd and so forth. On the flipside I would take going to a classical music concert over listening to the same music on record any day of the week.

a lot of the negatives about the live experience are because you can't really relax and sink into the music because ~practicalities~ keep intruding - at classical concerts there's usually some relaxing comfort guaranteed

I guess (classical aside) it's like watching a DVD vs goign to the cinema; you can pause it to nip to the loo, the Ben & Jerry's is cheaper, there's no talking teenagers behind you, and so on and so forth.

Dunno about the talking teenagers, but yeah.

Yes, this is the thing, at classical music concerts, lots of precautions are taken to ensure that the faff-factor is reduced so that you are sitting in a semi-comfortable chair without idiots spilling beer on you, so you can enjoy the physical sensation of the music.

But classical music really is one of those things where the live physical presence of the instruments really counts for a lot. Because if you listen to classical music in a car or on an iPhone on the bus, you get, like, LOUD BITS and then you get engine noise where there should be dynamics.

the thing that bothers me most about gigs is actually where to put your bag and coat. cloakroom = massive faff, overpriced, huge queue at the end. lugging them around with you = constantly have to think about them

big up seated venues

that's not even me being old or whatever cuz i felt exactly the same way when i was 19

Likewise. It's like the logistics of live pop/rock/dance etcetera music just aren't thought out to make them at all pleasurable.

Re: classical music, cars, iPhones etc etc, this is why I'm into big fancy stereos - it gets the closest to giving the scale, physicality, immersion, detail, dynamics and soon and so forth of live music.

Plus recorded music, replayed so that certain elements sound "real", is just absolutely fucking crazy psychedelic. It's like magic. I love it.

clubs are different - i mean, clubs can be unpleasant logistically too as well but if it's a good night, sinking into the music and rising above everything around you is absolutely possible

sometimes you might even think you're on a tropical island

ruh-roh it's high-end consumer equipment time

*departs*

Sometimes you're on a club, on a boat! Listening to Matt DC on a boat music!

Actually, scrap it all. My ideal listening environment is on a yacht, in the Mediterranean.

Ha, unexpectedly listening to "Sandinista"

(memories...)

I'd just like to say that I HATE HATE HATE seated gigs. So stifling, so inflexible. I mean, if anything's like 'going to the cinema' about a gig, it's a seated gig. And really, if what you want is the sitting down and good quality of audio thing, maybe gigs just aren't for you? And that's all cool, you know. Just don't whine about it.

I mean, I'm probably going to vote for private-space listening in the end, and I really do love gigs. I just think that if I was only allowed to keep one method of listening, and all others would be exploded, that's the one I would *need* to keep, rather than just like to.

Am I allowed to "whine" about it, if I have back problems and standing on hard concrete for 3 or 4 hours is actually incredibly painful? I'd like to experience a pleasant experience like music without worrying that I'll be flat on my back in agony for the next day, you know.

Not to mention anxiety issues with regards to crowds, and people in my personal space which interfere with my ability to enjoy music at all, where I've had to leave gigs I've paid for and was expecting to enjoy because a venue oversold the event. When I have a seat allocation, and an allotted slot where I have the right to unmolested enjoyment of the event, that alleviates many issues which can completely destroy any chance of getting pleasure from an event - or indeed, even surviving the entire event without having to leave in a state of agitation and psychological distress.

It's really nice for you, that you're able to enjoy cattle hall venues - but if you're going to disparage the things that enable me to be able to *tolerate* an event " then that does not predispose me to your point of view.

What I'm saying is not that there aren't problems with going to gigs, but that if you can't enjoy them, then maybe you should just accept that they aren't things that you enjoy. Let it slide.

I enjoy going to gigs. But I enjoy going to seated gigs. I don't appreciate your telling me that I have no right to enjoy gigs in a tolerable environment because you find it "stifling and inflexible," maaaaaaan.

Maybe you should just accept that seated gigs are not for you, and not try to tell other people what they should have access to.

Different kinds of music call for different kinds of live experiences. We saw Lambchop at a seated venue and it was great. We saw Patrick Wolf at a big seated gig and it was a bit stiffling initially but then he did a fast song, EVERYBODY stood up and moved to the front, he responded by playing more fast songs that he hadn't planned, and it was bloody amazing. We'd seen him at a little seated venue years before and it had been intimate and entrancing and magical.

i'm with emily, not a fan of seated gigs. you're supposed to jump and dance and get stepped on and feel like shit and want to pay $4 for a bottle of water afterwards. if you have a problem with that, maybe being alive on this Earth isn't for you.

With some music I think the setting will never be achieved. It's gonna be a while till I get to listen to dub reggae playing on a beat up soundsystem in the middle of a Jamaican blues party. Similarly, I'll never get to become a white hot ball of mercury and go zinging around a futuristic neon city while listening to Orbital. I just have to imagine it.

you have to sustain your attention for an hour and a half or whatever

i dont have a problem with that - its more that it abruptly starts at a particular time and abruptly ends at a particular time and there is nothing before or after - i can easily lose self in music in a club for longer stretches than that, its more that i like the idea of music just being kind of continuous and just kind of coming in and out as and when

― coal, Monday, 16 April 2012 15:21 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm gonna bang on about the smoking ban again... I think since smoking became an outdoor pursuit, it's harder for performances to keep audiences completely rapt as those with itchy feet will start looking at the door as people go in and out.

as a non-driver I'm starting to wonder what I'm missing out on by not driving around listening to music.

I saw Madness at a seated gig. Suggs thanked the three people who'd managed to stay sat down and not pushed their way to the front.

the smoking ban is the single greatest piece of english legislation of the past decade

It should have gone further.

The is no right or wrong way to listen, of course, there's just a multitude of pragmatic best ways "right now" which depend on infinite circumstances.

I find most gigs either a bit boring or annoying. Boring because I'd rather be listening to music at home because the act can't really pull it off live or the live experience doesn't really add anything. Annoying because there are annoying people there who either talk incessantly or get in the way. I tend to give up and hang near the bar, which is easier to do if it's not seated.

In a club you can find your own space and dance providing the layout and sound system is adequate. I'm not sure if I'm 'experiencing' the music rather than listening to it in a club though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Rockists. All of ya. ;-)

no surprises

shut-ins, more like ;)

Headphones while commuting is my favorite.

I'd just like to say that I HATE HATE HATE seated gigs.

The few seated gigs I've been at have been in rows of uncomfortable school assembly chairs, which I don't like, especially when you have to fold your knees up and be jerked out of the ~zone~ every 10 minutes when someone wants to get out, and when there's only one appointed time for getting a drink and so you all have to queue for the entire interval for a lukewarm can of coke and worry about whether the next band's started yet.

But my favourite thing ever about standing up gigs is when the venue is only half full and you can find a chair at the back away from the mad crush and just bliss out and listen to the music. Because I am lazy and short and being somewhere where I can see and moving whenever someone a foot taller stands in front of me etc is physically tiring and, again, distracting from the music.

Obviously the promoter's least favourite thing about running gigs is when the gig is empty enough that I get my cosy bliss-out seat, though, so I felt a bit bad about that when I went to gigs. Now I mainly don't go to gigs, because although gigs can seem really transcendent in ways I don't get from at-home listening, the faff and alienation of the rest of the evening compared to that 20 minutes of possible ecstasy is just too much, too jarring.

PS tl;dr rundown of faff and alienation:

• transport
• worrying that I'll be too late to get in
• actually finding that I'm early and it's running late
• waiting and waiting and intermittently losing my waiting spot by going to check the doors again
• still being vain enough to worry about feeling uncool when surrounded by hip young punx half my age
• shouting myself hoarse at the barman just to get a drink
• paying £2.50 for a cracked plastic thimble of sodastream Pepsi
• losing my spot every time I want a drink or the toilet
• getting walked into every 30 seconds because short people look like gaps in the crowd
• spending the last band's set checking my watch and worrying about when to run for the last bus home instead of being able to enjoy it
• etc

feeling those

plus standing up with no bar to lean on is tiresome plus if i really want to watch somebody play music why must it be a battle royale to get an eye-line plus that was just like your record but worse/more boring/more surrounded by nobs

I think live gigs = classic if <6'.

Although, I can name a bunch of acts who I'd happily watch live again, but not listen to on CD. Someone like Gideon Conn - his live act is so wonderful, charming, witty, interactive, but very little of this shines through on record.

the only answer i can give is that it depends. the live experience of loud, viscerally intense, physically produced music can't be completely captured in a recording, and for some artists it's the entire point. this is especially true when the primary appeal of the music is physical and even brutal, as with metal and punk, spazzy weirdo stuff, noise rock, etc. studio recordings of certain artists or styles can be quite tiresome to listen to, even when the live show is thrilling. context is everything.

if i'm listening in a private space, my choice of album vs mixtape will depend, again, on context. if i want "background music" while my attention is on something else, then a mixtape, radio show, varied playlist or randomizer might be preferable. if i'm listening closely as my primary activity, then i'm slightly more likely to prefer an album or single-artist collection.

i don't go to dance clubs, so i can't really comment on that.

So many options that could be included:

Headphones while working out
Headphones while commuting
Carrying boombox on shoulder
Portable speakers on backpack/bike/motorcycle
Headphones at work
Speakers at work
Headphones at home
Live outdoor concert/festival
Live at small club (< 500 capacity)
Live medium club (> 500 to 1,000 capacity)
Live at large club (> 1,000 capacity)
Live at super large venue/stadium/arena (> 10,000 capacity)

Carrying boombox on shoulder

^only way i listen to music

*boombox option can include walking, rollerblading, rollerblading wearing nothing but thong. Yes, I have seen it. I cannot unsee it.

Ned, were you hanging out with yr box on Chicago's lakefront last summer? ;)

Railway station buskers
Through the wall from the next apartment
Supermarket PA system
In my head
Personally singing and/or playing an instrument
In church
In the style of the Romans

I'm not Ned but I do go rollerblading in my thong sometimes, yes.

Missed this. Car--not even close.