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The Outpost Cafe / Re: You can’t hiii-iiide your lyin’ tracks …
« on: May 06, 2024, 08:42:35 AM »
It's all nothing new, but it's funny how it's a continuum. Canned tracks doing things that the musicians onstage simply can't goes at least back to the Who's Next tour of 1971. Reportedly Townshend wanted an (offstage?) keyboardist for the following Quadrophenia tour but couldn't get Daltrey to agree, so they played the very complex Quadrophenia arrangements with lots more backing tapes with sometimes problematic results - there were some famous incidents of tape malfunction and also of Keith Moon malfunction.
Maybe it's an arbitrary distinction, but somehow having the lead vocalist lip syncing feels like crossing a line - but to me it depends on who they are and how the represent themselves to the public. I'm not surprised and don't care if an "entertainer" is dancing with pyrotechnics and needs some help from autotune or tracks because they're too busy with choreography. If I went to a show like that I'd be expecting a visual spectacle.
But if I'm shelling out the big bucks to see an aging rocker who recorded "classic" tracks, I'd rather hear them struggle to hit the notes and hear what they sound like today, even if their voice is shot, and if they can't be bothered to expose that, then I'd rather they and me both stay home.
But that's just me. If other folks want to watch Don Henley or Billy Gibbons or whoever stand at a microphone and do nothing, that's fine. I'd rather it not be a secret though. I don't want to show up expecting one thing and get the other.
Maybe it's an arbitrary distinction, but somehow having the lead vocalist lip syncing feels like crossing a line - but to me it depends on who they are and how the represent themselves to the public. I'm not surprised and don't care if an "entertainer" is dancing with pyrotechnics and needs some help from autotune or tracks because they're too busy with choreography. If I went to a show like that I'd be expecting a visual spectacle.
But if I'm shelling out the big bucks to see an aging rocker who recorded "classic" tracks, I'd rather hear them struggle to hit the notes and hear what they sound like today, even if their voice is shot, and if they can't be bothered to expose that, then I'd rather they and me both stay home.
But that's just me. If other folks want to watch Don Henley or Billy Gibbons or whoever stand at a microphone and do nothing, that's fine. I'd rather it not be a secret though. I don't want to show up expecting one thing and get the other.