You can’t hiii-iiide your lyin’ tracks …

[Ken]

Funny thing about Alice Cooper having a boa on stage is that they are wonderful creatures.  I've had one.  It was probably just thrilled to have warmth.

[uwe]

I know. Poor critters. Not that it was remotely "worldwide", they didn't even get to Canada or Mexico, it was strictly nationwide (in the Lower States).

But one look at their opening acts during 1976/77 tells you how big they were, albeit as a strictly US-American phenomenon: Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Wet Willie, Marshall Tucker, BÖC, Rory Gallagher, J. Geils Band, Bob Seger, The Outlaws, Ted Nugent, Foghat, Foreigner, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Pure Prairie League, REO Speedwagon, Styx, Edgar & Johnny Winter, The Band, Montrose, Point Blank, Head East, Elvin Bishop, The Dictators, Santana, Rush, Nils Lofgren, Sea Level, Burton Cummings, Muddy Waters, Climax Blues Band, Piper, Blackfoot, Atlanta Rhythm Section and Starz.

[uwe]

Funny thing about Alice Cooper having a boa on stage is that they are wonderful creatures.  I've had one.  It was probably just thrilled to have warmth.

Like all snakes it was also deaf (they have an inner ear that senses vibrations, but doesn't really "hear") - that no doubt helped!  It wasn't even his snake and saw retirement to a snake farm eventually. It must have liked the warmth from the stage lights, but keeping it cozy warm during transport must have been a task. And then Alice's alcohol breath ...

[Dave W]

He has a whole army of canned rhythm guitar tracks behind him when they play the 80ies hits and the background vocals don't sound real either, let's not even talk about the sequencers, but does he lip sync too? It wouldn't surprise me. ZZ Top's legacy as a great live band goes back to the 70ies and early 80ies, ever since then they have become more and more "augmented" live.

Yes, according to a member at TDPRI who saw them in Sacramento Friday night. he said Billy's voice would keep singing when Billy would step away from the mic.

[uwe]

That's sobering. 

I saw them in 2017 with Status Quo as openers at an open air. The difference was day and night: Everyone laughs about Quo, but  their music is the epitome of live excitement, warts and all as well as taking the piss out of themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=louOWbSA4aI&list=PLOaOZamj9YJVGz7LZ1jZGxJ7EKVTL1SJr

ZZ Top were very collected, safe and lifeless in comparison.

[Alanko]

This is them circa 1980, and there is a rhythm guitar track coming from somewhere during the solo. Could be an offstage musician? At a guess they wanted the clean look of a three piece band?

[uwe]

Good catch, Alan, though I’m not sure whether it might not be an electric piano rather than a guitar. (The studio version features prominent keyboards during the solo.) But there is undoubtedly a fourth guy playing.

That said, offstage keyboard and other support was nothing new even in the 70ies, Sabbath and Quo had it too. Michael Schenker had his guitar tech play rhythm guitar parts behind the Marshall stacks when Michael was soloing in MSG line-ups sans a second guitarist. And in the 80ies it became de rigueur: Ozzy, Whitesnake, Foreigner and Iron Maiden all had offstage keyboarders.

[Basvarken]

ZZ Top used backing tracks and also sequencers back in 1980 already.
Even in the Rockpalast show you mentioned they had backing tracks. For example with the horn section that was themselves. They hadn't figured out how to synchronize it to their own live part yet, as it sounded kinda sloppy.

[slinkp]

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.

[TBird1958]

 Well put!

 To me, it's one thing if it's supposed to be a dance show - I get that.
Since I've played in bands since I was 15 or so I realize there's always going to be limitations on what you can do, and sometimes that meant not doing something because it just didn't sound good. The use of backing tracks and canned vocals is, to me, lame. I'm old enough to have seen bands that were very talented be able to go out on the road and perform their own music without any aids, that's still the way I like live music.     

[Alanko]

Speaking of The Who, this clip muddies the waters!



I assume the winking lights on the modular synth are to represent the processed organ track, even though the band never tried to pass the organ off as a live instrument during real performances of the song. At a guess we are looking at some of Pete's ARP gear rather than fake synths from the Doctor Who prop department, but Pete never normally brought his synth rig onstage.

I read, years ago, that Pete wanted live performances of Baba O'Riley to feature a spontaneous synth track, generated by inputting metrics from a random audience member into a synth. That would have been interesting to see, if completely implausible.

[uwe]

Speaking of The Who, this clip muddies the waters!



I assume the winking lights on the modular synth are to represent the processed organ track, even though the band never tried to pass the organ off as a live instrument during real performances of the song. At a guess we are looking at some of Pete's ARP gear rather than fake synths from the Doctor Who prop department, but Pete never normally brought his synth rig onstage.

I read, years ago, that Pete wanted live performances of Baba O'Riley to feature a spontaneous synth track, generated by inputting metrics from a random audience member into a synth. That would have been interesting to see, if completely implausible.

Frankly, I don't think anything in this performance is live. Daltrey even misses his scream at 03:06 and Moonie isn't in sync with the ending of the song either.

[uwe]

"kinda sloppy"

That is the understatement of the century, Rob, the Texans are way off beat and timing, hilariously stumbling all over the place! 

[uwe]

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.

Amen!

I can't get worked up about Taylor Swift using Auto-Tune and backing tracks reinforcing her vocals. She was never Ella Fitzgerald in accuracy nor Janis Joplin in emotional outpour in the first place and plays largely to an audience that is under the misconception that an auto-tuned voice is how a natural voice sounds. Plus with the amount of moves she performs she is closer to a figure skater than a singer, you don't expect the former to sing either while they do their loop jumps.

[Alanko]

Frankly, I don't think anything in this performance is live. Daltrey even misses his scream at 03:06 and Moonie isn't in sync with the ending of the song either.

No, all mimed to the kitchen-scissors single edit of Won't get Fooled.

The ZZ Top clip is weird because they almost look unsteady and unstuck. Dusty and Billy are turned to face the video screen and at one point Billy appears to try and slow the tempo a fraction, while facing the drummer.


Thanks to YouTube I've seen clips of what modern musicians hear onstage through IEMs, and it is a constant ticking click track for each song with audio cues like "...and fill in three, two, one" to ruthlessly keep bands in sync with visual and lighting cues.

Both my current bands have found keeping drummers impossible. Add a few babies along the way and we now mostly play acoustically. Recording this stuff to a 'grid' is really tricky as we add so much variance to the tempo of things. Learning the flute has been difficult for me as I'm so used to playing bass 'on the one' rather than shaping tempo to fit phrasing, etc.