As A Fan...Is Touring Literally The Vehicle To Promote an Album Or???

Motley Crue

*For the purposes of this thread Ive kept the name of the band a secret. Read through without revealing the bands name and then ask yourself if you were suprised to hear that information or if it was what you expected, not just about the band in particular, but in general of rock and metal artists.

A few years ago I went to see

Green Day

perform a concert. At the time, and I suppose even now, I am still a fan of their music and I had also been looking forward to it for a long time. Id a few friends who'd seen the band before, and they told me a little about the concert when they had been, although this had been about 5yrs previous

The band had released a new album and a new tour was underway. I spent quite a lot of money on the ticket, in terms of what I could afford at the time, and went to the concert. I was more than a little suprised to see the band perform pretty much the same show my friends told me they had seen 5 years previous. The band had the cues, the in crowd participation and the interaction finely timed. I enjoyed the show but felt it had lost a lot of the uniqueness. They had played in France the week before and I could have realised if someone from the French show had told me about the show last week but it seemed like this had been going on since the last tour.

Several years after that the band released a music DVD, and I purchased it, and watched it....only to discover a relatively similar show taking place as to the one Id seen....except staged in a different venue.

What Im asking, is why this band feel the need to do this, or why any band feel the need to do this. I can understand that a concert is much like a play but surely, like some bands do, every band can make an effort to change their routine every couple of years and change around the setlist a little. Do fans of the band pay to see some new stuff, followed by some old stuff, and an encore of the most famous stuff...as well as crowd interaction that sounds the same as the last time you seen them too...same jokes/performance?

jim o doom

Yeah I understand what you are saying, I don't think they do it to "support the album" at all anymore to be honest;

Since the advent of Mp3s and the interweb, it seems to me that album sales are probably dwindling quite heavily, especially amongst the more non mainstream types of music, because the non mainstream people seem to be a bit more savvy in general in relation to the web.

On that basis, I reckon touring is now more about making money from the tour as opposed to getting publicity for an album.. especially with ticket prices as they have been in the last while (not very cheap).

The reason I would say they stick with the template of previous successful tours, is exactly what I just said; It's a template of something successful & as they say "why change a winning forumalae?".

I don't really agree with it, but I understand the logic behind it.

lord lucan

touring and merchandise sales are where the moneys at these days. there's some bands who genuinely love being out on the road and playing live in front of a live audience every second night and there's those who go through the motions cause its what the record label and management told them they should do.

tbh i've probably been lucky in that most of my favourite acts that i've gotten to see live have lived up to what i expected,the true sign of a great band is being able to do what you do live without the bells and whistles that the studio provides.

one of the biggest problems that a lot of the more established acts face is trying to keep everyone happy. on the one hand they feel they have to play the 'hits' to appease the 'first-timers' and newbies but also throw out the odd rarity to keep the 'die-hards' happy. you'll never keep everyone happy but there's no excuse for not shaking up the stage show/production or re-jigging the set list occasionaly,if anything i'd have thought it would get boring playing the same **** every night!!

Doctor J

Read up on the likes of Cream or The Who. In the late 60's they used to improvise a lot in their gigs, but the strain of theying to create something new destroyed one of them and almost destroyed the other. Most bands rehaearse a set before they tour and that's what they play.

The now famous Metallica DVD, shot in Seattle on the AJFA tour, is lauded as the band at their peak. To me, I see lots of the tired cliche's which became the hallmark of 90's Metallica. They'd been on the road for a year and a half at that stage, playing the same old songs, of course anyone would find it easier to slip into a rut and start going through the motions. It doesn't compare to when I saw them at the beginning of that tour over a year earlier. There is some great footage shot by the BBC for a programme called Arena, it should be on youtube. It was shot in London a few days after they played here and the difference is very noticeable. They sound aggressive, full of energy and the relentless grind of a long tour hadn't smoothed out the rough edges which made them as good as they were. They learned a lot on that tour and they changed a lot, they became the experienced slick machine black album era, they developed stage routines and went through them every night for every new set of faces who showed up in front of them. It's to be expected.

How many people are looking forward to seeing old Angus Young prancing around in a schooboy outfit or any Maiden fan how they feel when Bruce does the famous "Scream for me Long Beach!!" line at all the gigs these days. It's chiche but it works, it's all some people want

senordingdong

A reasonable complaint, but I guess they want to rehearse what they are going to do, and realistically, you can't rehearse improvisation.

But also worth noting is that while we may want to believe that every gig we've been to is unique, it isn't.
Regardless of the fact that it's the same show that the people in Frnace got a week earlier, imagine it from the bands POV.
It might aswell be the same audience infront of them.

Though fairplay to Metallica I know they try to mix it up every now and again.

shenanigans1982

Motley Crue wrote: »

*For the purposes of this thread Ive kept the name of the band a secret. Read through without revealing the bands name and then ask yourself if you were suprised to hear that information or if it was what you expected, not just about the band in particular, but in general of rock and metal artists.

A few years ago I went to see

Green Day

perform a concert. At the time, and I suppose even now, I am still a fan of their music and I had also been looking forward to it for a long time. Id a few friends who'd seen the band before, and they told me a little about the concert when they had been, although this had been about 5yrs previous

The band had released a new album and a new tour was underway. I spent quite a lot of money on the ticket, in terms of what I could afford at the time, and went to the concert. I was more than a little suprised to see the band perform pretty much the same show my friends told me they had seen 5 years previous. The band had the cues, the in crowd participation and the interaction finely timed. I enjoyed the show but felt it had lost a lot of the uniqueness. They had played in France the week before and I could have realised if someone from the French show had told me about the show last week but it seemed like this had been going on since the last tour.

Several years after that the band released a music DVD, and I purchased it, and watched it....only to discover a relatively similar show taking place as to the one Id seen....except staged in a different venue.

What Im asking, is why this band feel the need to do this, or why any band feel the need to do this. I can understand that a concert is much like a play but surely, like some bands do, every band can make an effort to change their routine every couple of years and change around the setlist a little. Do fans of the band pay to see some new stuff, followed by some old stuff, and an encore of the most famous stuff...as well as crowd interaction that sounds the same as the last time you seen them too...same jokes/performance?

I went to see the same band twice and it was the exact same show both times. I think the bigger the band get and the bigger the venue the more likely they are to slip into this rut. At least in some of the smaller venues there is some chance of interaction between the band and the crowd with the distance between crowd and stage being really short but when there are 80,000 people there its probably a safer bet for them to just put on a stage show.

Motley Crue

Doctor J wrote: »

They learned a lot on that tour and they changed a lot....they developed stage routines and went through them every night

Quite true, although I do give credit to Metallica for changing the setlist a little from city to city, I have 4 soundboard concerts of Metallica in Dublin over a few years and you get the usual songs but there are some rarities thrown in here and there without a doubt. Even the usual stuff is mixed around, it could be early on in the set, or it could be second from last.

While Metallica weren't the band I was talking about originally, one thing that pisses me off is that when you compare the 2004 Dublin show to the 2007 Dublin show James uses the same intro to Seek and Destroy on both occassions, almost word for word, and also does his whole "thank you....GOODNIGHT" routine just before the 2nd to last song. Its not that Im complaining, because I love to see Metallica live and do what they do, I just wish they werent so damn repeative sometimes

redenemyjoe

Lamb Of God - Killadephia. Best.

lord lucan

Motley Crue wrote: »

While Metallica weren't the band I was talking about originally, one thing that pisses me off is that when you compare the 2004 Dublin show to the 2007 Dublin show James uses the same intro to Seek and Destroy on both occassions, almost word for word, and also does his whole "thank you....GOODNIGHT" routine just before the 2nd to last song. Its not that Im complaining, because I love to see Metallica live and do what they do, I just wish they werent so damn repeative sometimes

or "you're the loudest crowd we've had on this tour" or "dublins the best city in the world" etc etc.:D

senordingdong

But Dublin is the best city in the world.

Maybe

Greendays

calibre as musicians/performers has something to do with it.

Nightwish

During a 5 day period last year I saw the same band play 3 times in 3 different cities and the set list was different each night. Obviously the intro's and encore's were the same, but the order in which songs were played was changed and other songs were taken out altogether. Crowd interaction was different each night also.

In 2006 I did go see a band play 2 nights in a row in Dublin, and the setlist was the same both nights with the exception of the "random" cover versions that were thrown in for good measure. I went to both nights in the hope of seeing something different the second night, but I was sorely disappointed.

On both those occasions the bands had just released an album, and the setlists heavily featured the newer material, which is to be expected. To see the same set pretty much 5 years apart is just pure lazy!

John

Then again, for every band that does the same thing each gig there's another who shake things up. Look at Neil Young, he changes his set hugely over a tour and even when he plays the same songs, they don't always end up the same. The last time he played here, "No Hidden Path" was twice as long as it had been on any other date (and when it normally clocks in at around 15 minutes, this was a serious jam!).

While I wouldn't be too annoyed with bands playing the same songs the same way on every tour (Kraftwerk, please step up), the banter being rehearsed/identical is just annoying. Either you mean what you say or shut the hell up.

anonymous_joe

Saw a band who I just remembered I can't talk about playing this summer two days in a row and they did two very different gigs.

Thing is, though, with a lot of bands, there's massive demand for the grand oul classics, etc. I was at another gig I cant mention with a very famous mid 90s band who'd reformed released new music etc. Problem is, their fan base exhibited very little interest in their new material.

Most bands are being called upon to a greatest hits gig, and nothing more. The bigger and better a band, the more tracks they'll have which they will 'have' to play.

John

Although to bring old Neil back up, what I love about going to see him is that you're not guaranteed hits. He'll play songs off his big albums but they might not be the hits (only one out of the three gigs I've seen by him featured "Heart of Gold"). If you go out and play the hits, then people will expect the hits. The problem is, not all bands are as consistently good as Neil Young so if they bypass their earlier (and better) stuff then they won't have the same audiences (and revenue).