In my free time, when not working or gaming, I go to music shows with my friends. I like bands. Like, a lot, and I love to see live shows. Mostly I like the local stuff here in Brooklyn, but once in a while I'll pay a little more for a ticket to see a better-known touring band in a bigger venue (the sort I normally avoid because of the $10 beer or whatever!) .
One of my favorite bands is Animal Collective (yeah, yeah, you and every other d-bag in Brooklyn, Leigh). They're probably in my top five, at least for these days, and the music blogosphere is full of all kinds of cynical snark and eye-rolling about how they're about to "cross over" to the mainstream and blah blah. So seeing them live would be a pretty big deal, even if the ticket's going to be a bit pricier. And yet, every time the opportunity's arisen, I decline.
It's not just because I prefer more intimate shows to huge affairs. It's because I don't think Animal Collective would be too much fun to watch, or at least not relative to how much it'd cost. This is because they're three dudes who make their music with major contribution from electronics and effects -- seeing them would be less "watching a band play" and more "watching some guys fiddle around with equipment."
As much as I love the band, "watching some guys fiddle around with equipment" is just not the same to me as "watching some guys rock out on stage."
Okay, and now I'm getting to the video game part. It's the energy of a rock show that makes plastic guitar games so successful -- that, and the aspirational rockstar fantasy. This is something I really don't think translates into hunching over a turntable in DJ Hero. In other words, I think DJ Hero is by its very nature less broadly-appealing than Guitar Hero, and yesterday at Gamasutra, I wrote about why, expanding so that my position hopefully makes a bit more sense to you.
Of course, I'm more intense of a music consumer than average, and I'm also more intense of a video game "consumer" than average, so the collision of two major interest spheres for me is bound to color my perspective differently from that of some dude wandering into GameStop. Nonetheless, I feel pretty strongly on this point -- check it out and tell me what you think.
By the way, if you're among the large swath of my gaming readers who couldn't give a hell about my nerdy music, you wouldn't know that the header image is the cover of Animal Collective's critical-darling Merriweather Post Pavilion, which you might like to listen to. I tried making a giant version of this image my desktop wallpaper once, and I lasted all of thirty seconds before my eyes started gushing founts of blood. Trippy, right?
[PS: As you can see, I survived both my move to a great new apartment as well as the most crippling flu I can recall ever having -- thanks to everyone who sent kind wishes and comments through my travails!]
12 comments:
I'm not going to make that my desktop background. But I am going to make it someone else's as a horrifically cruel prank.
I listen to a lot of music, but I listen to electronic music most. As an observer, I feel rock shows are much more fun. As a participant, electronic shows are more fun. I think live electronic music has always struggled with the fact that DJs aren't much fun to watch. Even turntablists, where they are much more animated and directly involved in real-time music making are not as fun to watch as a guy thrashing around on guitar. You just can't get as rowdy with turntables and complicated electronics.
This isn't always a problem for live electronic music though. When done properly, the DJ is not a performer, so much as a party director. The audience is the performance and it's not a good party unless everyone is dancing, dressing freaky, and getting crazy. The DJ is just their musical muse that prompts them to freak out in a bacchanalian mass of dancing, sweaty bodies.
This is partly why electronic music never really did so well in the US. We are so used to others entertaining us, where we don't have to participate in the creation of the party, that we expected DJs to function like rock performers and provide us with theatrics. DJs tried to do this and the superstar DJ was born with the likes of Paul Oakenfold and Keoki and the shows got more and more lights and effects to wow people, and bigger louder speakers so nobody would have to talk to anyone, but ultimately the DJs were still boring to watch and it still wasn't a good party if nobody danced.
Since people never seemed to really understand what a rave was about, maybe you are right and DJ Hero won't be as enjoyable as Guitar Hero. However, turntables were outselling guitars for awhile there and everyone and their dog has tried to DJ at least for a little while. And in a virtual world, the crowds are always dancing and not repressed with social awkwardness, so maybe this new game will actually let people DJ a party where people don't just stand around and drink. In that case, it might be very successful.
Oh, and I once made my eyes bleed by attempting to have this related image as my desktop:
http://visualfunhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/throbbing-fractal-optical-illusion.jpg
heh. :)
Animal Collective are actually really great live, though I saw them in the Sung Tongs/Feels era back when they were doing less electronic stuff.
Actually, I saw them again for Strawberry Jam and it was great too, perhaps even better. You should see 'em.
I think JT said a lot of what I wanted to say. A rock concert is entertaining for different reasons than a DJ performing at a club. Sometimes there's crossover (I can see Daft Punk being really fun to watch), but generally, when you go see a DJ perform, it's really more about "hearing" the performance, more about the music than the physicality of what is happening on the stage.
Rock music requires you to move around while you're on stage when you're on stage to be entertaining; electronic music requires you to make other people move around, while you're on stage, to be entertaining.
I think playing with the music (from what I've heard so far) is the selling point of DJ Hero, and it's lost on the people who see another plastic instrument that they may NOT have aspired to play while listening to music as a kid. The downside is that, most of the time, no one will be dancing when you're rockin' the plastic turntable.
I should note that I haven't played DJ Hero yet, because I simply haven't got the cash right now. But I want to, and for some of the same reasons that made me interested in GH, but primarily because I like some electronic-type stuff, and think I'm going to like messing with the music.
Leeeeeigh...
DJ Hero will, without any doubt have less appeal than Guitar Hero but I'm still getting a kick out of it, because it's fiddly and difficult and it has music.
You lost me on the argument about the 'energy' of rock shows factoring heavily into the appeal in guitar hero sessions. When I play it's pretty much hunching over, concentrating hard, trying to nail the tricky section; rock star fantasy isn't really a factor. I don't get that at all. And I pointed out in my write-up on DJ Hero that it's probably best enjoyed by small groups on enthusiasts.
Everyone wanted to be a DJ for awhile in Brooklyn? :) Awesome... sounds highly entertaining to witness. I'm in Canada, I didn't experience that. In university everyone sat around on hillsides with guitars playing Radiohead.
Incidently the occasional DJ is as mesmerizing as any rock star... but for the most part they just stand there and look tragic. In fact, most of the time the DJ is positioned in such a way that you can't see what he's doing, even if he's good at it. Ah well, what can you do.
Hum... I hadn't been able to figure out why DJ Hero felt lacking, but you make a strong point. Seeing live acts of people just scratching is not something that I'd normally do, unless I was thinking specifically of dancing. I think the only exception would be Daft Punk, which I saw live a couple of years ago, but just because they have a very high emphasis on the visual part as well.
On a side note, if you still haven't seen Animal Collective, I highly recommend that you stay like that. They came to Brazil last year, and played on what you might call pefect conditions. Good sound, a small place etc. I was pretty excited for the show, and thought that pretty much all their albums were great... until I saw them live...
I don't really understand what happened, but it was so bad that I haven't been able to listen to them ever since that day. They lacked stage presence, it felt like they didn't want to be there. It really crushed any interest I had in the band.
You need to watch the Underworld DVD called Everything; Everything, and then let me know if you still feel your previous opinion about electronic shows stands.
Yes, they do lots of "tricks" to make it interesting, but the fact that they are tricks doesn't negate the interest.
@Adam
Underworld are great, aren't they? :) I've been a fan ever since I first heard Born Slippy.
I've seen some of Everything;Everything. I still feel like they are compensating for the fact that watching guys move mixer sliders and twist effects knobs isn't very fun to watch. What makes them entertaining is that they include lots of effects and they have a singer that is enjoyable to watch in a traditional performance-sense. They pull it off reasonably well though. Daft Punk and Rabbit in the Moon manage to do similarly well at creating enough visual showmanship on stage to compensate for the fact that their instruments lack the physicality of drums and guitars.
Most live electronic acts that are enjoyable as performers usually try to incorporate more physical instruments like guitars/bass/drums/voice.
For example,
Pendulum:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b43rTofAYE
Nine Inch Nails:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSZFAX82MCk
I got to say, I would love to see a great song like Grass adapted for plastic guitars. I know THAT would set my living room on fire.
On the other hand, Brothersport is my favorite song to play in Audiosurf :)
I think that over their career, Animal Collective have travelled across the spectrum ; first you had absolute freak-outs like We Tigers and other physically charged performances, now you have the controlled intensity of Bluish. They're one of those penultimate "evolution" bands, following their own trends and ditching them whenever it's time... kind of like video games, if you want to stretch the metaphor. And that's why it remains so fun to "play" with them over the years.
And just to say, I too have deliberately chosen not to see them live in this current phase, so I definitely get where you're coming from (and I'm not speaking of Brooklyn, lol...). The music they're making right now is of a more introspective kind than before, and thus more akin to the experience of playing video games, in a way. I guess you could start rambling from there...
I'm a huge DJ Hero fan, but there is definitely a point to be made here. This is more a game for DJs and fans of DJs than fans of dance music/electronica/hip-hop.
The thing about dance music - and I say this most commonly when confronted with people telling me things like "I don't like dance music, because it has no soul" - is that dance music is made for one purpose, and that purpose is in the name. You dance to it. And it takes one helluva skill to create that music well.
Our brains are hard-wired for music. Music spurs on memory and emotion. To create a moving song isn't really that hard - pick a nice minor key, write something about a girl that broke your heart, sing with a bit of soul ... presto. To create something that patently does NOT make you remember your childhood, or think about a girl you like, or evaluate your life in any way, now THAT's a challenge. To make such a song and STILL make you want to get up out your seat and dance is a further skill.
Of course, DJ Hero is more instrumental hip-hop than dance, and I'm not quite as sure of what instrumental hip-hop is supposed to do to people, but I imagine its much the same.
This is probably my only complaint about DJ Hero. As a game, it is sublime. Like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, et al, it gives you the euphoric satisfaction of musical performance without actually requiring immense amounts of skill, by engaging you just enough with the music through the controller. Yet it doesn't really exploit anything of what DJing actually means - the reading of a crowd's emotional state, and the careful control of the music to lift them to a state of euphoria.
I guess what I'm saying is that there might be room for a game about "proper" DJing too.
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