On Dec. 28 at 11:30 p.m., Phish played their final note of the night. By the time I got home at 12:15 a.m., the show was available for download.
While this is relatively unheard of in terms of turnaround time, the band is clearly onto something with this.
A number of bands release official, soundboard recordings of their concerts, with some taking 24 hours to put the shows up online while others take weeks. For $9.99, usually, you can listen to the recordings of the shows you attended or read a review of it later.
This tradition started in the jazz and folk scenes; however, the rise of Grateful Dead can be directly attributed to the distribution of fan-made and band sanctioned recordings of their concerts.
While the band started selling nearly all the “famous” recordings of their performances after guitarist Jerry Garcia died, the concept of having live shows recorded and then traded among friends became a part of the Dead’s lore and trickled down to myriad other bands.
Currently, this phenomenon is confined mostly to the jam band world but recently, Bruce Springsteen adopted the same system of selling soundboard recordings of his shows. While fans have been clamoring for this for years, the fact that an artist like Springsteen would do this could lead to other bands taking up this practice. But releasing live shows is not for every band.
The reason why bands like Phish and Grateful Dead have grown thanks to the trading of tapes is because not only are their live shows more captivating than their studio outputs, but they also have sections of their catalog that never made their way onto an album.
As an example, Phish’s third-most played song live, “Mike’s Song,” has never found its way onto a studio album. A number of the Dead’s most famous songs never made it on a studio album either.
Another reason why people collected and traded tapes of bands was because how much the band varied their sets.
Every show, Phish will play for nearly three hours, nary repeating a song from show to show, playing some songs once a tour while others settle into more of a rotation of every three, four or five shows on the tour. While the Dead occasionally repeated songs from night to night, no two set lists were ever the same over the course of the band’s 30-year history.
While this is a staple of jam bands, it would be hard for Billy Joel to not play “Piano Man” or for the Eagles to not play “Hotel California.” Springsteen gets away with mixing up his set lists, at least to a degree, as his fans know that it’s coming, and keep coming back because of it.
Bands have tried a number of different ways of disseminating these recordings. The Allman Brothers Band won’t let their shows be traded on the Internet, only recently partnering with an online retailer to distribute downloads. Archive.org supports nearly all Grateful Dead recordings, with officially released soundboard recordings only available for stream as opposed to download. Springsteen was originally just going to release these shows on USB sticks at the concerts themselves; however, upheaval on the Internet led to the availability of MP3s online.
By releasing live recordings of the shows, Springsteen is giving fans who were there a keepsake of the show, a la a ticket stub or a poster, and gives those who weren’t there a chance to hear the “Thunder Road” they didn’t hear when he came to their town.
While not for everyone, I think this practice should be picked up by more bands as it generates an extra revenue stream and forces bands to get more creative with their sets.
Though it would be tough to implement for some bands, for other bands who probably already tape their shows for archival purposes and mix up their sets anyway, this seems like a no brainer.
Furthermore, I think bands should give fans the ability to listen at home for a nominal fee. Already, there is a rise in “webcasting” shows. Different bands have taken different approaches to this, with some bands using a dozen or more cameras to give a very “concert film” feel to each performance, while others have opted for just a single camera at the front-of-house.
While both have their positives and negatives—for the former, it feels very professional but you, the consumer, are paying for those extra cameramen. For the latter, you get the sensation you are almost there, and it is cheaper, but with a fixed camera, you can’t see the guitarists fingers or the real interplay between band members. The best part is that it is an option.
With live audio streaming, as long as there is an ability to stream from the venue, which can sometimes be impossible due to the below-ground nature of many venues, there is no reason not to try.
Have you always wanted a “Piano Man” of your own? Ask Brian to lobby Bill Joel on your behalf at weidy@wisc.edu.
