Rant: Encores

Thinking of last week's concert, and plenty of other concerts I've attended, I must rant about the silliness of encores. No one is fooled. It doesn't take a lot of awareness to notice the concert is over only when the house lights turn back on. An empty stage, with the concert hall or arena still dark, means the band will come back, no matter how little you cheer.

It's even worse when the band doesn't play their best-known song in the main set. You know they're not going to leave the stage without playing their biggest hit. (I remember a review of Joan Osborne, known for one song only, making just this point.) In my opinion, encores should be songs with special meaning, like an early hit, a cult classic first release, or the like. Of all the concerts I've seen, one of the few to actually play their popular songs first was Inspiral Carpets, opening with Generations and playing Two Worlds Collide early, both songs then active on MTV's 120 Minutes.

When I saw Freezepop perform in February, they mocked the concept of encores. I appreciated it greatly.

Yaz: Reconnected

I took a precious vacation day to see a concert in Chicago. Why? A band that had broken up long before I started paying attention to music was reuniting, to play a few dates in America. After 25 years, and for a limited time, Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet are back together, finally touring in support of the second Yaz album!

Of all bands that are no longer together, I thought Yaz was one of the least likely to reunite. For one, the band was never that popular, particularly in the U.S., and couldn't anticipate the revenues of a reunion tour of, say, The Police. The band only released two albums. And most importantly, Clarke is still going strong with Erasure and Moyet with her solo career.

Overall, I was impressed by the concert. Moyet retains an impressive voice, and of course, I love Clarke's synthesizer work. The presentation was simple, just the two of them on stage, with a background of colored LED lights and graphics. The few instances where there are two voices on the song (e.g. Walk Away From Love), a heavily vocoded voice was used.

Although the promotional materials for the tour expressed the band's regret for not getting to play the second album live, it was the first album that was played in its entirety. Even experimental track I Before E Except After C was performed, with the band members offstage and only a reel-to-reel tape player and synthesizer playing. The band didn't play You And Me Both tracks Softly Over, And On, and Happy People. (The latter wasn't a surprise, as it is a UK-only track sung by Clarke.) They did play B-side State Farm, B-side and later single Situation, but not third single The Other Side Of Love. (Again, that didn't surprise me, since that song was left off their greatest hits album, despite being a moderate hit in the UK.)

Come the encore, it was clear what songs would be played, as they had yet to play their two U.S. charting singles, Only You and Situation.

Now, to rip my singles into .mp3s and add them to my iPod!

22 months

That's the answer to the question, "I'm curious to see how long it will take," posted here.

In a mere 22 months, I listened to all of my CDs once. (And a few more than once.)

Young musicians, old music

An interesting discovery, courtesy of browsing Billboard magazine...

Tween band Girl Authority has a new album coming out, Road Trip. The first single, Let's Get Together, is twice as old as the band members.

How did this happen? While I don't know how this song came to the attention of the band*, I did learn that this song was written by Vince Clarke, back in his days with Depeche Mode (that's 80-81, for anyone keeping score at home). The song was never recorded with Depeche Mode, but now this early 80's track sees the light of day with a band whose members weren't even born until the 90's.

Here's an article from Side-Line.com. And thanks to the miracle of YouTube, you can see a bit of a very old Top of the Pops broadcast, showing Depeche Mode practicing this very song.


*Actually, I think I have an idea. The band’s current manager is Michael Pagnotta, who was previously manager for George Michael, Morrissey, and the Cure. More relevantly for this band, he was manager for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. One of the duo’s many direct-to-video releases, Winning London, was set in the namesake city, and had an appropriately European soundtrack. The soundtrack included a cover of the classic Vince Clarke-penned Depeche Mode track, Just Can’t Get Enough, along with a track from his disco side project, Family Fantastic. You may note the keyboard riff from Just Can’t Get Enough in the chorus of the song Let’s Get Together.