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geiginni wrote:

Angriest_Dragon wrote:Unfortunately, for the most part I often find myself getting bored of most bands about halfway through their set.
It's almost like I'm just kind of waiting for the bands to be done so I can leave.
Anyone else feels this way?

I do.

I don't go to any shows anymore unless it's something I specifically want to see, and often I'll go late so I'm not forced to endure the opening band(s).

99.5% of bands out there suck donkey dick. I have no tolerance for cliches and and psuedo badasses invoking "rawk!", poor musicianship, emotionally draining depressives and crybabies, undisciplined fuckups, and emotionally stunted weenies crying for attention.

I don't fuck around. Sorry to all you burgeoning indie bands out there, but I just can't fucking stand it. My patience died out years ago.


I go to symphonies and chamber concerts. I'll go to solo and chamber recitals. I'll go see this stuff for free, often at college/universities. Sometimes a premiere or new music. The audience is generally polite. There's no smoke. The musicians are actually "musicians", with a commesurate level of ability and professionalism. I don't have to wait until one in the fucking morning to get to hear what I came to hear. I'm usually home before 10:30 and not too damn tired to have sex after.

The music may not always be my ideal liking, and occasionally the playing may be uninspired, but rarely am I bored or wishing it would just end.

Don't mind me saying so, Geigini, but you sound like my dam grandma.

sunlore wrote:Don't mind me saying so, Geigini, but you sound like my dam grandma.

Ha ha ha, I don't mind at all. I also don't mind Solum's pointing out how I might come off sounding arrogant or pompus.

The reality is that I have gotten older, and as a result, I don't go to shows for the same reasons I did when I was younger. I don't care about the social interaction, the "scene", picking up girls, getting a buzz on, discovering some cool underground act before "everyone else does", or any of that shit.

The only thing I care about when going to hear music is the music itself. Does this group perform music that is original, engaging, complex, and well played. And when reduced to bare elements, the music, to me, is nothing more than the notes and intervals, the silences, the rhythm and time, and the timbre. To me, these elements are combined in a way that I hear qualitatively. Is this good music?

Most of the time at local rock shows I find the answer is no. What I do find is young scenesters who have put a great deal of work into looking the right way, sounding the right way, placing themselves in the right crowd, and producing the appropriate music for the scene that they've chosen. The music is a derivative of thier collective musical experience, which often doesn't amount to very much scope - historically or geographically, and their personal experience, which usually reeks of solopsy - amounting to their immediate interpersonal and personal turmoils and pains. This "package" that results, may be a more holistic socio-cultural method of communing with an "audience", and to also satisfy the material and cultural requirements of an "industry" that uses and promotes a "lifestyle" from it...

For example: Shostakovich lived through Stalin's "Great Terror", the seige of Leningrad, and was subject to great personal and professional hardship at the hands of a regime that controlled all aspects of his and his countrymans' existence, and was responsible for the elimination of hundreds of those who he was closest to. This is expressed in everything he wrote; which runs a wide range of periods, stylistic phases, and genres. (I'd be interested to see how the likes of Radiohead etc... would have responded to the Zhadnov decree) How can I be expected to show interest in the whinings of young middle class white males because girls don't understand them, or can't stay together, or resent their place in middle american ennui, or they don't "fit in" to "normal" society? It all seems so petty and contrived. And, in addition, I don't find I relate to the world around me in any such way anymore. Yet, this is the way that 99% of band playing shows around town express themselves. If that's how a person relates to their environment, and finds comfort and understanding in a social and artistic setting...fine.

My dissatisfaction is real and honest. If you want to fault me for that, it is your right to do so. But, to answer the original question....yes, I find myself bored by most shows and therfore don't go.

I got a good face melting from Acumen this weekend in Milwaukee. I would say go see them, but they are opening for KMFDM all other dates and Sascha can't hold it together by himself.

I know the feeling. For instance, I went and saw Dinosaur Jr. last week, and, while it was a great setlist, played well in a decent venue, I was secretly hoping they didn't do an encore. It's not that they weren't good or I don't like them, they just didn't grab my undivided attention and have me grinning from ear to ear. I was more impressed about standing next to Aidan Moffat for most of the night.

In the past two years I can only think of two gigs that have really blown me away - Guided By Voices and Shellac - and those gigs I didn't want to end; they had me grinning like a spastic and I left the gigs feeling I'd honestly seen something special. Even a lot of my favourite bands have recently bored me or let me down live. I'm just more put off going to gigs these days due to it. Save for a few select bands, I'd rather buy albums instead.

geiginni wrote:Most of the time at local rock shows I find the answer is no. What I do find is young scenesters who have put a great deal of work into looking the right way, sounding the right way, placing themselves in the right crowd, and producing the appropriate music for the scene that they've chosen. The music is a derivative of thier collective musical experience, which often doesn't amount to very much scope - historically or geographically, and their personal experience, which usually reeks of solopsy - amounting to their immediate interpersonal and personal turmoils and pains. This "package" that results, may be a more holistic socio-cultural method of communing with an "audience", and to also satisfy the material and cultural requirements of an "industry" that uses and promotes a "lifestyle" from it...

Jesus, yes.

The thing that i've been wondering is: is this a recent phenomenon grown out of a recently stagnated creative scene, or is it just that, since now we're older, we're only first noticing that it was this way when we were young?

That is an interesting question. I have been in the camp of not being really into shows as much recently…

Years back I was there all the time, in the NYC. And I lived in CT, so it was at least a 1 1/2 hr. each way… I remember though, that we were always the first there, and stayed till the end. And more then once a damn week we would hop in the car. I don't know if it was the fact that there was just more stuff I wanted to see (like '98 era June Of and Tortoise in the same week) but I just didn't weant to miss stuff. Christ I remember going to the Middle East in Boston to See Sam Prekop and Pajo on the night they changed the clocks forward an hour with nothing but lots of work at eight in the morning ahead of me, and a three hour car ride compounded by the damn clock change! Or borderline passing out at 2 nights of Labradford/GodSpeed in NYC, because we had to in front both nights!

Nowadays I can't stand a lot of the kids either (a sure sign of getting old), or that awful weird sweaty feeling. The showsI have enjoyed the most in this last year have been comfy adult oriented venues, like Wilco at Radio City, or even the oldies review that was "Brian Wilson Presents Smile" at an awful "CELL PHONE COMPANY- theatre". But I godda admit. The chairs and curteous staff were much appreciated.

I feel 60. I'm old.

geiginni wrote:

sunlore wrote:Don't mind me saying so, Geigini, but you sound like my dam grandma.

My dissatisfaction is real and honest. If you want to fault me for that, it is your right to do so. But, to answer the original question....yes, I find myself bored by most shows and therefor don't go.

I didn't mean to question your honesty and I get what you are saying. I concur that 99 percent of what you see at a regular rockshow will be self-indulgent crap.
Yet.
The 1 percent pure coolness (loudness) I will occasionally stumble upon is always an experience so blissful, so beautiful, that I will, for now at least, take a few hours of wading through crap for granted.
You are a classical music lover, and so am I. However I am frequently put off by performances of classical music for the air of "seriousness" that surrounds them. No noise! Not even a sneeze! No fun... I don't get that. Making music should be joyful, a communal experience indeed.
I also think that many people who attend performances of classical music really know jack shit about it. Sure they can tell you about bending notes and clever modulations and all that. Sure. You can learn that from any good textbook. What they often don't get is soul, or the spirit of a piece. The dirt, the spleen, the ghosts, temperament. You know... I've many people like that in my family. So much talk, so little real listening.
What always comes close to a rock experience to me are organ concerts. The BIG organ concerts, where the instrument is not the organ itself, but in fact a whole church. That wall of sound just crushing you. It often leaves me gasping for breath.

DrAwkward wrote:

geiginni wrote:Most of the time at local rock shows I find the answer is no. What I do find is young scenesters who have put a great deal of work into looking the right way, sounding the right way, placing themselves in the right crowd, and producing the appropriate music for the scene that they've chosen. The music is a derivative of thier collective musical experience, which often doesn't amount to very much scope - historically or geographically, and their personal experience, which usually reeks of solopsy - amounting to their immediate interpersonal and personal turmoils and pains. This "package" that results, may be a more holistic socio-cultural method of communing with an "audience", and to also satisfy the material and cultural requirements of an "industry" that uses and promotes a "lifestyle" from it...

Jesus, yes.

The thing that i've been wondering is: is this a recent phenomenon grown out of a recently stagnated creative scene, or is it just that, since now we're older, we're only first noticing that it was this way when we were young?

It's recent. Shows and the people involved in them were a lot different, when I was young anyway. There were tons of insane genius people around putting on crazy shows in weird places. Bands were exciting, the way it was presented was exciting, it made you want to get involved and do it yourself....there dosen't seem to be much of that these days. People seem to just go to the empty bottle and stand around then go home. It's all just assembly line boring same old same old.
It's a different world. Breaking away and doing exciting things with Music is not so much a big deal to a lot of the people anymore. There dosen't seem to be any kind of movement to get behind and fight for with everything you have anymore.
The way music is presented is extremely boring these days, so I can't really blame the kids for not putting it at the center of their lives anymore.
Someone will figure it out sooner or later and start doing some cool shit.

When I was in high school and college in South Dakota, we used to drive to Mpls for shows (5-6 hours) and leave immediately after to make it back for class in the morning. Now that I'm 28, and live in Mpls, I find it hard to drive downtown on a weeknight sometimes. I find myself complaining a lot that music sucks in the last couple years, or that we don't get any good shows anymore, but I think a lot of times it's an excuse for laziness. Plus, sometimes my back hurts when I stand in one spot for so long.

I used to go to shows all the time, every night, sometimes multiple shows in one day.

Over the past year or so, I've become a lot pickier. And when I DO eventually decide to go, I usually get bored or start complaining about how loud it is, how crowded the venue is, it sounds bad, etc.

The only shows I've seen in the past few years that have floored me were The Wrens, Shellac, Six Organs of Admittance, The Oblivians, Wilco, Jack Rose, Broken Social Scene and...that's all I can think of...