I am seeing more and more rock bands come out on stage and play along to laptops these days.

Since when has this been acceptable practice?

example please

I've seen Matmos and Battles do this.

Matmos said, "we promise we are not reading our email" when they got up on stage.

stewie wrote:I've seen Matmos and Battles do this.

Matmos said, "we promise we are not reading our email" when they got up on stage.

What do Matmos have on stage with them besides laptops?

Christopher J. McGarvey wrote:

stewie wrote:I've seen Matmos and Battles do this.

Matmos said, "we promise we are not reading our email" when they got up on stage.

What do Matmos have on stage with them besides laptops?

iPods?

Tortoise uses them as well.
But I'm not sure I know what the laptops are being used for.

When you say "play along to laptops", it confuses me.
Are you sure they're playing along to their laptops?

Isis was the band that prompted this poll, and it certainly appeared as if they were just playing along with the laptop. Jesu from the same show as well, they had better results, but even then it still seemed as if the damn thing was neutralizing the rhythm section.

I've seen a lot of other less well know bands do this laptop thing recently.

Battles was a good use of a laptop, in that they were all playing together, and the laptop was for live loops and treatments (or they made it feel that way, maybe that's thanks to Mr J Stainer).

I think it's the karaoke feeling it can give that disturbs me about this trend.

Agreed,

Karaoke=Crap
Live Loop= Not Crap

Its the Carpenter not the Saw.

JDanger wrote:Its the Carpenter not the Saw.

In this case, I believe it's the carpenter and the saw.

I believe that it's almost always a terrible idea to incorporate a laptop into a live performance by a rock band. In my opinion, the use of laptops sounds silly, artificial and about as non-rock as music can get -- and I've seen many examples of these Bad Idea jeans in action.

I'm sure that there are exceptions to this general idea, but I'd recommend that you little wizards leave the notebooks at home. Don't worry, kiddies. I'm not going to miss the impact of your shit-hot rock song if you fail to incorporate the FFFZZZHHHH KKKKRRRRRR WHHHAAAANNNNGGGG.

The same goes for drum machines and triggered drums. Boo.

Of course, my favorite record of all time is constructed from samples and drum machines. I've also used a recording of a chorus of breaking bottles as a de facto rhythm section for a song.

So, really, wtf do I know?

Bradley R. Weissenberger wrote:I'm sure that there are exceptions to this general idea...

Somebody please name one.

The same friend of mine who did the Rennie Sparks interview did one with Calvin Johnson in which he joked that he was gonna get a pizza box, cut an apple with a bite taken out in the middle of the box, and put some Christmas lights around it, then just play one of his records.

You're a funny guy, Calvin Johnson.