Re: [Harp-L] Live performance

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Robert Bonfiglio wrote:
<I am getting this very weird feeling at live performances now.  The people love you, <they go nuts, but somehow the dots no longer connect.  Take last Friday, 2800 <people, they go nuts , buy CD's but there is this very odd Star Trek disconnect, as <if you were some kind of freak show and I don't me the harmonica, I mean the whole <idea of live music.
<
<Anybody else getting odd vibes at concerts?  The old "I didn't know musicians were <still doing this" kind of feel.  My life is on my iPod feeling......

I discussed this issue at some length in my book "World Without Secrets' (Wiley&Sons, NYC, 2002--available used on amazon.com if anyone is interested). In a digital world, a performance is the audience's link to reality, not a freak show.  They go wild precisely because it is real and can't be duplicated. Its value to the audience is in direct proportion to its rarity and singularity (especially compared to a recording, which can be duplicated endlessly at a marginal cost of near zero for each copy).   

The ability of artists like the Grateful Dead and the String Cheese Incident to make a good living without a hit record--in fact, to use recordings as a kind of global free advertising, a vector to an audience that will support the artist via paid performance--is one kind of evidence for this shift.  The promotional--so far apparently not financial--success of Christelle Berton, who has used YouTube as a free advertising platform for her renditions of (with rare exceptions) other people's songs, is more evidence.  To complete the cycle--and earn a good living--artists must deliver live performance experiences that are singular and striking, as Bonfiglio so obviously does.

So don't freak, Robert.  You're the real deal.  And that's what a significant portion of the audience wants--the real deal, live and in their faces. A concert performance is a rare and precious experience that no recording can duplicate.  And unlike recordings in the modern world, it's something the audience will pay for.

Regards, Richard Hunter



author, "Jazz Harp"
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