Is It Live, Or Is It Memorex?
by Mike Agranoff
as published in Sing Out!, Vol 47 #4, Winter 2004
Last Sunday, a friend invited me to go to what sounded like an interesting concert.
A church in town had scheduled a concert by a children's choir from Uganda as
part of their regular morning service. OK, I'm game.
After a brief service, the minister introduced the choir who took their places
on a set of risers at the front of the church. There were maybe 15 kids ranging
in age from about 7 to 12. They were adorable; dressed in colorful African garb,
enormous grins on their faces, and cute as a basket of puppies. Four adults
performed with them, three who sang and preached, and one who played electric
guitar. The music was wonderful: upbeat, uplifting, songs of praise to an Afro-pop
beat. The production was slick. Very slick. The singing was punctuated with
complex choreographed arm and body movements performed to perfection by the
children. Behind the group was a projection video screen where African scenes,
pictures of the kids, words to the songs would flash and change in time to the
music. The singing was accompanied by a pre-recorded sound track of a small
combo, which was overlaid by the adults' lead vocals sung into hand-held microphones
and the electric guitar. The sound was excellent.
There was only one thing that bothered me. I don't think I ever heard the children
sing. There were children's vocals on the pre-recorded sound track. I could
tell from the quality of the voices that they were individually miked and carefully
mixed. But the kids on stage just had two area mikes several yards in front
of the choir. I don't think the kids were lip-syncing. I looked carefully, and
there were none of the exaggerated facial expressions that evidence that sort
of sham. They were singing. But it wasn't them that I was hearing.
Does this bother anybody but me? Am I just old fashioned to expect that a live
performance be performed live? Has Millie Vanillie become the accepted standard
in America? Or am I just some kind of old fart that hangs onto the outmoded
notion that what you see is what you hear?
The practice is becoming more common. At large events where sound reinforcement is difficult it is almost the norm. At parades, halftime shows, even some arena "live" concerts there often isn't even a pretense that the performers are actually singing what you hear. There is something disturbing about the notion that everything from Broadway shows to our National Anthem must now be audio-airbrushed to perfection, for fear that...what? Someone will discover that we are a nation of imperfect human beings?
I wonder if 80 years ago when Caruso was king a similar stink was raised by
a bunch of purists when singers started using microphones for public performance.
Today we accept sound systems as a normal part of live performance without a
second thought. (There was, of course, the legendary flap raised over Dylan's
"going electric" at Newport, but that is not pertinent to this question. The
objection was to his musical taste in using electric instruments, not in his
ability to play without enhancement.)
We blithely accept all the enhancements inherent in the process of studio recording.
"Okay, Take 14. We'll get this fiddle solo right eventually." Or maybe we'll
just record 5 or 6 different fiddle solos and edit and splice the best parts
of each together to achieve that perfect sense of spontaneous virtuosity. Stephane
Grapelli is doing the boogaloo in his grave. Then we'll lay down the mandolin
track, the pedal steel, the drums, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and the London
Symphony Orchestra. Hey, we still have one open track left. We can splice in
a few licks from some outtakes that Chet Atkins recorded before he died. That's
what I like about folk music: simplicity. Sure takes a lot of equipment to achieve
it though.
Never mind that when the artist goes on tour it's just him and his guitar. We
accept the fact that the performance and the recording are two separate art
forms, only slightly linked by a bond of common repertoire. If we were to buy
a recording of just the artist and his songs and his guitar, we might feel vaguely
let down. If the artist were to show up at the gig with the Mormon Tabernacle
Choir and a CD-ROM of Chet Atkins outtakes, we might feel vaguely put upon.
Time moves on. Tastes and standards change. The old farts are left standing
in the dust cloud waving their fists at departing progress, while the rest of
the world has an indulgent chuckle and gets on with things.
Or are they? Have you seen some of these retro-rad bluegrass groups going back
to the 4 guys clustered around a single microphone technique? Have you seen
some of these young singer-songwriters step out in front of the microphones
and sing directly to the audience with their naked voices? Sounds pretty good,
don't it? Gets your attention, don't it? There are two kinds of fool in this
world: Those who say, "This is old, and therefore good." and those who say,
"This is new and therefore better."
So what about this children's choir from Uganda? Maybe the Mission that sent
them picked the best singers in the mission to record the soundtrack, and the
best dancers to go on tour. The dancers were pretty darn good. So was the music.
I dropped a twenty into the collection plate. I'm sure at least six or eight
dollars of that will find their way back to the Mission's goal of getting these
kids off the streets, and into good homes, and into the arms of Jesus. The rest
probably is going to pay off the loans on the recording studio and the tour
bus.