Why do we attend live concerts, when iPods and Spotify are readily available? Why drive to music festivals in the middle of nowhere or brave rush hour traffic to get to a concert hall, when a few clicks or taps can deliver the same music in pretty decent quality?
Seeing artists play live is a whole, 'nother experience. It allows us to experience the music more intimately and watch as the musician's godly skills unravel right before us. However, a shift in the music scene to EDM has also produced a change in the quality of popular live acts touring today. I recall watching Ratatat performing on the Coachella livestream a few years ago, as well as some other EDM artists. Now, Ratatat is one of my favorite groups of all time, and they're not even considered as edm, I think. Their live show was disappointing though, due to the limitations of the music. There are very little vocals (if any), and apart from some guitar solos- you don't have anyone on the bass or drums like a conventional rock band. You can't really have back-up singers or dancers because you don't really need them for this kind of music! (The dancing is done by the audience anyway, in the case of EDM. Besides banging on some drums to the predominantly prerecorded music, the duo didn't really do much onstage. What is there to do? All you really needed to do was to just press play... but that doesn't make an engaging show! I suppose that in the case of the dubstep and electronic music trend, you don't really go to shows to watch the artist fiddle around on a computer or mixer- you attend them to dance and jump repeatedly in place with a fist in the air. Of course, those artists are still great musicians, but their talent is mostly in the studio, not onstage. It doesn't take a lot of skill to operate a laptop or effect pedals.
When I first came to this realization, I thought that this was a really pretentious view to possess until I came across this post by Deadmau5. But maybe Deadmau5 was a little too harsh. After all, most of these really brilliant musicians- whether they play house, classical, or pop- all deserve to be recognized for their ability to produce tunes that people love and enjoy. Musicians that rely more on technology, like a computer, might just have it easier when performing. After all, they don't really need to worry about hitting the right notes onstage or staying in sync with the backup dancers or hoping that their voice won't crack on that high falsetto solo. Aside from the occasional technical issue here or there, there isn't really any improvisation or spontaneity involved.
I hope that this genre of music will undertake some innovation to make their performances more interesting. Not that the crowd will care anyway, while they're dancing and possibly getting plastered, but at least I'll feel that I'm getting my money's worth, and that the experience can't be replicated with a giant boombox and some blacklights at home.
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