Live and disingenuous

December 12^th – When does a parody become a mockery? I always thought The Plastic Ono Band sort of extended the genre to its utmost; that was until I got to know more about the music industry’s use of electronic augmentation in order to make their protégés even barely tolerable.

With tongue firmly in cheek, John Lennon and Yoko Ono got together and formed this conglomerate of musical interpretation, both live and recorded, in order to, well, to what? It was neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat and, going out on a limb here, their output was singularly lacking in depth or quality imho. I felt there was a little too much tongue and not enough cheek in their output and the music and ideology left much to be desired but it did continue to get the cash rolling in so, all was not lost. I have a feeling that the con perpetrated on the public by this co-operative of self-serving, back-slapping musos was continued on through Mr. Lennon’s premature and totally unnecessary death and beyond by Ms. Ono who seems to have built a very lucrative career on pretty well nothing much in the way of talent and social challenge; or maybe it’s just that I don’t get it…? Whatever, best of luck to her, it all pays the gas bill.

However, this hoodwinking of the public, a musical King’s New Clothes if you will, is thrust deep into the shadows by the machinations and fiddles perpetrated on a gullible public today. With miming, lip-synching, pre-recording, overdubbing, auto-tuning, backing fills and click-tracking now all part of the set up it’s difficult to know what you’re hearing at a live concert is indeed live. I guess the question has to be asked;

Does it matter?

So what if Madonna or One Direction just mouth their way through a pre-recorded set. They’re there, on stage, in the flesh and that’s what the punters want, isn’t it? To see their idols? There’s an interesting article about some twat of politician who’s said that it’s a waste of his time travelling up and down the country to give speeches. Instead he should be allowed to sit at home, record them onto a DVD and send them off to the various venues where the disc can be plugged into a player and the audience watch the recording…FM, talk about hands-off government. The next thing will be Skypeing the whole thing thereby cutting out the cost of the DVD and then sending pictures of a look-alike so the lazy shit doesn't have to leave his bed. I’m all for this kind of thing providing we cut down on the money-grubbing arsehole’s salary to reflect his lack of input.

Mind you, the no-show part of this could be a blessing as far as some performers are concerned, particularly if recent footage concerning their reliance on auto-tune is anything to go by; Ms. Spears not turning up for a gig could be made complete if we could also have access to the off button on the sound desk.