How Gorillaz could dominate a post-Covid world
reframing.substack.com
reframing.substack.com
Live shows will certainly be impacted, but to think that you need bands to become virtual characters is kind of extreme. The Beatles were purely a studio band for much of the time they dominated. That's nothing new.
Multitrack recording has been around forever, so recording your part at home isn't that big a deal, especially now that home equipment has gotten so affordable. (note that the winner of the grammy for best engineer last year, Finneas, did it on a few thousand dollars worth of equipment in his bedroom). So much music now is created on a computer more than on an instrument, so that's becoming a big factor. Even if you play it onto an electronic piano, you can tweak to your heart's content after the fact. (and you can play at slow speed, you can play right and left hand parts separately, you can loop, you can play in a different key and transpose, etc).
You sure don't have to go full Gorillaz to do any of this. They are an interesting extreme, but beyond that....
One of the big problems, though, is that many musicians have a lot of trouble making money off their recordings, especially with so many people just listening on YouTube etc. There isn't the incentive to buy a record as there was a few decades ago.
It's just so different from when I was young, and people would call into a radio station, getting busy signals over and over, just on the chance they'd pick up and the further chance they'd actually play the song you requested. You had a real incentive to buy the record.
I found the sentiment of this article comforting. It points to a way forward to make music and get some of that connection back. I don't know that there's any substitute for the real deal but that's probably because I'm old. ;)
Those two are different things. We could say that one is not better than the other, it depends on the use case.
But one can also say that we're wired evolutionary for the direct presence, and the other case is a 10-30 years affair that we're rushing into often when it's not really needed (like now with COVID) but just because it's new (or because other things, like ticket prices or free time, are fucked up).
Smaller audience for social-distancing, absolutely spectacular location, and make money selling Blu-Ray discs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_Tire_Damage_(band)
>On Friday, November 18, 1994, the Rolling Stones decided to broadcast one of their concert tours on the Internet. Before their broadcast, Severe Tire Damage returned to the Internet, this time becoming the "opening act" for the Stones. Instead of an obscure Australian researcher, the entire world press was watching this time, and Severe Tire Damage was elevated from obscurity to Warholian fame.
>Newsweek magazine described Severe Tire Damage as being "a lesser known rock band." The Rolling Stones told The New York Times: "the surprise opening act by Severe Tire Damage was a good reminder of the democratic nature of the Internet."
>Band members: The core band consisted of these people:
>Russ Haines: guitar and vocals. Haines worked at DEC Systems Research Center.
>Mark Manasse: bass and vocals. Manasse worked at DEC Systems Research Center.
>Steven Rubin: vocals. Rubin worked at Apple Computer.
>Mark Weiser: drums. Weiser was Chief Technologist at Xerox PARC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone
>History of the Internet - Severe Tire Damage, The Internet’s First Live Band
>Severe Tire Damage was the first live band on the internet.
>In 1993 they began multicasting onto the internet's IP multicast backbone, the MBONE.
>In 1994 they opened for the Rolling Stones on the Stone's first internet show.
>The band often played in the parking garage at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in Palo Alto.
>Severe Tire Damage was the first band to perform live over the internet.
>Like many bands, they performed at garages and at parties.
>However these garages were the parking lots of companes creating a new world of personal computers and open networking: DEC, Apple, Sun, Xerox PARC.
>And at these parties were prople who were inventing the technology of this new world.
>In 1993 Severe Tire Damage began to broadcast video & audio performances over the internet's new IP MulticastBackbone - thge MBONE.
>In 1994 Severe Tire Damage opened the Rolling Stones first online internet show.
>"We were using about half the available bandwidth. Half the available total bandwidth of the internet was just us, doing really really bad songs. That's because the internet had not been pumped up to do anything with audio or video at the time. The internet was for email, was for text." [...] "You gotta remember too, that this was 152x76 pixels or something, incredibly small screen, updated maybe 8-12 times a second. The audio at best a bad telephone connection."-Russ Haines, Digital Equipment Corporation
>"I think what we did was a kind of piracy, like in the early days of people buying airplanes, where you'll land in some farmer's field, because you had no place else to go, and it was ok because there weren't very many airplanes around. There aren't very many people now who can use the internet in this way, and so anything goes for new, because we're still explorers exploring brand new space and there's very very few of us." -Mark Weiser (1995), Chief Scientest, Xerox PARC
It reminded me of demoscene programs in a way although not as intellectually stimulating. It's early days for the medium but as VR gets cheaper I can't see why it won't become a normal thing in the west to have virtual gigs (I think people around me wouldn't be surprised if they saw something like it in Asia already)
You can still move around in the game but the game applies external forces to you to throw you around and put you in the different environments etc.
It’s an interesting problem-space and it’ll take a while for people to acclimatise to the changes, but I think we’ll start to see a lot of this.
I miss the trip hop, I miss the ‘edge’. It’s basically Damon Albarn’s synth pop at the moment. I feel like he should be releasing records such as ‘The Now Now’ under his own name. I’d still listen and I’d probably appreciate it more.
They were on the cover of the iPod box, as well as the matching ‘dancing iPod’ ad.
While I’m not the biggest fan of most of their recent albums, the first two are certainly worth a listen. :)