We took a trip to Bury St Edmunds on Friday, and happened upon this little band busking outside Marks and Spencer. Nothing too fancy – just 4 clearly competent musicians doing their thing in the winter sunshine. We only had time to stop for a few minutes while they played their opening number, Johnny Cash’s “Fulsome Prison Blues”. No vocalist on this occasion, but it was live and joyous and everybody was happy. They were called “The High Points” – click for their website. I suspect they’d put on a good evenings entertainment.

But here’s the important thing: It was LIVE! No backing tapes, no tricks, just music.  Unlike an awful lot of modern performances. 

Now I’ve long suspected the concert going public are being fooled with technology.  We have singers who appear to sing well whilst dancing, but are then obviously out of breath when introducing the next song (Madonna), bands with members obviously absent (Sheniah Twain performing at Glastonbury without a bass player on stage), remarkably perfect renditions of well known songs (Dua Lipa, also at Glastonbury this year).  Not to mention hip-hop, rap and techno performers who obviously have no band at all.  

I’m not alone in this view, of course, and there’s increasing concern about this by industry insiders. A good example is the “Wings of Pegasus” channel on YouTube, run by ‘Fil’, who is not only a very talented guitarist and singer but also a whiz at musical and recording analysis. Significantly, he doesn’t necessarily set out to unmask the culprits – he simply analyzes videos people request him to take a look at, and reports what he finds. Over the last few months, he’s demonstrated convincingly that overproduction and excessive reliance on technology are absolutely rife.

In live performances there are a number of ‘tricks’ employed: 

1. Miming to backing tracks. This has been going on for years of course – Top of the Pops on TV, for example, though that was always an open secret. But you don’t expect it in a so-called ‘live’ performance you’ve paid money to watch.  Today they get a bit more sophisticated, maybe adding a little live vocals into the mix in order to give the impression that it’s all live.
2. Partial use of backing tracks which are mixed-in to ‘perform’ the tricky parts of a song
3. Singer really singing, but to a backing track, with the band on view simply miming.
4. Band really playing, but the singer is miming.
5. Singers making extensive use of technology such as ‘auto-tune’, which automatically adjusts the pitch of individual notes if the singer sings a bum note.

So who are the culprits?   Well list the included some big names. Here are just four

1. Taylor Swift – lots of backing tracks in the ‘Eras’ tour and extensive use of auto-tune.
2. Maria Carey – partial use of backing tracks
3. The Eagles – singing clearly not live in recent tours
4. Celine Dion – appears to be using partial backing tracks.

The silly thing is, these people CAN sing – they’ve proved that in their careers. But when doing it live they feel the need, possibly under pressure from managers, promoters, record companies, to enhance the performance using technology.It’s not good. 

If you can’t do it live, don’t call it live!

But here are a few performers who definitely are performing live:

• U2
• Rolling Stones
• Pink
• The High Points

So to summarise, if you want to see a girl dancing around the stage in a sparkly swimming costume, go to a Taylor Swift gig.   On the other hand, if you want to see some live music, go shopping in Bury St. Edmunds.