Porcupne Tree continuing to tour with NO bass player

[mike257]

10 hours ago, greavesbass said:

So Glastonbury is just one big Karaoke event. You could not make it up. Be cheaper and easier to have holograms of ur favourite bands, save a whole lot of hassle and money ...Oh sorry its marketed as a "live music event", silly me.

 

There's tons of bands making use of tracks, for sure, but that doesn't make it karaoke. 

 

I'm sure artists would love to have a massive band line up on stage recreating all the parts they'd like to squeeze in, but it's not financially or logistically practical for the vast majority. 

 

Even for bands touring reasonably sized venues, every player you add to the show adds a cost in wages, catering, travel, accommodation, rehearsal time, equipment etc. You add a few extras players and you need to start increasing the crew size to manage it. You go past the amount of people you can fit on a sleeper bus and you have to add an additional bus and driver to move your touring party around, with all the cost and logistical issues that entails. 

 

For smaller bands touring in vans, you can fit 9 people including driver in a typical tour van (any vehicle carrying more than that requires a CPC trained driver and a tachograph to log drivers hours, so isn't commonly used in small scale touring). If you can squeeze extra players in, you still have all the other additional costs attached, and given that the vast majority of tour vans are usually already running over the legal weight limit when packed with backline and a few bodies, accomodating extra players and their kit safely and legally isn't really practical. 

 

Operating costs on tour are higher than than ever at the moment and budgets are being squeezed. When you see that side of it, you can see why it's more practical for bands to add additional elements on playback than it is to add another couple of musicians to the lineup. 

 

The majority of bands that use click tracks and playback are using it for parts that enhance the overall impact of the show, but are still a fully functioning musical unit playing live together. Some modern genres of music are more dependent on electronic elements that don't all lend themselves to being recreated through live performance too. 

 

Running a click track also means that lighting rigs and other visual elements like video content can be locked in sync to the performance, adding to the overall experience that's created for the audience. Some artists I work with are using click tracks live purely to lock in with timecoded visuals and don't have any playback element to the show at all. 

 

Expectations for production standards on live shows have risen considerably over the last couple of decades, so artists and their teams are just making the most of the technology available to create a memorable experience for the audience. The majority of the crowd at most shows aren't musicians, they're there to see and hear a show and be entertained. A drummer having a click in their ear, and a couple of layers of backing vocals and keyboards being dropped in on playback doesn't invalidate the performance that's happening and the experience that the audience are enjoying. 

[tauzero]

16 hours ago, toneknob said:

When Tony Levin was taken ill on the ABWH/Yes tour, Jeff Berlin stepped in with less than a weeks notice and took his place, playing a two and half set of Yes and related music. From interview at http://www.nfte.org/interviews/berlin_interview.html "I wrote them [the charts] out on Sunday and Monday night. Wednesday we were rehearsing and Thursday I was on the gig. Now if I didn't have the background and experience I probably would never have been able to do a Yes show in two days"

Any advance on two days?

 

Midge Ure learning Thin Lizzy's set when he got drafted in to replace Gary Moore, apparently in about a day? I know it's guitar, but after all, we all know that anyone who can play bass can play guitar.

[BreadBin]

My band is back to a 3-piece, our drummer couldn't commit the time (he has a young family, it's all amicable and doors are open) so we have decided to use backing tracks instead. We still play the same instrumental and vocal parts but with either programmed or recorded drums and crucially now all the extra parts that are in the studio versions.

This has been a revelation, the added dimension of all the synth lines and extra orchestration make things sound amazing. We still have dynamic range it just sounds better!

[Dad3353]

To me, it's the difference between going to see a show, and going to listen to live music. I'm not at all sure I'd attend a concert when the conductor waved his baton before a wide video screen, whatever the piece. I watched and listened to the Pink Floyd  and Jefferson Airplane in their early years, with their psychedelic light show, but all the music was played by those on stage, in plain sight. I wouldn't have gone if the players were on screen, or pre-recorded. Ultimately, and in the extreme, it can become a DJ perched above the floor setting off digital files; I don't attend such entertainment either. It might be good entertainment for some, but that's not what I appreciate as a Good Musical Event. 

Disclaimer : I'm old. 

[Bassassin]

Can't see a problem with this tbh. I have a long history of gigging with pre-recorded backing going back to the mid 90s, when my cover band made an executive decision to gig as a duo, basically so money was split 2-ways rather than 3 or 4. Me & the guitarist both had 8-track recording setups so recording keys, rhythm guitars & programmed drums was a formality.

 

My subsequent originals band gigged for a while with pre-recorded drums (programmed stuff from demos I'd done) when our meat drummer smashed up his leg in an alcohol/steps based incident.

 

I've not been in a gigging band for a while - but tech being where it is now, my musical collaborator & me are starting to discuss going out again, as a duo. The whole other people/herding cats element was what killed our (rather brilliant) last band & on reflection, soured the experience of creating music for a little while. It might be nice to only have ourselves to blame when it all goes predictably & grotesquely wrong, just for a change.

[Doctor J]

If I want to hear the nuances of Tommy, I can do that at home. I want to experience Live at Leeds, if you get what I mean. I'd rather it raw and genuinely live than an effort to perfectly replicate the recording. For me, live is all about the musical energy and, in the parlance of the young people "living the moment", by both band and audience. I generally don't go to big gigs where you get all the elaborate visual fluff but I do understand why it's done in this day and age. There is a beauty, however, with an adrenaline-fuelled blast through a song 20bpm faster than the original, which gives genuinely live music that something extra. It should be a different experience, filled with flaws and, for want of a better term, humanity.

[meterman]

I don’t see this as a big deal (unless you’re a fan of the bassist from Porcupine Tree maybe).

 

Nowadays with advanced studio production techniques vs the ever increasing economics of touring, it’s inevitable that some artists are going to augment live playing with pre-recorded elements. Acts as varied as Flaming Lips, Björk, Ian Brown, Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, Aswad, Wire, etc, immediately spring to mind but loads of chart acts also do it.

 

And it’s been going on for decades. I toured with a dance act in the ‘90s that combined live instrumentation with some of the impossible studio stuff coming from a DAT machine. At the time I thought it was a bit weird to have seven musicians and two singers onstage with a bunch of production stuff coming through the PA as well. Extra bass, drums and synth parts and production bits. But when we did all the festival gigs it became apparent just how many artists were combining pre-recorded elements to their stage performances. This was over 25 years ago and it was already happening before then. Especially with electronic acts that also used live drums or bass or whatever.

 

If the UK Subs toured with Charlie Harper on a pre-recorded video screen I’d probably give them a miss. But a drum n bass act would be a different story.

[diskwave]

Some weird existential strangeness going here. If this carries on bands will gradually become less and less of the performers and performance their supposed to be and judging by the current trend for crowds to seemingly put on the usual ..me, me, me, show at festivals Ive seen recently, tis the crowd which are becoming the performance. 

 

[Russ]

Colin Edwin has no interest in touring with PT again. Him and Steven Wilson seem to have drifted apart, and he never got a call when Wilson “reconvened” PT, with Wilson handling bass duties on the new album himself.

 

Surprised Wilson didn’t call on Nick Beggs though, who played bass for most of his solo stuff. Wilson’s live set always contains multiple PT songs, so Beggs knows the stuff. I guess he was busy? 

[No lust in Jazz]

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Edited August 29, 2023 by No lust in Jazz
pressed the wrong button

[No lust in Jazz]

I saw the gig at Castlefields in Manchester - (Actually my mate and I went to see Magma who were the support). Although I have limited knowledge of the Porcupine Tree back catalogue I thoroughly enjoyed their gig. 

[NancyJohnson]

It's odd, people having a moan about click tracks, backing tracks etc. etc.

 

If anyone thinks a band like Porcupine Tree don't use MIDI and time codes to ensure everything works together is delusional.  The only thing going this route is it just makes things a tad sterile.

[Bassassin]

16 hours ago, Russ said:

Colin Edwin has no interest in touring with PT again. Him and Steven Wilson seem to have drifted apart, and he never got a call when Wilson “reconvened” PT, with Wilson handling bass duties on the new album himself.

 

Surprised Wilson didn’t call on Nick Beggs though, who played bass for most of his solo stuff. Wilson’s live set always contains multiple PT songs, so Beggs knows the stuff. I guess he was busy? 

 

What's odd about the aggrieved reaction to PT with no live bassist/PT with no Colin is that it was always a just vehicle for Wilson's own compositions, not a democracy. It's interesting that the current album's probably their most collaborative, as it does seem to have developed from jams with Harrison & Barbieri (seemingly with Steve-O playing bass) rather than him beavering away over his Tascam 4-track & presenting the band with songs to learn.

 

To my ears, the best of SW's solo work (eg Raven, Hand Cannot Erase) isn't wildly different to Porcupine Tree.

[fretmeister]

I saw Devin Townsend when his click system went wrong and they had to reboot the laptops.

 

He was open about it and properly explained that as the next song had orchestral parts and he did not, in fact, earn enough money to fly an orchestra round the world to do 1500 capacity venues he was using backings and backings need a click track. It also controlled the backdrop and the lights.

 

Nothing wrong with that to me.