When you go to see a band play live, what are you looking for? Do you want to hear the 'hits' reproduced note for note, but with a flashy stage show? Or do you prefer hearing musicians whose repertoire undergoes a distinct evolution from the recording? I've always been in the latter camp - and most of the musicians I know are the same way. If I want to listen to the album, I'll do it in the comfort of my own home. Why on earth would I want to risk my eardrums, have beer spilled on me, get jostled by young people too busy screaming for the hit to listen to the music, and have to stand up for hours on end, if all I'm getting out of it is something that would be far more satisfying delivered to my ears in the much more relaxing setting of my home?
For most of my career, I've written songs in a manner that is tailored to the evolutionary approach - songs that would find their completion only in a live setting. With Baaba Seth, I would often bring a song to the band that was entirely bare-bones. A chorus and some chord changes, usually some idea of a melody. The interactions of the players, particularly in the context of being on stage performing, was the catalyst for the song, taking it from an outline to a fleshed-out composition. Sometimes the process would take years. I didn't write down actual lyrics for most of the Baaba Seth songs until the eve of our first recording session.
When we were going to record the song Delhi, I sat in my room and listened to live recordings of the song, writing down words I had composed on the fly during concerts. I remember bringing Tracy to the tape player to help. "It sounds like I'm saying 'come down from your tower' there at the beginning, doesn't it?" In fact, I'm not sure that's what I had actually sang, but it sounded close enough - and it was enough of a start to allow me to string the rest of the lyrics together. I thrived on being extemporaneous on stage. I even ended up developing the skill of being able to sing actual gibberish that sounded like words, to get me from one more concrete line to the next!
But that's not really the kind of evolution I intended to talk about today.
The album is the musical equivalent of a painting or a novel. It's there, and it doesn't change. When writing a song for a recording project, I want to tailor the song for the medium. My focus is on the impact of the lyrics, the sonic qualities, the way the instruments combine to form a piece that will be interesting to listen to on repeated plays. But making a song sound just right on a record is quite different from how I want it to sound on a stage. I say want, but really it's more unconscious than not. Not everything that works well on a recording translates to the stage. With good musicians who communicate well with each other, songs will naturally evolve as they are played live.
As I've begun busking, I'm discovering a third sort of metamorphosis. Busking with an acoustic guitar, my songs have to project. I can't get away with delicate picking or soft vocals. I've had to tailor my songs for the street - meaning strumming, and singing in a register that allows me to project my voice. The way I play my songs on the street is different both from the recording, and from the way I would play it on a stage, with amplification.
1 comment:
Great post. I remember being at a Baaba Seth show and thinking, "he changed a word or two there". I always thought that was cool. I remember when Pat went and saw REM when we were in college. I remember that he was dissapointed in the show because the songs all sounded exactly the same as on the record. I agree that if I want to hear the record, I will play it at home.
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