As stated in a previous blog, what i'll probably use this space for is to blow of some steam about work in a spot where I can't piss many colleagues off, so here's the first one I felt like writing
I've been working in the concert business pretty much non stop since 2006, starting as a stagehand and reaching in the past few months the role of production manager. In these years i've become pretty desensitized to the downsides that come with the territory like someone being a total dick, the occasional important information that wasn't mentioned in the production emails and pretty much anything that can turn a smooth day of work into a headache.
Yet, in these past few months, I realized there is still something I can't quite ignore and that manages to piss me off even slightly. That is (cue drumroll!!!!)....
Half-assed tributes to a recently deceased musician.
I'm pretty aware that what probably annoys me lately relates to the fact that the most recently deceased artists come from the musical eras that pretty much shaped my youth and therefor I have a strong feelings about.
But still I can't shake that feeling of disgust when I hear a band, usually lower tier supports, that cover the most popular song of the latest dead artist often butchering it.
In the past couple of weeks I worked at 8 shows and in all of those one of the supports covered the Cranberries' "Zombie" in the same formula: a simplified version made to resemble their style with the singer dragging his or her way up until the chorus.
This doesn't feel like a tribute, but more like a cheap way to get an applause from an audience that isn't there for you. After all if it meant anything to the band, the singer would have bothered to know the full lyrics rather than just the chorus (which in this case it's not that much to learn).
Yes I'm sure there are bands meaning well. I actually remember a band who sort of butchered a Linkin Park song the day after Bennington died, but it was something done on the spot by a band who clearly was influenced by them and chose a song that wasn't really popular but made sense with their set. In that case it wasn't good, but it felt honest and the singer got it right.