Guest Book

Hey Bird...nice post. Hope your day is going well. Raining hard down Birmingham way....a great day for chili....gonna make a pot full this morning and serve it with white cheese dip and chips for lunch with my beautiful and sweet Mara, enjoy the rain, and get ready to play some jazz this evening. ______..________..________.._____ I want to share an article in the Birmingham News this morning relative to artists "today" and lip syncing. As I was reading the article, I could not help but laugh, because I think ABB fans....and the Band... represent the antithesis of faux, in general, and musically speaking (no pun). I was going to comment about the production side of concerts and how that would get in the way of music, but I am reminded of early ELO and Pink Floyd concerts when production efforts reached new highs for live rock concerts, so it would not be fair I suppose to bash Britney Spears for her crap, because our generation stated it all. But then again, I am just so opposed to sound tracks, or dubbing, or anything beyond what I would call "minor" electronic affects, i.e. sound pedals, triggers, and so forth at live gigs. If you can play and sing when the power goes off or the computer craps out, then I would say the gig met the mark. Personally, I love the fact Greggs' vocals have changed over the years; it had gotten better in some aspects and aged appropriately for a blues singer in others. And look what you lose in dubbed vocal tracks....spontaneous effects of feel and so forth. Again, I use the GA Tour as a good example. Gregg's howls and his gutteral moans could not be manufactured; it came from his heart. That is so cool, and so absent in artists today. There was a comment in the article that mentioned Spears website had about 3,000 kids sign a petition to ask her not to sync it in her 2004 Tour. Funny as hell if you ask me. Fake boobs, fake music, fake everthing except the very real money she has made being fake. From strictly a music appreciation perspective, I simply cannot understand where kids heads are today to even accept that crap. In our day, we would have booed someone like spears off the stage. If there were a "no lip sync here" button to display, I would proudly wear one! Go ABB! Play it cool, or play it rough, but play it without sync! Rock on.... RT