I had a good time earlier tonight catching the mustachioed Donavon Frankenreiter with T-Money and Cam.ilicio.us at the charming local venue the WOW Hall. T-Money also wrote up a little review.
It wasn’t very crowded, but was a nice intimate experience with Frankenreiter’s smooth voice and varying styles from acoustic to funk to rock. Opening act The White Buffalo was also amusing for many reasons, and he was talented to boot.
Even though it wasn’t too crowded, there was still a fair share of fans using their phones to record pictures and videos of Frankenreiter in action, which reminded me of Fred Wilson’s recent post about Hyper Recording. Fred’s post complains that the super high quality video being shot probably wouldn’t be seen or shared like it should be, while we’re moving to a society that will be recording ever more stuff as phones and cameras continue to improve in quality and size.
Like Fred, I agree this is a good thing, but really it led me to wonder why I haven’t seen or heard of any bands taking advantage of the new video phenomenon by actual releasing live shows or portions of live shows the night or day after the show occurred?
I’ve been to many live shows that I’ve wished to watch again or see parts of again. And there are bands that I enjoy so much that I’d love to view shows or parts of shows I wasn’t even at just to see what went down. It’s even a service I’d pay for with certain artists.
What’s the down side? Less people going to shows? I doubt it, you can’t replicate watching a live concert over a computer, so it would probably only increase the amount of people who come to see the shows. Sure, it takes some work to record a show, get it on a computer, and upload it. But we’re getting to the point where that’s getting more and more feasible. I’ve seen 25 minute concert clips on YouTube of decent quality, so why couldn’t a band start putting up 45 minutes from each night’s show? And soon why not 90 minutes or 120 minutes?
Maybe Fred’s right that artists are perfectionists and wouldn’t want their imperfect work out there. I tend to think there’d be some artists willing to take this “risk”, it seems like a no-brainer to me. I’d love to watch the Frankenreiter highlights again tomorrow and possibly share with some others who missed out on their cover of The Band’s The Weight featuring the White Buffalo. In fact, I’m laughing now as I typed that….ah, the memories, too bad they’re only in my head. At least I can watch some older short clips on YouTube.
The White Buffalo was truly inspiring, I’ve not recently seen an artist who could rock the second verse with a lit cigarette and a can of PBR in his hand.
I thought smoking in public venues in Eugene was illegal. The laws do not apply to the White Buffalo. He is an endangered species.