Did you know that as of this March, a group in Japan was awarded as the current record holders of the World’s Longest Concert? Beating out Canada (who held it since 2002) in the Guinness Book (to my own chagrin). On Thursday night, when The Fiery Furnaces played, the audience was put to the test for almost an hour and 45 minutes of original concert material. For an indie band, that’s kiiind of a long set – especially when you’re not expecting it.
Sparks; in a pensive mood. I would expect a long set from Sparks.
With no breaks between songs when your band sounds more like a melodic Trenchmouth or Red Red Meat fronted by a not less interesting Patti Smith or PJ Harvey, it can test your fortitude and rock n’ roll strength to stay interested – and I like to think that I’ve got a pretty good attention span. Double drummers, and lots of on stage action almost trick you into believing that the momentum and excitement could keep up with itself, but all that just falls to the background once it goes way past the hour mark – even the encore is mixed in with the regular set to “save us” from waiting for them to come back out on stage (we are told).
Is it possible that the band may have exceeded even their own expectations in length? Is it simply a practice in showing us who’s The Boss? After seeing Yo La Tengo‘s live show again earlier this year (not having seen them since the mid-90s), I was lamenting to a friend that I really liked most of the band’s set, but that the actual length of the show went on forever! He completely understood, having seen Yo La Tengo many times himself in recent years, what I was getting at:
Should experimentation take the live stage or go back to the garage?
Related article:
JAPAN MAKES HISTORY WITH LONGEST CONCERT EVER by Lexi Feinberg
What fun would a Saturday morning be without a new Guinness World Record winner?
This time it’s Japan that can take a bow: Over 900 Japanese musicians ranging from ages 6 to 89 took turns playing continuously over nine days, for a record-breaking 184-hour concert. If that’s not impressive enough, they kept on going right through fatigue and a major earthquake–a 6.9 whopper, to be exact.
According to Yahoo! Music, the program spanned a variety of music from the Beatles’ classics to traditional harp tunes. The previous record was held by Canada since 2002, and that one clocked in at 182 hours. A representative from the Guinness Book certified the new champion on 10 a.m., saying, “The longest concert by multiple artists was achieved by Kuniko Teramura and friends at Toriimoto Station … from 23-31 March 2007.”
To qualify for the prize, the musicians were not allowed to take breaks and could not stop playing less than two minutes into the song, says Hiroshi Mizutani, who was fondling the piano right through the earthquake. Good times.
And now, news from the Slowest Concert ever!:
What a good lookin’ guy!
“The John Cage Organ Project began performing the experimental U.S. composer’s piece Organ2/ASLSP (or As SLow aS Possible) on Sept. 5, 2001 — which would have been Cage’s 89th birthday. The piece is being performed in the abandoned Buchardi church in the German city of Halberstadt, about 60 kilometres southeast of Hannover. The recital is scheduled to last until 2639.” (cbc.ca, 2006)
Here’s the current timeline:
1992
John Cage dies in New York.
5 September 2001
The 89th birthday of John Cage marks the beginning of the performance. The first organ that is build for the consequent performance of a composition and that will blow all so far known temporally dimensions and therewith also sound dimensions. It is connected with the intention of optimism, someone´s spirits and idealism which is equal to the creator of the big cathedrals.
5 February 2003
the first sound
5 July 2004
the first change of tone
2639
the finale of the performance
I have one more question for you:
Will the World outlast the actual performance of As Slow As Possible?
God only knows.
http://www.john-cage.halberstadt.de
Onstage experimentation is fine provided those doing the experimenting are qualified. For some bands the message should be Only try this at home.
Great point, meanstom!
So what did those of you at this show or others on their recent tour think? I’ve only got that EP album by them, which I like and which steers away from those sea shanty numbers. Whenever I’ve seen clips of them live I’m surprised at how visceral and raw they are. I get the sense I’d like it, at least for the songs I know and like. Do any fans of the band miss hearing the studio finesse of their records?
As for onstage experimentation, I’m a longtime believer in my bandmate Andyr’s now-apocryphal dictum: “I don’t mind jamming as long as it’s planned out.”
Mr. Mod sez: Do any fans of the band miss hearing the studio finesse of their records? I know Matthew will back me up on this when I emphatically say “yes!” I wasn’t expecting the live set that they played at all, and it was the first time that I’ve seen them play, so I was pretty excited to see them live and hear some of the songs that I’d been digging. But their live show was really different from their studio sound. Great description, very apt when you said “visceral and raw”. I wouldn’t necessarily say in a bad way – because it was interesting and good, but they should definitely mix in more of their studio sound with some of their more… inventive numbers. Whether that’s selling out or not, (playing to partially please an audience) I have no clue. Thoughts? Btw: I’m all for experimentation – sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t – but how far do you push that envelope before you actually start driving away your audience?
I’ve been a fan of theirs for about 4 years now and have seen them play 7 times. Although I love most of their records, they’ve always disappointed me as a live band due to their sheer insistence on playing their songs completely differently than the studio arrangements regardless of whether or not it works or not. On one hand I admire their sense of risk and experimentation and it’s initially thrilling not knowing what to expect, but after a while it gets tiresome and I do in fact miss the finesse (relatively speaking) of the studio records.
The other night, they played for almost 2 hours (!), but it felt more like 4 partially because it was really late on a weeknight but also because they tried to play their songs as fast as possible instead of allowing the melodies to breathe a little in the arrangements. I don’t know if they deliberately try to screw up their songs, but sometimes it really sounds like it and it’s frustrating as a fan.
I love the EP record, listenened to it constantly. I found Blueberry Boat entirely offputting. I have wondered what makes my reaction to these so different because, on the most obvious level of arrangements and musical approach, they seem very similar, but the magnetism of the EP, the way it draws the listener along from song to song, working up to emotional heights like “Sing to Me”, a fantastical genre exercise that they somehow invest with a feeling of authenticity, is nearly the opposite of the willfully disconcerting BB transitions.
I’ve only seen them twice, this show and the TLA show a few months back. The two concerts were as different as those two records for me, but I lked each show in its own way. First off, I went to the TLA having no idea what to expect. I didn’t know if they would use sequencers to approximate their synth-pop sound or have an army musicians to play the many interlocking parts. I was stunned to see basically a power trio, with Matt somehow reducing hit multiphonic synthetic symphonies to a raging single electric guitar with dums and bass. It was a new way to hear the songs and, for me, a very successful approach. I’ll agree with Matt that none of the songs really matched the original studio constructions, but that seemed entirely beside the point. The guitar versions worked, and in a completely different way that revealed oodles about what was the essential kernel in their best tunes.
This show was a more accurate representation of the sound of the recordings, but less inviting than the trio version. They had a drummer, a percussionist, a guitarist that sometime filled in on bass lines with an octave divider, and Matt played keyboard. The inclusion of the keyboard in and of itself made this show “sound” like the records. But while the previous show hewed closely to the songs as originally written, this show involved many wholesale rewrites of the material with revisions to…well pretty much everything. But it’s not as if they were jamming; the band had a turn on a dime precision that WAS exhausting to watch. The constant action particularly from the hyperactive percussion guy, the long set and the late hour conspired to make things more impressive than enjoyable. I went to the show with someone that described it as “Excruciating.” On the other hand, I really appreciated their ability, their devotion to the live performance to come up with endless, complex reworkings of the material and execute them so well.