I too remember the days where even if the crowd chanted for an encore, they weren’t necessarily going to get one. When I’ve seen the Melvins, the crowd had to work for the encore, and wasn’t always successful. The expected encore is mostly a development of the last 20 years, and it always isn’t universal. Great bands usually give their all from the first song on. When they’re done, they’re usually done.
Yeah, the man is a machine of pure rock. Even when he was young, asking more from him than his regular set is just abuse.
I’ve been to a few shows as well that bumped up against hard curfews and didn’t (or couldn’t) play an encore.
I once saw Dead Can Dance who for unknown reason didn’t play an encore, the lights immediately came up at their last song. It seemed planned so I always thought it was a venue curfew thing.
The mandatory encore is a tradition i’d be happy to see go away.
Just saw Titus Andronicus this weekend and they didn’t do an encore. Though i thought for sure they were gonna play one cause they brought out Craig Finn (in Minneapolis no less) to sing with them and closed out the show with 3 covers. It was awesome but i didn’t think they’d close out the show with three covers. (Bastards of young, I’m wating for my man, Stuck between stations).
Isn’t this one pretty obvious? It’s a piece with a beginning, a middle and an end. It would have been really incongruous to throw in something else after the (spectacular) conclusion. And there was the whole “Outside the Wall” at the end, where everyone in the band was introduced.
Of course, one of the times I saw it, this included introducing David Gilmour and Nick Mason
I saw Chuck Berry in the mid-1970s. At first, he threatened not to play because the amplifier that was contractually supplied for him was one model number out. Apparently, the exact amp couldn’t be had and the best they could get was the following version which was virtually identical. He finally “graciously” consented to play, and gave his usual entertaining high-energy show–for 35 minutes. On the last note of the last song, he wheeled around and walked off the stage. No good-bye, no thank you, nuthin’. A few days later, I saw in the newspaper that he threw a fit at a club in Houston after being heckled. Something must have been going on his life at the time.
I saw The Beatles in August 1965. They did a dozen or so songs, then were hustled off the field. No encore. I couldn’t have cared less- it was wonderful to see and hear them at all.
Rollins Band, Bumbershoot, probably in the 90’s, near the end of his set he says something like “this is the part of the show where we are supposed to pretend we are leaving and you pretend you believe it but instead we are just going to play an extra song instead” and they kept on rockin. No actual encore.
Also Bumbershoot, this time it was Zero 7 who had packed along Sia and Jose Gonzalez (they sang on some of the Zero 7 tracks) at the end of the Show when they came out for an encore Sia is wearing jeans and a t-shirt, it seems she was unaware of the whole fake encore thing and was already changed out of her outfit she had been wearing for the concert.
For much of the time its a bathroom break for at least one person in the band.
I’ve seen two shows where that happened: One was Penguin Cafe Orchestra (think they repeated Music From a Found Harmonium, Or maybe The Ecstasy of Dancing Fleas?) Clearly and hilariously unprepared for an encore.
Other time was a Gentle Giant show, These guys weren’t expecting anything like the reception they got in Santa Barbara, ended up playing In the Midnight Hour. Definitely a refreshing stylistic departure.
In Monty Python’s late-70s live show (performed in NYC and later filmed at the Hollywood Bowl), the projected flashing words PISS OFF would appear when the audience began clapping for an encore.
Just this weekend, jazz trombonist Robin Eubanks and his Mass Line Big Band played in Oberlin. Good concert, but from the speed at which they left the stage after the last song, and the house lights coming immediately up, it was clear that we were not in for an encore.
I saw the Foos at Wrigley Field this summer and they didn’t do an encore…same deal I think where there’s a ordinance that says they had to stop playing at a certain time, and they played up to that time and stopped.
It’s happened twice to me, and for the same reason. With Boston and KISS.
In both cases, the bands were playing in outdoor arenas, in areas that had curfews. As it reached 10:30, both bands told the crowd,“Since we have to end the show soon, what say we skip the part where we pretend to leave the stage and just do our encore songs now?”
In '79 saw XTC at the acoustically amazing Farquhar Centre at the University of Victoria, and no encore - hopefully nothing related to Andy Partridge’s stage fright issues (which overcame him a couple years later and never played live again) (there’s a short youtube video of him in the middle of a song walking offstage in Paris, for good - a sad day in music history)
In 84 if I recall correctly King Crimson went disappointingly encoreless at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, but they sure opened up cool, one at a time, like how the Talking Heads were doing then.
