Recently, James Taylor’s “Shower the People” is being used for some commercial. Back in the 70’s, he performed this on SNL. Instead of having backup singers, a reel-to-reel tape player was sitting on the stage and would “sing” the backing vocals. Anybody remember this?
Better yet, anybody remember why this was done?
I remember the SNL appearance, and before that seeing him do it in concert. Teac tape deck on stage with its own spotlight. It started and stopped on the choruses (i.e. wasn’t running through the whole song), presumably manually activated by a crew member with a wired remote (there were no infrared remotes back then, children).
I never heard any authoritative reason why he did it. My best guess then and now: because they could. Showing off. I was pretty impressed with the precision.
Another reason might be that Carly Simon (one of my favorite singers) is doing the background singing and as we all know she suffers from debilitating stage fright. Therefore, James Taylor must have figured that a tape recorder would be less susceptible to stage fright. (but not as pleasant to look at as Ms Simon).
One thing that I’ve always wondered is how they managed to get that recorder to play exactly “in sync” with James Taylor. If you have never attempted something like this, get 2 recordings of the same song (CD & tape for example). Play the CD and have the tape cued up for the chorus. Pretty hard to get it right isn’t it?
My unsubstantiated guess is that the tape recorder was just a prop; the backup vocals were not coming from that tape. As others have pointed out, it is very hard to start and stop a tape like that to cue up with a live performance. I suspect that the real backup vocals tape was running — continuously, not start and stop — elsewhere offstage.
If they put the real tape player onstage, running continuously, people would just think it was recording the performance, and not get that it was supposed to represent Carly’s presence.
I have no reason to think it was fake. Why bother? The sync would not be so hard to accomplish: it could have been cued up by use of metal foil on the tape that would stop the machine at exactly the right place.
I also seem to recall noticing in concert that there were very slight variations in when the chorus came in, and thinking that therefore it must be really coming from the tape.
I never heard or thought that it was Carly singing on the tape. It might have been, but I hadn’t heard that.
BTW, did you notice that on the commercial they actively de-emphasize (in the mix, I think) the word “the” (after “shower” and “show them”) that Taylor for some reason sang as “thee.” I always found that pronunciation inexplicable and annoying.
I forgot to mention: The reason they wouldn’t have done that is that there was nothing else on the track, no rhythm or other instruments. Without something else to play against during the verse, the band could easily have gotten too far off the beat, and then the chorus would have been really off.
I suppose they could have had a click track that only played through the monitors. But then the band and the tape would have had to start at exactly the same moment.
I think the tape worked just as it appeared, starting and stopping in the chorus. And if it was Carly on the tape (although they certainly never mentioned it during the show) that would explain why they didn’t just use backup singers. Otherwise it was just 1970s high-tech showing off. IMHO.
I remember that episode well, and always thought it was for two reasons:
When I saw JT perform Shower The People he introduced the reel to reel with a name, but I can’t remember the name
We’ve been waiting 20 years for you to weigh in, GNM.
(welcome!)
mmm