For me:
Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung”. Great on the record. But I’ve seen them 15 times over the years (starting 1977) and it’s always sucked the bone. I’ve even heard bootlegs of the Aqualung tour and it was pretty shitty then too. Just not meant to be played live.
Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Large parts of the song on the album are Freddie Mercury’s voice recorded multiple times to give the illusion of an operatic chorus. There’s no way to do this live without a large, live choral group. When I saw Queen live, they turned out the lights during the chorus parts and played the recording instead. What a copout!
Just about anything by CSN (&Y) or the Beach Boys. Those harmonies usually just exist in the studio.
Silenus
Especially “Good Vibrations”. That song is definitely a studio creation and nearly impossible to create in a live performance.
I recently heard a live version of Manfred Mann’s “Blinded By the Light”.
Not so good.
Someday before I die, I want to go to a performance of Rhapsody in Blue with the original arrangement. The a cappella version was interesting, and string-quintet-and-trumpet just doesn’t cut it. I want it done by a small jazz ensemble and solo piano, with musicians who have got the chops for it.
I ought to have added in my OP that I also get irked when a band decides to change the key of a song when performing it live. To me that’s no longer the song and it invariably makes it suck. Tull, the Stones, Madonna, and many others are guilty of this. Shit if it’s so hard to sing it, record the damn thing in a comfortable key in the first place. Don’t tease me!
Basically any song that relies on studio work for one of two reasons - to either build in dynamics or to enable precision. In terms of dynamics - songs like “Heroes” by David Bowie or “1979” by the Smashing Pumpkins (“and weeee don’t even care - as restless as we are…”) are both 100% reliant on layering in the studio. When my band tried to play these two pretty-simple songs, they came out as monotonous, with none of the tension and grandeur the song evokes - especially Heroes a personal fave. If you don’t have, like, 20 instruments that can add layers as the song builds, it isn’t going to work.
In terms of precision - posters have cited vocal arrangements and harmonies, both of which I agree with. Having said that, sometimes it is just the vocal - some “singers” really can’t sing and only can hit it in the studio - when they’ve had countless tries and finally got lucky. I remember hearing the Thompson Twins live - who ever decided that guy could sing? There are plenty of others - Madonna at first, but she has had extensive training and can now hit her notes. Paula Abdul, JLo, lots of others…
“Under My Thumb” by the Rolling Stones. The studio version has that great marimba line and a subtle touch throughout; replacing with a loud bass line, and a slambang feel generally, in concert just does not cut it.
I’m a big time Doors fan, and have seen the two most prominent cover bands around here, Strange Daze and Wild Child, and in neither band did the guitarist have the Robbie Krieger technique down. Krieger never used a pick in those days, allowing him to use pretty much equally all fingers of his right hand and contributing to his signature sound. But both guitarists in the cover bands did use picks, significantly hampering their ability to get the desired effect.
Saw Joe Walsh live several years ago. Overall, a great show, but his classic “Life’s been good” did not play well live. On the recording he uses, IIRC, four different guitars, consecutive, not concurrent, most noticably during the guitar solo bridge section. The loss of tone change live really dimished the song.
For a band with sufficient resources there’s simply no excuse for this anymore (not picking on you, WordMan).
Example: During the 1970s and 1980s Rush formed the habit that, as a three piece band, any song they recorded MUST be able to be played by the three of them onstage without help. They gave themselves one song per album to violate the rule and go wild but with the thought that such wouldn’t be a part of the stage act.
Well and good.
Well, with the advances in technology (sequencers and the like) suddenly they discovered that ANYTHING they could record could be performed live. So the rule got tossed because it no longer applied.
But I’ve always felt it was a good rule.
I came in here to specifically mention Bohemian Rhapsody. Why they ever even attempted it is beyond me.
I understand they did a physically exhusting show and needed a chance to rest, but that’s why Freddie did the five minute call and response bit and Brian had the fifteen minute guitar solo in Brighton Rock.
No worries - we certainly aren’t a “band with sufficient resources”
I think your example makes sense. I am inclined to agree and agree that with sampling and synthesizer tech where it is, most anything can be shunted off into a synth line and set up to be played live. My biggest concerns about this are:
when a critical component of the song - the main riff for example - is performed this way. It ruins it for me when a band is playing but the hook just hovers above them with no physical connection to a player.
when the additional layers are SO thick that, again, the “processed cheese food” content far outweighs the “natural” ingredients and we are seeing a “live studio performance” for all intents and purposes, if you get me here…
Finally, another thing that bugs me: Songs that are perfectly, note-for-note rendered live. Ever heard the Cars live? Or hear Ozzy’s live album “Tribute”? They sould EXACTLY like the studio tracks with an audience dubbed in - no variation, no spontenaity, no slop (I love slop - little mistakes that show a musician is reaching for something). Frankly sometimes I think I hate a perfect performance MORE than a weak attempt of a song best left in the studio…at least there’s humanity in the weak attempt (for the ones I am thinking of…)
Well, I agree there, too. And to bring Rush into it again they were often criticized for being so perfectionist that they wanted to make the live songs identical to the studio versions.
They loosened up in the latter half of the 1980s with extending songs, changing words around, and introducing improvisational sections. And that’s a good thing.
I liked Blink-182. ducks
Everything I’ve heard of theirs live sucks; other than the drummer they’re really not very good with their instruments, and neither of them can sing in key.
Robot Arm, you’ve probably heard them and probably have them. But just in case (and my apologies if this is a hijack) . . . .
There are two disc recordings of Rhapsody in Blue with Gershwin playing the piano, along with a piano roll he cut, that you can hear with RealPlayer on this page.
The 1924 disc version (there could be no live recording, alas) likely would be the original orchestration, seeing as Paul Whiteman commissioned Gershwin to write it in 1923. For what it’s worth, the 1927 version, orchestrated by Ferde Grofé, is electrically recorded, at least — and despite being on a 78 RPM record plays for nine minutes. (And the enjoyment of hearing Gershwin’s 1924 piano-roll version isn’t mitigated by the disc-recording state of the art of 81 years ago.)
That page, along with other Rhapsody in Blues (Rhapsodies in Blue?) also has a two-minute, 29-second andante from Rhapsody, played by Gershwin, recorded in 1928.
The original, 1924 clarinetist was Ross Gorman, who, another page says:
[QUOTE]
. . . rose to prominence in Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra and is probably best remembered today for his original playing of the opening clarinet solo in George Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue. Here we find him only five years before that classic moment in American music, with his own band making dog sounds on his clarinet in song Barkin’ Dog.[/QOTE]
(The recordings site’s use of RealPlayer may be a problem for anyone running OS X. RealPlayer demands an older codec that appears to be unobtainable. The older, Mac Classic RealPlayer functions, however.)
With all due respect to Tull, Ian Anderson’s voice aged rapidly and badly…their early live stuff is true to key, but he just couldn’t hit those notes anymore after '75 or so.
Other serious sufferers of this were Billy Joel and Elton John.
My wife did theater and had a lot of vocal training, and she tells me she can clearly hear from the manner that they sing that they would never be able to sustain vocal health very long without permanent damage. If they’d had a decent vocal coach and took care with their training, they’d still be able to belt out the notes of their youth.
Thanks, Foam. I’ve heard part of the piano-roll version, and I’m very happy that there is some record of Gershwin’s own playing. My favorite recording of Rhapsody in Blue is a Telarc recording of the Cincinati Pops playing from the original arrangement used at the 1924 premiere. (Gershwin made a small change, took out eight measures I think, after that first performance.)
From the liner notes of that disk is a great story. Gershwin only had about five weeks to compose the piece and rehearse the band. Originally, the clarinet opening was supposed to be played in conventional, orchestral style. But during one of the marathon rehearsals everyone was getting tired, and when they started over the clarinetist did that jazzy slide glissando. Gershwin knew a good thing when he heard it. It’s been done that way ever since.
I visited the Library of Congress about six or seven years ago. Downstairs was a small room with a collection of artifacts from the Gershwins. There was a hand-written score of Rhapsody in Blue, opened to the first page.
The string-quintet-and-trumpet performance was in Prague. The players were all technically fantastic, but they must have been playing Bach and Beethoven their whole lives and just couldn’t loosen up enough to do justice to a piece with its origins in jazz. It would have been a better concert if they’d all had a couple of beers beforehand.
And at the opening of the 1984 olympics, they did a version with a huge orchestra and something like 50 pianos. Guys, this is a brilliant piece of music, the quintessential sound of early 20th-century, big-city America. It recalls a certain era in an epic way, but it can’t be played as an epic! Keep the ensemble small. Get musicians who can hit every note and every beat, but know when not to. There’s a blend of technique and flair that makes that music come alive.
I want to hear it that way, live, just once before I die.
(Think it’s too soon to start campaigning for a 100th anniversary performance, from the original score at the original site?)
Well, The Clash never did get “Rock the Casbah” right when they played it on stage…
But almost every other song they played on stage sounded better live than it did in the studio. They were a band that really were “reaching for something” (as **WordMan ** put it) when they played live.
Now, maybe their on-stage style would have upset BwanaBob, because they also significanly changed the arrangements of their songs when they played them live. (I’ve 40+ Clash bootlegs, so I know whence I speak.)
Also, I’ll second the posters in this thread who lament bands that try to meticulously re-create studio versions on stage.
I saw the Pretenders live about two years ago, and if I closed my eyes at that show, I could easily imagine myself at home listening to their songs on CD.
Where’s the fun in that?
I think it’s too late. I can find practically nothing about The Aeolion on Google — not even its address, so it probably was torn down decades ago (but I know nothing of New York).