Before concerts often there will be a song mix playing over the speakers. This is most often old and semi-obscure songs from whatever genre the band playing will be, but so far they have managed to avoid actual songs from the bands on the upcoming concert.
So who creates these mixes? I assume it isn’t the house because that’s too much work. So, am I correct in assuming it is someone with the band retinue who creates these?
I believe the band’s sound guy normally plays the pre-show mix.
I once spent an unfortunate 90 minutes at the Park West in Chicago waiting on a Jenny Lewis show to start and listening to the same 20 minute loop of sitar music over and over. I don’t know who was responsible for that but I hope he fell into a deep hole soon after.
At the vast majority of concerts I’ve been to, they’ve just popped in an album of an artist in the same or a similar sub-genre. More recently I’ve noticed it more of a mix, but I just presumed it was the sound check guy who put in a fairly generic playlist on shuffle.
For a funny story, I do remember one time when I went to see Type-O Negative they played the same obnoxious circus song over and over for the like 30 minutes between the last openner and them. My friend and I were actually laughing about it because of how annoying it was and that, in line with their well known sense of humor, they would deliberately annoy their fans right before the show.
Back in the old days at Winterland, the pre-show music was usually a mix of the latest FM rock hits. They would almost always play either "Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’ or “Won’t Get Fooled Again” right before the main act hit the stage.
At a Gogol Bordello concert in Columbus, Ohio, the “opening act” was 45 or 60 minutes of a DJ. We were not a happy crowd.
Fortunately, they broke this rule before the Ke$ha concert I went to last summer (the best concert I’ve ever been to). One of the songs they played before the show was Flo Rida’s “Right Round,” which has Kesha singing the chorus in an uncredited role.
Couldn’t speak to other bands but I know that the three members of Rush make the mix themselves.
Funny story… I once saw The Moody Blues in concert and it was a great show. The weird part was that they took an intermission about mid-way through (old guys gotta rest, I guess) and during the break, the PA played their newest album and we were sitting there saying “This song sounds really familiar… I think we just heard it live 15 minutes ago.”
A friend of mine does live sound for the Pet Shop Boys, and that’s how I know that their pre-concert music is specially recorded and mixed for that purpose by Neil Tennant himself.
I was actually going to mention Rush concerts. I swear I remember hearing AC/DC and some other equally irrelevant music before their show in Dayton. Mr. Big was opening for them, so I guess there was no accounting for taste on that tour.
I wonder if they ever have Yes and King Crimson playing before shows?
From my experiance, I would guess Satan.
Usually the band’s sound guy. At a recent Ben Kweller show in Denver the house music was all Austin artists. Phish plays Talking Heads and LCD Soundsytem, heard both a few times last year. I love paying attention to house music.
Also, DJ openers are standard at lots of mid level shows, that’s why you don’t show up right at door.
Back in the mid 90s when the Smashing Pumpkins were touring basketball arenas for the Mellon Collie album, they played the London Sinfonietta’s version of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) between the opening act and the recording of the song Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness which opened their set. Pretty sure that’s the only pre-concert work that I hadn’t heard before that I actually went out and bought.
Another Smashing Pumpkins show I went to (Queens of the Stone Age/Pumpkins) My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless was played on shuffle with something else… if there is one timeless rock album that sucks in shuffle mode, it’s Loveless.