Last night I had the unfortunate opportunity to go to the Collin Raye concert at the Dee Events Center. Collin ain’t a bad singer, and I actually really like that one song, “if you get there before I do.” But I do have some beef to vent about the concert. The sound people sucked so bad that the concert was ruined. Several times Collin pointed to the guitarist showing us that he was soloing and about five long seconds into the solo the sound would start to crescendo until you could actually start to hear a guitar. Embarrassing. There was an awful sounding orchestra playing with the band compounded with horrible sound mixing and an awful feedback sound for the first half hour of the concert. I know that it is very hard for an orchestra to play along with a singer without having practiced together much but if the two groups can’t synchronize at all they should not be included in the program.
Okay so after all of this they played the rest of their songs and then ended the concert. An announcer then came onto the stage to announce the winner of a raffle they talked about earlier. People start leaving after the name is drawn and the announcer says “don’t leave yet, I think Collin should give us an encore, what do think?” This is followed by applause from the spectators that are still sitting around. Collin ends up playing two more songs, one of which is his big hit that I mentioned earlier. Why does every performer get to have an encore? I remember going to the Switchfoot concert at the USU Spectrum and experienced a similar situation. Switchfoot was a relatively new band and they had only two popular hit songs. They played the first popular song to open followed by a dozen boring songs. Most of the crowd sat in their seats bored to death. The concert ended and of course everybody started cheering and so they came back out and played their other popular song. Of course we all know they were planning on playing that song for their encore song. I hate that bands just plan on playing their big hit for their encore song, I don’t think that is what an encore should be and I don’t think every musical group is entitled to have an encore performance.
3 comments:
Switchfoot was fantastic. I had never been to a Christian Rock show and it really didn't disappoint. Collin Raye sounds like he didn't put up what he should have. I've never liked encores, except for 311 because I always felt like I was satisfied with the concert and the encore was just icing on the cake. They have so many great songs that you couldn't leave angry. I think that is the way things are supposed to be, but it doesn't always work out that way.
I have always had the opinion that a staged encore is kind of ridiculous. I've been to concerts where everyone wanted an encore and got denied. I've also been to concerts where the band came out for an encore and played some of the same songs they had already played in their set. I guess it depends on whether your really like the band or not. If it's 311 playing they could probably play the same five songs over and over and I would still be happy. I have seen Metallica play some pretty sweet encores also. If the band has enough songs that they can do an orignal encore with songs that everyone likes it probably wouldn't matter what they played. What I'm trying to say is if you don't want an encore why are you still at the concert to hear one?
An encore performance should be a song that is old and popular that you didn’t play in the concert, or give the audience a taste of a new song that you are currently working on that has not yet been released. Better yet, follow Elvis’ footsteps and don’t play encore performances and let your audience leave the building yearning for more.
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