Hey,
I've been discussing the issue of live recordings with a lot of Indie artists lately. It's hard work, and I think a lot of the resistance I get on the issue is just that.
What Indie bands and artists don't realize IMHO, is that the internet has created a 'pulish or perish' environment. Of course it's always been that way, I mean, in the old days, if you had no vinyl, you had nothing except live gigs and things weren't that bad. But we have certainly walked through many different stages of that equation.
20 years ago, If you had no 'album' to sell, all you had was live gigs, and maybe that was enough.
10 years ago, you better have a CD, you aren't gonna make it on live gigs alone, because you probably won't get many with a 'cassette' tape.
Now, with the internet, your fans are always hungry for more and they are constantly in your face on your website, in the forums or the blogs.
I believe that bands and artists who establish a regular routine of recording each and every live gig and simply smacking that onto a CD, and having the ability to burn CD's at the gig with a laptop and sell them for $5.00 apiece is the way to go.
And let me clarify here.
A band BEGINS by scrambling to record every live gig as a minimum taking the stereo right and left out of the soundboard, and burning that to CD in whatever form they can get it in and selling it at the bar for $5.00 per copy, and it's really a novelty item ... people can say ... hey check it out, I bought a CD of the gig 'Band Brand A' did at 'Upchuckems Bar' in Houston last weekend, it's got two really totally cool songs on it ... and such and such yells to 'Band member C' that they wanna fuck 'em ... it's hilarious ...
As a band or artist works diligently to improve and upgrade their live recording capabilities, the CD's they sell at the gigs get better. Their live performances improve as a result of having to do good shows, to get live recordings.
And there is an example of a young band doing this right now, and a label saw them working hard and signed them, before they could really go anywhere with this scheme.
This idea scares the SHIT out of labels. Because the gear is available to do an excellent job.
For instance, check out
http://www.echoaudio.com and look at their 'Laptop Layla', 8 +4db level ins and outs, and you can use two at the same time on a laptop, that 16 tracks. With an external 80GB USB 2.0 drive ... yer in
the fast lane ...
Sure, it's not easy, it's hard word, but the bands who do that will CONSTANTLY have new MP3's up on their sites of EXCITING live gigs, they will not be denied and they will have constant entertainment for thier fans ... and they will be the winners.
Publish, or perish.
Just think of how good you can be at recording your live gigs, after you have recorded 50 live gigs. You get pretty damn good at it.
The Greatful dead got famous doing this with crappy bootleg tapes.
With the 'Laptop Layla' you just hand the club's soundman 8 outputs labeled and say ... here ya go, all balanced, all 4db ... makes his job easy.
And you get a repuatation with club soundmen, for being an easy band to work with.
And any soundman who can't take 8 to 16 chords all nicely balanced at 4db and plug them into his board without a problem is an idiot ... and you will run into them.
I think a soundman with a laptop, a 'Laptop Layla', the Cables and a good externall drive could make good money in a town with lots of live gigging.
I write Cakewalk Automation Language code, and I know in SONAR I could develop some really nice things to cut the songs out of the huge wav files that develop from a live gig, I mean, if you get $1.00 for each CD the band sells while on tour of the live gigs you record and prep for them ... that could be very nice at the end of a tour.
And you can make MP3's, and automate the whole damn process, and sell the MP3's online for fifty cents a download ... and you get a dime ... or whatever.
But the whole point is that I think bands and artists MUST record all of their live gigs, and sometimes you get that magic, but you'll never get it if you don't do it, practice, and get good with it.
I'm D/L'ing your file now.
