Aisle 34 and 3/4

Aisle 34 and 3/4: The Bargin Music Bin

Last Friday I finally saw Gogol Bordello, quite possibly one of my favorite bands ever. Very great band, great stage presence, great music, bad mics. I mean the mics kept cutting out on the band it was total shite.

Everytime I go to a concert I look at it from a sound designer's point of view, despite the fact I am a novice at sound design. Stll, I listen to the house's mix, think up ways to improve the vocals and overall sound of the show, and I am a bastard when it comes to the house music they play inbetween bands. Honestly I think many places don't even put half a thought into the music they play. None of it goes with the present bands nor does the music go with itself. I'm all for contrasting musical choices to shake things up in a line up but having a pop R&B song following a punk song and right before an old jazz standard makes NO sense.

Music has a flow to it that you must acknowledge when creating background music to fill in space between acts. You don't want anything to be too over whelming or risk having the music over power the show (which is a rarity I'm sure). You want to have the music just on the back of the audience's minds. It serves as a link between the acts and as a nice way to spark conversation between the socially inept. For example you throw in a song everyone knows, a song that people almost always here and respond well to. Such a song would be Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes. You put that on and you'll have people singing along with it, recanting stories of when the heard the song, what movies it's been in, how fucking awesome Gross Point Blank was. It's an easy choice.

I tell you, house music is greatly underapreciated.