These folks are going to cost me lots of money!

“The ability to live with contradiction is a sign of maturity.”
–Michelle Shocked, Aug. 26, 2007







I’ve always found recordings of live performances overrated. Even the best of men (or women) behind the mixing board can only perfect the levels in hindsight. And the vocals are either too loud or not loud enough, both versions invariably garbled. Harmonies and rhythms get lost in the transmission. The live performances themselves, on the other hand, are what phonophiliacs live for. They make surround sound seem like the poor substitute that it is, void of tangibility. Flaccid. And they remind us that music isn’t a lecture but a conversation. Musicians need an audience, just like we need them.

So was my thinking as I sat uncomfortably in the Boulder theater last Sunday stunned by the Charisma of the Avett Brothers and the rabid energy of Michelle Shocked. The Avett Brothers are exquisite performers brimming with effervescence and innocence, playfulness but precision. Their lyrics are simple but wise. Falsetto erratic harmonies filled the spaces between heavy banjo riffs not unlike those Pete Townsend would play given the chance. The brothers (and another) paid no mind to the broadcast audience…or all their special needs having not the chance to watch the music-body electric. They played to us—those who understand that music can only really be heard if it’s coming from musicians who speak to one another in time signatures and chords. Tuning in on FM, or AM or XM for that matter, just isn’t the same. Disembodied music is just that. Disembodied. It lacks a pulse.

Perhaps this is why I like etown, painful as it can be. It’s a rare moment to see musicians in their natural habitat. Unfiltered and porous, fermenting our affections and attentions until we are drunk on their vapors. No noisy couple standing next to you having a fight, no young and bouncing groupies shouting along, no beer-juice steeping its way into the canvas on your shoes, no long drive home. And still, I’d take all of these over pressing the button on my ipod and be all the better for it.