LIVE MUSIC LIVES ON — MAYA WALLIS
LIVE MUSIC CONNECTS PEOPLE – IT DOESN'T MATTER
WHAT AGE, HEIGHT, CRAZY DANCING LADY YOU MIGHT BE
The age of vinyl and cd’s are slowly
coming to an end as iTunes and
downloading music is on its way to victory.
But live music still holds its head high, it
still kicks ass, and it still remains the true
victor. Yeah, a band can record a couple of
songs and write a few hit singles but
without the ability to perform live they are
nothing. I recently saw Richard Ashcroft
perform at Latitude 2013 festival. There
alone on a stage with nothing but an
acoustic guitar, a microphone, and a single
spotlight he managed to command an
audience into a state of awe. His
performance of songs like ‘Bittersweet
Symphony’ and ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’
was enough to make the crying toddler
behind me fall silent and watch in wonder
with the amount of emotion he put into
every word of every song. But what really
got to me, what really made me re-think
the importance of live music was the
mistakes he made. Richard Ashcroft, lead
singer of The Verve, made mistakes. But
after he made these mistakes he
apologised and said something along the
lines of ‘Well that is what makes live music
so powerful, it is human beings performing
on a stage, and the mistakes we make take
us down from that pedestal and make music
seem real’. Now I am not sure if that was a
drunken ramble or something that actually
came from the heart but it got me thinking
why live music will never die. Live music
adds the human feel too music, it makes it
relatable, makes music raw and imperfect
and it makes it seem real. And that is the
way all music should be.