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The following article was published in the March '99 issue of Musician Magazine.
The Awful Truth About Live Recording
by Reverend Billy C. Wirtz
I love listening to live albums. Such classics as James Brown Live at the Apollo or Jerry Lee Lewis at the Star Club are nothing less than defining moments in popular music. But as a performer, I'd rather have my teeth cleaned by a perky hygienist while listening to a Muzak rendition of "I Blelieve I Can Fly" than record a live album. Ice storms, P.A. meltdowns, throwaway tunes the producers insist on using, tape machines with mysterious hums, fights among audience members, air conditioners cutting on without warning: Anything can happen while it's costing you - or, worse yet, your record label - five hundred bucks an hour.
Which means, of course, that being on the edge of nervous hysteria, the sudden appearance of bizarre rashes, and gastrointestinal distress are all facts of life in any live recording situation. Fortunately, there are a few adjustments you can make to keep things from getting worse:
Plan on recording at least two shows. Don't even think of trying to get it all in one take, on one show, in one night. If you can afford it, try to record at least two complete shows, on two different nights.
Pick a good time of the year. Check to see if any big events will conflict with your session - a football game, a state fair, a Jehovah's Witness convention. Try to record in the early spring: Rain is okay, but snow keeps people at home, and mid-summer heat makes for a restless, uncomfortable crowd.
Plan your songs. Practice your solos, and if possible, time them. Virtually every artist who has ever recorded a live album complains about a lost solo, or a great song that didn't get recorded because the engineer was changing tapes, or a bad mic cord, or a sudden outburst by an audience member. (More about this in a minute).
Control your crowd. A good performance + an enthusiastic crowd = a great recording that needs only minimal edits. A good performance + an enthusiastic crowd + one intoxicated friend of the club owner yelling "Let's Get Drunk And Screw!" between every song and standing next to the audience mic going "Woooooo!" during your best solos = lots of time-consuming, costly edits in post-production.
Make sure you have a designated peacekeeper; unless you know the club real well, bring your own. They don't have to look like Goldberg's little brother, as long as they can be polite and quietly assertive when needed. If you do have to use them, have a prearranged signal, such as "Hey, buy that man another one!," instead of the more crowd-provoking, mood-squelching "Would somebody please shut up this ignorant spawn of Satan before I shove my Kurzweil up his ..."
Create an atmosphere. Make the room as dark as possible, and keep the temperature at no more than 72 degrees. This advice was given to me by an old club owner, and it never fails to help focus a crowd. And finally ...
The Universal Rule of Live Shows. Never play any song or say anything that you don't want to end up somewhere, sometime, on an album. Just ask Chuck Berry, who thought the tape was off, decided to kill some time at a gig, and as a result became known to an entire generation as the man responsible for "My Ding-A-Ling."
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