An insane audiophile of my acquaintance recently remarked (in a locked LiveJournal, otherwise I’d link to it) that while live classical music is clearly superior to recorded classical music, it’s crazy to go to a live performance of pop music because “you’re not hearing actual instruments/voices, you’re hearing them miked and amplified through speakers just like you would at home,” and if speakers are going to be involved, you might as well not be there. This is space-alien logic, of course, but not all that far out there as insane audiophilia goes. Remember, kids, friends don’t let friends read obsessive stereo geek magazines.
I pointed out there, as I’ve said before, that the attraction of live pop music is not the sound quality, but the spontaneity and improvisation that you get in a live setting. Good live acts rarely sound like thier studio albums, and most of them will either re-invent their own songs live, or play some cover songs that you won’t find anywhere else.
It occurs to me, though, that I could perfectly well turn that around, and make it an argument against live classical music. After all, nobody ever came back from a symphony concert saying “Dude, you should’ve been there– they totally re-did the Third Concerto as a waltz! It was amazing!” When you go to a classical concert, you know exactly what they’re going to play in advance, and you know more or less what it’s going to sound like. So, why should I want to get dressed up and spend a couple of hours sitting silently in uncomfortable concert-hall seats to listen to an orchestra working really hard to faithfully reproduce exactly the sounds written down on the sheet music? Why wouldn’t it be better to just buy the very best recording of the very best orchestra with the very best conductor, and listen to that in the comfort of my own home?
It’s a dumb argument, of course, but it’s dumb in exactly the same way that “Going to pop concerts is crazy because they use microphoes and speakers” is. In fact, they’re essentially the same argument– not in any of the details, but in the crucial implied clause: Both of them are, at bottom, “It’s dumb to go to live performances of music I don’t like.”
And, of course, in that light, both arguments are correct. My audiophile friend shouldn’t go to pop concerts, and I shouldn’t go to classical concerts, but the reason has nothing to do with the sound quality or the preserved-under-glass nature of the performance. We shouldn’t go to those concerts because we don’t like that type of music.
After all, the theater where we just saw Richard Thompson play often hosts classical concerts, and features exactly the same sort of uncomfortable concert-hall seats that I complained about it my anti-classical argument. If I had been dragged there to listen to some string quartet, I’d probably bitch about the seating, but I’ll happily go there to hear Richard Thompson, or John Hiatt, or the Subdudes (to name three acts I’ve seen at the Egg). The difference is, I enjoy those performances enough that I don’t think about the seats, but classical music doesn’t really do it for me, and I’m left with free time to think about things that bug me.
I’m perfectly capable of coming up with reasons why pop concerts are superior to classical ones, but they’re all essentially reverse-engineered arguments. I like pop music, and don’t really like classical music, and with that as a starting point, it’s easy to generate lists of things I like about pop concerts and things I don’t like about classical concerts. It would be a mistake, though, to think that this constitutes an argument that ought to apply to anybody else.