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Thread: When bands play their songs faster in concert

  1. #26
    One thing I've really learned over the years is that it's hard- not impossible, but hard- to have a good band where one guy is the guy trying to keep the train on the tracks tempo-wise, be it the drummer, bass player or even the rare case where it's the guitar-player. When everyone, or at least the majority of the rhythm section, can lock in, you have a good thing. That's part of why Zep was so great back in the day, imho. You didn't have Jonesy and Bonham looking at each other going, dammit! Slow the f**k down! They just locked and Jimmy was generally not working aginst them either.

  2. #27
    Iron Maiden is another band that had a habit of playing the songs faster onstage. Compare the Live After Death version of Hallowed By Thy Name to the studio version. I never actually noticed it until I saw the Classic Albums show on Number Of The Beast, and Bruce talks about the tempos creeping up once they got onstage. And if you're trying to sing stuff like Hallowed..., and the rest of the band was moving at freight train pace, it's gonna be hard to get those words out, do it on key, in time with the rest of the band, and without passing out from oxygen deprivation.

  3. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by NogbadTheBad View Post
    Motorhead. Fucking brilliant live, much faster, No Sleep Til Hammersmith, definitive.
    Not only one of the best live metal albums of all time but one of the best live albums, all genres, of all time. And, as you may know, despite the title The Hammersmith Odeon was not played on their 1981 tour (Norfolk, Leeds, Newcastle, Belfast).

  4. #29
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    The 1st band that came to mind was Hawkwind. I love how they played super fast versions of Assault & Battery/Magnu/Master of the Universe/etc beginning in the late 80's with Friday Rock Show through the early 90's live albums like California Brainstorm
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  5. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarGeek View Post
    Iron Maiden is another band that had a habit of playing the songs faster onstage. Compare the Live After Death version of Hallowed By Thy Name to the studio version. I never actually noticed it until I saw the Classic Albums show on Number Of The Beast, and Bruce talks about the tempos creeping up once they got onstage. And if you're trying to sing stuff like Hallowed..., and the rest of the band was moving at freight train pace, it's gonna be hard to get those words out, do it on key, in time with the rest of the band, and without passing out from oxygen deprivation.
    I saw Maiden with Blaze once, and the songs felt the same as on album.

  6. #31
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    My favourite live recording by any rock act is The Rolling Stones' 'Brussels Affair', and my favourite live track by anyone is also from that, 'Midnight Rambler'. The tempo is hyper-speed in parts, but totally thrilling.

  7. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by WytchCrypt View Post
    The 1st band that came to mind was Hawkwind. I love how they played super fast versions of Assault & Battery/Magnu/Master of the Universe/etc beginning in the late 80's with Friday Rock Show through the early 90's live albums like California Brainstorm
    They were already speeding tempos up on Space Ritual. Compare Master Of The Universe on that album to it's studio incarnation.

  8. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by PeterG View Post
    I saw Maiden with Blaze once, and the songs felt the same as on album.
    The Blaze era was loooong after Live After Death.

  9. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by klothos View Post
    Depends if the band is locking-in and feeling it all at a certain tempo as a collective.....Sometimes, its the musicians themselves doing it - some nights 105 BPM for a song seems slower than the previous night at the same tempo (the variance comes from the preceding songs of the set so its just human error perception). Many times, its the drummer: I find that if a drummer can play on-the-beat with a fatbacked snare in tandem with a push bass player, this usually creates great energy and keeps tempos where they are supposed to be. On the other hand, a "push" drummer usually causes the whole band to go off-to-the-races and I have to work with double-effort to anchor the SOB (I'll wind up keeping time at that point). Then I'll get done with the show, Im way more tired than I should be (its even more of a slap in the face when the drummer gets all the praises from the band for being awesome and Im a sweaty mess thinking "WTF?").....Youre not a bass player (well, you know what I mean) so you dont have to deal with the actual implementation of the timing as much as I do......
    I used to do gigs with a drummer who did a lot of studio work in the '70s (when there was a lot of studio work to be had). His specialty was playing just in back of the beat and in that situation where there was always a click track, he sounded really good. However, when playing live with no click, he'd always want to play in back of everybody else and when the rest of the rhythm section (particularly the bass player) would try to lock in to where he was at, he'd pull back further, causing the whole band to drag the tempo. It was maddening and it took a lot of people criticizing him before he realized that what he was doing wasn't working.

    A long time ago, I tried my hand at playing bass. I was in a band where the bass player played guitar and the band leader would let us switch for the last set. We had a dragging drummer and I discovered just how hard it was trying to be the anchor. It's a lot more work and a lot less fun than it should be.

    These days, the band I work with the most has a drummer who has a natural tendency to rush. He's a great player in all other respects, but he has that one fatal flaw. He CAN keep a steady tempo if he concentrates enough, but he's an emotional player and often forgets to keep himself in check. And when he takes off, we have no choice but to ride on the speeding train. Interestingly, the other band I work with consistently has a drummer that doesn't have half of that other guy's flair, chops or creativity, but his tempos are very consistent and I've come to greatly appreciate that. If I could put both of their DNA in a blender, I'd have one perfect drummer.

  10. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarGeek View Post
    They were already speeding tempos up on Space Ritual. Compare Master Of The Universe on that album to it's studio incarnation.
    Cool. Never heard Space Ritual...the earliest Hawkwind live album I have is Hawklords Live and I don't recall that one being drastically sped up
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  11. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by WytchCrypt View Post
    Cool. Never heard Space Ritual...the earliest Hawkwind live album I have is Hawklords Live and I don't recall that one being drastically sped up
    Space Ritual is their definitive album to my mind.
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  12. #37
    I'm here for the moosic NogbadTheBad's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PeterG View Post
    Not only one of the best live metal albums of all time but one of the best live albums, all genres, of all time. And, as you may know, despite the title The Hammersmith Odeon was not played on their 1981 tour (Norfolk, Leeds, Newcastle, Belfast).
    I love playing the original Hawkwind version of the track Motorhead back to back with the live version Motorhead play on No Sleep. It's like 3X the speed but both version work really well.
    Ian

    Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on progrock.com
    https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-a...re-happy-hour/

    Gordon Haskell - "You've got to keep the groove in your head and play a load of bollocks instead"
    I blame Wynton, what was the question?
    There are only 10 types of people in the World, those who understand binary and those that don't.

  13. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by WytchCrypt View Post
    Cool. Never heard Space Ritual...the earliest Hawkwind live album I have is Hawklords Live and I don't recall that one being drastically sped up

    Dude, you've seriously never heard Space Ritual?! That's like one of the greatest records ever!

  14. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by NogbadTheBad View Post
    I love playing the original Hawkwind version of the track Motorhead back to back with the live version Motorhead play on No Sleep. It's like 3X the speed but both version work really well.
    Which Hawkwind version? There's two. One was the B-side of the Kings Of Speed single (with Lemmy on vocals), then they redid it a number of years later, way after Lemmy left the band.

    That drum fill that kicks off the Kings Of Speed B-side I always thought was really cool, it almost sounds like Simon King shouldn't have been able to land on the one coming out of that fill, but somehow he does.

  15. #40
    I'm here for the moosic NogbadTheBad's Avatar
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    The Lemmy version
    Ian

    Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on progrock.com
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    Gordon Haskell - "You've got to keep the groove in your head and play a load of bollocks instead"
    I blame Wynton, what was the question?
    There are only 10 types of people in the World, those who understand binary and those that don't.

  16. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by GuitarGeek View Post
    Dude, you've seriously never heard Space Ritual?! That's like one of the greatest records ever!
    Nope...started with Warrior on the Edge of Time and worked my way forward...have to put this one on my list
    Check out my solo project prog band, Mutiny in Jonestown at https://mutinyinjonestown.bandcamp.com/

    Check out my solo project progressive doom metal band, WytchCrypt at https://wytchcrypt.bandcamp.com/


  17. #42
    Replying to the original topic....

    "Any band with a drummer!"

    Ba-dump-kssh!

    I'll be here all week....tip your waitress!

  18. #43
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    Not sure they still play this fast but saw ACDC on a couple of tours in the mid 80s and they played the songs so fast coupled with not saying a word to the audience between songs they finished 20 songs in about a hour 20 minutes.

  19. #44
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    I've always been a proponent of playing songs faster live.

    Yes, yes if you have a delicate song you need to make it breathe, but let's not pretend that any of these songs are Stravinsky's Firebird.

    But dammit, every time I hear the Firebird I want it played faster too.




    I read something somewhere (it may have been in Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me, that definitive oral history of first generation punk, or somewhere else) that one of the English punk bands, The Clash I think, went out on their first tour with a 40 minute set prepared and by the last date of the tour they had sped it up so much that they were playing it in 22 minutes or something like that. Right on.

    One more factoid from the scary world of punk: Husker Du's debut record was called "Land Speed Record".

    Semper fi. Play fast, dammit

  20. #45
    Marillion's "Garden Party" is hit-or-miss live IMO because they tend to really speed it up (on occasions at least). Doesn't work fast.

  21. #46
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    Quote Originally Posted by Flightwave View Post
    Marillion's "Garden Party" is hit-or-miss live IMO because they tend to really speed it up (on occasions at least). Doesn't work fast.
    I have always felt the opposite. I can barely listen to the original now because of my preference for the faster version on Real to Real/Brief Encounter. (Although, I forgot that album existed for a while. I used to love that record. I always thought the Fugazi material sounded much better live than in the studio)

  22. #47
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    ^The drumming on the studio 'Garden Party' is absolutely shocking IMHO.

  23. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by Reid View Post
    He's actually 74. Speaking of older cats with great chops, I just found out Larry Coryell is playing at a club about a quarter mile from my house on Sunday night. I'll be there!

    John McLaughlin is another oldster with monster chops.

    He's blazing on his latest album, Black Light .
    no tunes, no dynamics, no nosebone

  24. #49
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    I guess for some people this is the rhythmic equivalent of not being able to get past a singer not having absolutely perfect pitch or having the songs transposed to different keys.

    I think it really depends on the song. Sometimes faster (or slower) will feel right. I'm not sure it can always be said that the right tempo was chosen when the studio version was recorded.

    Personally, when I'm playing in a band, I can tolerate more subtle and gradual increases in tempo. I don't always have the best sense of timing myself. I do recall being extremely annoyed when my brother was playing drums in a band with me. He's a really smart guy, one of those people who can teach himself anything and he has a very mathematical mind well-suited to playing all sorts of complicated stuff. But on certain tunes the tempo would just go down, and down, and down...and I (playing bass at that time) fought him all the way. You'd think being brothers we'd have some sort of telepathy or that he'd be able to read my signals...nope. That band didn't last long.
    <sig out of order>

  25. #50
    My wife and I saw Molly Hatchet at the Walla Walla County Fair and she filmed the band doing their song Whiskey man with her cellphone... The sound was nothing but static when we viewed it later.... So she dubbed in the album version behind her film.... Look at how well synced this is. Its almost perfect. The show was just this year... The album released many many moons ago.
    Still alive and well...

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