La fondation cartier / value of AC live recordings
Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2020 11:34 pm
Hello friends, I'm going to ramble for a bit
A couple times a year for nearly a decade, I've gone through phases where all I want to listen to is AC live recordings. What era I want to listen to changes; sometimes it's 2007 mpp stuff, sometimes its the really early days... lately, I've been obsessed with the 2004 pre-feels shows. I've been particularly into the la fondation cartier show, which is the earliest recording of the feels songs. If you haven't heard it, it's extremely messy, loud, even violent; a totally different energy from what the songs eventually became, and the tone of the guitar and general style is kind of closer in spirit to HCTI than feels.
Yesterday, I was reading comments on a thread on one of the Facebook music groups I'm in, and I saw someone mention that AC were very disappointing live, and that the vocals sounded "untrained" and "like they weren't even trying to make it similar to the album." I'm not sure which era they were talking about, but it caused me to reflect on the fact that shows like the fondation cartier recording could genuinely sound bad to people, and I understand why. It's dissonant, abrasive, and so loose that it's practically falling apart. It caused me to ask myself- why do I enjoy this so much? Why do I keep coming back, year after year, to fall down the rabbithole of AC live recordings?
a couple years ago, I really started making music with my friends for the first time. We'd hang out, grab our synths / samplers / whatever, get super stoned and improvise. We'd never really know what we were doing, but most of the time it was wonderfully cathartic, and even though I'm a classically trained pianist and percussionist, the most satisfying musical moments of my life have been just making random shit with my friends.
I guess what I'm saying is what appeals to me so much about AC live recordings isn't necessarily how they sound. Of course, that's a big part of it; very simply, I love these songs, and it's cool and appeals to me in a nerdy way to hear the songs at various stages of the creative process. I enjoy noticing when the band introduces sounds that stuck around for the final versions, or toyed with ideas that were left behind by the time they were recorded. I enjoy the experience of hearing the core of a song I love preserved, with everything else about the song being formed uniquely in the moment. All of this is cool and a major reason why they're so fun to listen to. But more than any of this, at the core of this experience for me, is the sensation that I'm listening to friends make sounds that they want to make. Those sounds take different shapes depending on their moods at the time of making them, or just the exact kind of interaction theyre having with each other at that moment, which is the beautiful thing about performing and playing with people. I love the fondation cartier recording because the songs are recognizable, yet there's such a radically different energy to them than what I was familiar with, because it was a totally different point in their lives and they had a different perspective on the song and the sounds and each other.
I don't think I'm really saying anything new here, I think what I'm saying is something that most AC fans would recognize, that a huge reason why their performances are endlessly fascinating is because they're organic. They're driven by a very genuine urge to make sounds that they feel, and build something together in the moment. On the one hand, this feels like something most musicians probably aim for, but realistically, it's a rare thing to listen to a band perform and be struck by the sensation that they're doing exactly what they feel like doing, completely in the moment, in a way that's authentic and unique to that moment.
Like I said, I know I'm treading familiar ground here for an AC forum, but I think that this is ultimately what appeals so much to me about those messy, noisy early shows. I love hearing them play before it was *something.* It might turn into something, but in that moment, it's just them playing, it's just the sounds, it's just the feelings. Hearing the crowd cheer after a performance of the purple bottle long before anyone in the audience couldve been familiar with it always puts a smile on my face, because that's the purest experience here: you don't need to go into it thinking "if this band doesn't sound like I expect them to, it'll be bad," because the entire idea at the time was they're doing what feels right, they're just a group of friends making sounds, and I understand that feeling intimately. It's so cool and inspiring that they could tap into that in such a way that audiences genuinely enjoyed it, and it's part of why I keep coming back to these shows.
Sorry for wall of text
A couple times a year for nearly a decade, I've gone through phases where all I want to listen to is AC live recordings. What era I want to listen to changes; sometimes it's 2007 mpp stuff, sometimes its the really early days... lately, I've been obsessed with the 2004 pre-feels shows. I've been particularly into the la fondation cartier show, which is the earliest recording of the feels songs. If you haven't heard it, it's extremely messy, loud, even violent; a totally different energy from what the songs eventually became, and the tone of the guitar and general style is kind of closer in spirit to HCTI than feels.
Yesterday, I was reading comments on a thread on one of the Facebook music groups I'm in, and I saw someone mention that AC were very disappointing live, and that the vocals sounded "untrained" and "like they weren't even trying to make it similar to the album." I'm not sure which era they were talking about, but it caused me to reflect on the fact that shows like the fondation cartier recording could genuinely sound bad to people, and I understand why. It's dissonant, abrasive, and so loose that it's practically falling apart. It caused me to ask myself- why do I enjoy this so much? Why do I keep coming back, year after year, to fall down the rabbithole of AC live recordings?
a couple years ago, I really started making music with my friends for the first time. We'd hang out, grab our synths / samplers / whatever, get super stoned and improvise. We'd never really know what we were doing, but most of the time it was wonderfully cathartic, and even though I'm a classically trained pianist and percussionist, the most satisfying musical moments of my life have been just making random shit with my friends.
I guess what I'm saying is what appeals to me so much about AC live recordings isn't necessarily how they sound. Of course, that's a big part of it; very simply, I love these songs, and it's cool and appeals to me in a nerdy way to hear the songs at various stages of the creative process. I enjoy noticing when the band introduces sounds that stuck around for the final versions, or toyed with ideas that were left behind by the time they were recorded. I enjoy the experience of hearing the core of a song I love preserved, with everything else about the song being formed uniquely in the moment. All of this is cool and a major reason why they're so fun to listen to. But more than any of this, at the core of this experience for me, is the sensation that I'm listening to friends make sounds that they want to make. Those sounds take different shapes depending on their moods at the time of making them, or just the exact kind of interaction theyre having with each other at that moment, which is the beautiful thing about performing and playing with people. I love the fondation cartier recording because the songs are recognizable, yet there's such a radically different energy to them than what I was familiar with, because it was a totally different point in their lives and they had a different perspective on the song and the sounds and each other.
I don't think I'm really saying anything new here, I think what I'm saying is something that most AC fans would recognize, that a huge reason why their performances are endlessly fascinating is because they're organic. They're driven by a very genuine urge to make sounds that they feel, and build something together in the moment. On the one hand, this feels like something most musicians probably aim for, but realistically, it's a rare thing to listen to a band perform and be struck by the sensation that they're doing exactly what they feel like doing, completely in the moment, in a way that's authentic and unique to that moment.
Like I said, I know I'm treading familiar ground here for an AC forum, but I think that this is ultimately what appeals so much to me about those messy, noisy early shows. I love hearing them play before it was *something.* It might turn into something, but in that moment, it's just them playing, it's just the sounds, it's just the feelings. Hearing the crowd cheer after a performance of the purple bottle long before anyone in the audience couldve been familiar with it always puts a smile on my face, because that's the purest experience here: you don't need to go into it thinking "if this band doesn't sound like I expect them to, it'll be bad," because the entire idea at the time was they're doing what feels right, they're just a group of friends making sounds, and I understand that feeling intimately. It's so cool and inspiring that they could tap into that in such a way that audiences genuinely enjoyed it, and it's part of why I keep coming back to these shows.
Sorry for wall of text
