Is the Live Music Experience Irreplaceable? Pretty Much Pop #11

Sure­ly tech­no­log­i­cal advances have made it unnec­es­sary to ever leave the house, right? Is there still a point in see­ing live peo­ple actu­al­ly doing things right in front of you?

Dave Hamil­ton (Host of Gig Gab, Mac Geek Gab) joins Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss what’s so damn cool about live music (and the­ater), the alter­na­tives (live-streamed-to-the­aters or devices, record­ed for TV, VR), why tick­ets are so expen­sive, whether trib­ute bands ful­fill our needs, the con­nec­tion between live music and drugs, singing along to the band, and more.

We touch on Rush (and their trib­ute Lotus Land), Damien Rice, Todd Rund­gren, The Who, Cop Rock, Bat out of Hell: The Musi­cal, Hed­wig and the Angry Inch, the filmed Shrek The Musi­cal, and Riff­trax Live.

We used some arti­cles to feed this episode, though we didn’t real­ly bring them up:

• “Nielsen Releas­es In-Depth Sta­tis­tics on Live Music Behav­ior” by Dan Rys
• “7 Pred­i­ca­tions on the Future of Live Music” by Jason Don­nel­ly
• “Live at Home: how to see con­certs every day with­out leav­ing your couch” by Noel Mur­ray
• “Broad­casts Of ‘Live’ The­ater And Opera Are Ter­rif­ic In Their Own Way” by Mau­reen Dezell

You know Mark also runs a music pod­cast, right? Check out Eri­ca doin’ her fid­dlin’ and sin­gin’. Lis­ten to Mark’s mass of tunes. Here’s Dave singing and drum­ming some Badfin­ger live with his band Fling, and here’s Mark live singing “The Grinch.”

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.