The Dear Hunter in-and-around Tawas and Oscoda
{All pix ©2023 Daughter of a Beach Industries
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used by permission}
1.10.23
Descriptive Marbeling
b1-66er: Be sure to at least watch the opening video as well as the last one...
The use of the dome as projection is superlative. It's remarkable how good landscapes look on "the screen."
•••
entropy Dave:
Thanks for sending this, it was interesting to see. I particularly liked the optical illusion they created in which it looked as if the concrete segments of the sphere were warping and letting light in through cracks. The still of the quasi-Bosch ceiling of birds, fish and asps was extremely impressive and I am sure would have been quite a spectacle to those in person. Similarly, the scope for 16k-resolution panoramas on the spherical surface made for some remarkable distortions of perceived space.
Another thing that struck me immediately from years of concert-going was how the lighting was done. Gone was the framing of the space by an overhead lighting rig. That completely changed the way you saw the band, no longer enclosed in a presentational frame. (Even outdoor venues with their rectangular backdrops do not achieve this.) Immediately I thought, this would be even better as a venue for a play than for a band. That in turn led me to notice how spare the stage was, with no amps, no monitors (well, two little ones) and almost no gear. They even had the drummer in a shower cubicle--the likely effects on the acoustics of the drums filled me with scepticism. This had to mean the audio had a different quality than a normal concert with its walls of speakers. (It reminds me of seeing Iron Maiden in 1985 when they had assembled the loudest audio system ever--225,000 watts--and the ambient vibration was so great that the music was like a series of footnotes to fluctuating cacophony.)
Second, the thing with which I am most struck when I see any public spectacle nowadays is the way people hold their phones up. It seemed as if fully one third of the audience were holding up their phones to record. This image is itself the mottled skin that marks a symptom of a sickness in our 21st-century consciousness.
Third, when they flashed up the slogan, "Everything you know is wrong.," I almost horked my coffee. That is some smug shit. In that moment, the collusion between band and audience was so great and so squalid that had I been there I would have immediately felt the need to immolate myself with hand sanitiser. Even now I feel a tide of expletives rising in my throat. Loathing to the third power would go some way to saying how I feel.
I love Achtung, Baby and I remembered how much I enjoyed the deliberately dirty production. It seemed to me a real advance on Unforgettable Fire and the Joshua Tree which, while catchy, seemed like deposits in a 401k. I try only to listen to songs from those albums live on Rattle and Hum. I'm curious as to how the performance sounded, not because of the venue, but because of the band. I wasn't feeling much in the videos in that regard. My worry was that the overall experience--disregarding the social element--was of audiophile headphones within an Apple Vision Pro-like curated visual experience. If that were right, it would be interesting to determine how much of that is a consequence of the venue and how much the band. Again, if I'm on the right track with the limitations, then the kinds of acts they can host may be limited. It strikes me that Springsteen and the E Street Band on that stage would be a joke, no matter how much effluent flowing through Jersey rivers you put on screen. Kraftwerk or Philip Glass or Grimes all seem like home runs. Celine Dion, that could work. Oddly though, not Taylor Swift for example.
eD
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