We just saw the remains of ELO in concert. The special effects at concerts are getting more impressive. The laser shows, formerly designed to impress, are now designed to partially blind you, and contain subliminal messages telling you to buy the band’s new album. The lights and lasers can be incredibly bright. You wouldn’t want to be an epileptic.
But then, you wouldn’t want to be one anyway.
Any band that’s been around more than about 10 years are desperate to expose some of their new songs to the crowd. The crowd, of course, just want to hear the oldies. The ones they can sing along to.
I think there’s now an unofficial competition for the biggest band, with the most 747s, bringing in the biggest concert sets with the most tons of equipment. U2 vs Rolling Stones vs Madonna vs Nick’s Cabaret Act. Every time a big act comes to town, you see reports on the news saying that "XXX arrived today, with more than YYY tons of equipment, filling ZZZ semi-trailers. We talked to head engineer Jock McScaffold (because the band themselves were too stoned to go on TV)…" Bloody hell, the Rolling Stones even got a story on Beyond 2000! Perhaps this is twisting that programme’s format of showing new technology just a bit too far.
