Hello,
I've been a member of concertvault.com for a couple of weeks and it's reawakened my love of live music. Yes, it's a pay site for $3.99 a month, but it's well worth it. Honestly their selection of live concerts is hit and miss, and sometimes you have to dig a bit, but I've discovered a bunch of gems. When a band plays live is when you see what they are really made of. For instance I was disappointed by Boston, very wimpy vocals. But my appreciation of Bob Seger increased ten fold.
One of my favorite concerts is the Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band concert on June 15th, 1980 in Detroit. The man doesn't mess around, he just plays great song after great song. It's also funny to hear him refer to the "new record" and then play the new song "Against The Wind". It's great to hear many of these songs at their infancy.
I also like Chicago's June 13, 1992 concert from Detroit at Pine Knob. Their musicianship is great, including an electrifying "25 or 6 to 4", but the vocals are less than stellar. Just a note about more recent Chicago concerts, which aren't available on concertvault.com, I've noticed those later concerts they act as if their whole 80's output didn't happen. Sure that's extremely pop music, but there's no reason to be ashamed of it. Many happy couples have danced and have conceived babies to those romantic songs.
Other concertvault.com concerts I quite like are by Dio, who I never saw in concert, also the Hooters and AC/DC with Bon Scott on vocals. There are also good concerts by U2 & Eddie Money. As I previously referred to with the Bob Seger and AC/DC each concert is a time capsule. Many times a band can be good for several years, but then start releasing some lesser CDs. If you don't like their most recent CDs you can go back to a time before those CDs were released. Bob Seger is one artist that has multiple concerts over the years, you can listen to concerts from 1980 through 2007. There's something available for every Bob Seger fan.
The other great thing about a membership is the ability to download free concerts. Now I'm not going to kid you, not every free concert is worth clogging up your hard drive. However I've downloaded good concerts by the great Stevie Wonder, Ella Fitzgerald and Rhett Miller. Miller's set takes place at SXSW on March 16th, 2012. Now I didn't know anything about Miller, didn't even know he sang for the Old 97's. Of course I didn't know anything about the Old 97's either. His SXSW set is short but also is a great and energetic set. I wouldn't have known anything about Rhett Miller without the help of concertvault.com. I also bought a Byrds & The Flying Burritos Brothers concert from Whisky A Go-Go, it was only $2.00.
Already today I've lived to concerts by the great Blues Master Muddy Waters and the very creative and fun 80s band, the Thompson Twins.
Many, but not all concerts are available to purchase. Whether you purchase or not you still have unlimited listening to any concert they have available. If they have a concert available for sale, you'll never pay more than $5.00. Now concertvault.com is great, but as I mentioned above the concerts they have available are relatively few. Also there are many artists that they don't have any concerts for.
One of the downsides of concertvault.com is their hit and miss selection in concerts. But that's okay as Spotify, still free thank goodness, mostly fills that space. Someone was talking yesterday about Neil Diamond and I really wanted to listen to him play live. He has very little on concertvault.com, but he has a lot of live stuff on Spotify. So I'm now enjoying Diamond's "Live In America".
Spotify is great! Don't get me wrong, especially since it's free. You usually get what you pay for is the old expression, but that's not true with Spotify. A few commercials here and there is the only thing you have to "pay". Half of the time I don't hear the commercials. That being said I've been disappointed that some recent CDs haven't been available to listen to. For instance I really wish I could listen to the new Eric Church CD. I also would really love to listen to the Thompson Twins' "Queer". It's suppose to there most danceable CD, but I haven't been able to listen to it any where. Perhaps those CDs will be available to listen to later, but this is only a small quibble.
From all the artists I mentioned in this blog, you can see that I love all sorts of music. A lot of that love of different genres of music comes from the environment I grew up in. Growing up I heard everything from John Denver to Public Enemy- which is why I have both on iTunes.
Between the two music sites and my own iTunes library I love that I can practically listen to any music I want any time I want. It's extremely rare that I'm not to listen to whatever I want, according to whatever whim I have. Just a few years ago I wouldn't have imagined such a thing as being possible.
themusicaddict
No comments:
Post a Comment