The art of the "farewell" tour.
There is a trend in music the last few months. Artists retiring from touring. Without a ton of looking in to it Elton John
will do a three year “final tour”. More
on that in a second. Neil Diamond
suddenly stopped due to health issues.
Joan Baez, Paul Simon, Kenny Rodgers and Slayer have all said “we are
done” after their respective runs.
First lets cast off any thoughts you have on the artists
mentioned. What I mean is, I don’t care
if you don’t like xyz. That is really
not the point. Another reaction might be
“thank god”. Again, not really the
point.
Of all the bands mentioned there I have not seem them live
and I am not sure I “need” to. Honestly
I’d sit through any of them with Slayer, Simon and Rodgers being my top picks.
Lets start with announcing the farewell tour. We as consumers have all been burned. We are looking at you “The Who” as suspects
#1. Some of the artist have said “our
last formal tour” still leaving room for one off shows here and there.
As a fan of music this seems to make the most sense. Sure I get it, years on the road take their toll. Health, wanting to be near family are the big
things you hear with these artists saying its time to slow down. Face it, none of these artists are staying in
a Motel 6 and driving a van with 200K miles on it.
Look at what Springsteen has done on Broadway, or Billy Joel
doing a series of shows per month in NYC not far from his home. It would be like a long work day for the
average person. Get up, drive to the
venue, sound check, eat, do the show, hang out for a bit then head home. In
your bed, seeing your kids off to school the following morning its all very
appealing I am sure.
Elton doing the long run I have to applaud. Again, just going off memory he is pretty
much playing most of the places you’d expect.
US, Euro, Australia etc. Probably
South America too. It seems silly to
take three years to do this, but he is doing it at his own pace and when you
think about it it’s sort of cool. Not
only that he can..but he can still “ease” in to it.
As a fan of all genres of music it’s not hard to see the up
and coming bands doing their thing. Load
in, play, load out, drive. Rinse lather
repeat 200+ times a year…for 45/60 minute sets.
That has to be very difficult.
Even if you look at pop acts, they might have a tour bus right out of
the gate and play radio shows (again 45/60 minute sets) they still have high
level of burnout. The older I get the
more I applaud what goes on OFF stage as much as on stage. Again, for the bands that are doing tours on
their own, with a van and one friend helping.
Let’s face it most bands probably have part time jobs on the side,
struggle to get time off to tour, have a fan that was already pretty tired
before the tour began and they try to jam a bunch of shows in over a two week
period.
I exchanged an email with a band that resides outside of
Chicago a few years ago. Fell in love
with their record and wrote “will you be coming out east?” and I got a nice
response but it wasn’t anything like I expected. It basically said “we work full time jobs, we
all took our allotment of vacation time and this is what we can do for now,
sorry we can’t come your way”.
Making music and playing music is HARD.
If you have a chance get to the big “final” shows but make
it a point to catch a new band, or arrive early for a support band. There is just so much out there you HAVE to
find something you’ll dig!
posted by March2theSea @ 10:40:00 AM
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