Tom Dunne's Music & Me: 'It feels like a gig, but is closer to what a teenage boy gets up to in his bedroom'
'A gig without an audience is just a performance, a dry run, a glorified rehearsal.'
This live steaming of gigs thing is really taking off! Even Something Happens have been approached. But the promoter was concerned: “How will you feel about playing in an empty room?” he asked, for that is the reality of the Covid gig stream: there is no audience. “An empty room?” we asked, “don’t make us laugh.”
Because empty rooms and SH go back. We have played in many empty rooms and have travelled HUGE distances to do it. I still remember my first: The Underground in Cork. We had travelled from Dublin but a busker outside had more people. I stood there mortified. “Please come in,” I begged, but they wouldn’t.
But by 1990, with a number one album, I’d have thought things were different. We even had an American deal and were dispatched to the US for a three month tour. Initially it was sell out show after sell out show: New York, Philadelphia, Chicago fell at our feet. Selling out Boston made the front cover of an Irish newspaper.
On the tour bus I was just letting this sink in, was pricing Jacuzzis and working out how long you can actually ‘go mad and have the craic for’ before you need rehab when I noticed the drive. It was twelve hours! “Christ,” I thought, “America is huge!” That show wasn’t a sell-out. They’d never heard of us, in fact I’m not sure they’d heard of New York. “Do you know U2?” they asked.
And so it began: the drives got longer, the audiences more selective. By Kansas it was five people. Afterwards we joined them at the bar for a drink. A girl with them jumped on stage and starting taking her clothes off. I don’t think it was the first time she had done this. The venue suddenly filled. “You guys came all the way from Ireland?” our friends at the bar asked. The unspoken but incredulous “for this?” hung visibly in the air.
And therein lies a big danger of the empty room: the band starts to play to each other, complimenting nice riffs or accomplished fills with a nod and a knowing half smile. In worst case scenarios they will face each other and not the tiny crowd, nodding furiously. It feels like a gig, but in reality is a lot closer to what a teenage boy gets up to on the internet when he’s alone in his bedroom. And no one wants to watch that!
We arrived back in New York at the end of that tour chastened. “Music, she is a cruel mistress,” we would quip to each other but faced with the choice between a four week, risky Australian tour, or a valedictory ten-day, sell out Irish tour, we opted for the sweaty charms of Limerick, Newmarket and Nenagh.
Because those sweaty crowds are what makes a gig and their lack at live gig steams is the elephant in the room. A gig without an audience is just a performance, a dry run, a glorified rehearsal. It is delivered in a vacuum, to silence, and even with a film crew, it is flat.
For that is the Faustian pact we enter into. We write songs to play them to someone. We hope that someone will pick up on a good performance or one song being better than others and will let us know. Heartened by this we will then deliver the next song with a little more gusto, and this too will be picked up by the audience. A virtuous circle is born.
I don’t really see a solution to this, unless, you the audience (aka the Great Unwashed, the Punters, the Billies, the Civilians) could nominate just one person to attend on behalf of all of you. That one person could be tested, isolated and sprayed and allowed sit front of stage – 2 metres out. You could text them with comments for them to shout out like: “Stick to the hits!”, or “That was shite!” Because that’s what really keeps a band honest in front of an audience: Knowing they can walk out!
