Oblivion Ball Tokyo Live Streaming

[BeautifulBurnout]

Originally Posted by dubman

all i'm saying is may we please air some reservations without being countered with how special all the "stuff" we get is, and treat the live and interactive experience with the same creative standards that we do their albums? it's great that they still do albums, but should we be so grateful for them as to not note what's wrong with them? how is Underworld Live much different than that?

What I am saying is, why the need to critique each gig as if each one ought to be an innovative work of art in itself? Because we are between 50 and 100 geeks on here that listen to, and watch where possible, every single gig we can get our hands on, does that give us the right to moan because the gigs aren't "different" or "special" enough from our personal obsessive-compulsive view-point?

There were 20,000 people in Tokyo tonight. What did they want to hear? What did the band want them to hear? The singles/strong tracks from the album and a melange of their classic numbers - each with a little twist all its own: a little improve here, a new intro there. They have an album to promote, and more ephemeral fans than us to please. There were lots of nice new bits were in this gig, but some people just seem to fixate on what they personally have heard too much of recently - what they DIDN'T like about it rather than focussing on what was new and interesting and exciting.

It just annoys me, when you compare them to the other kinds of plug-and-play bands out there who never even change a setlist from one venue to the next, much less improvise on their numbers, to hear people having a whinge all the time. We are LUCKY we have had these gigs streamed. We are the lucky ones who get to go to two, three, four gigs during a tour, sometimes more. We are lucky that we can buy the live CDs now. How many boots are out there of 5 or 6 shows from a single tour from previous years? I bet there aren't actually 5 or 6 from the same tour. And if there are, I also bet that, if you gave them a listen back to back, you would suddenly realise that, actually, this is what Underworld has always done. Two or three new tracks to promote the album, and a selection of hits.

Like I said, we were spoilt with the 3 hours shows and Cocoon, because they had no new album to push at that time - in fact, I would go further and suggest that we were hearing a variety of new stuff that they had created, a DARC here, a Globe there, a Faxed Invitation somewhere else, to test the market and see what got the best responses, and got the forums chattering. One or two new tunes out of a 3 hour set doesn't make much of a dent, which left plenty of time for the classics and the less mainstream stuff as well.

I understand the need to critique to a certain extent, but sometimes it is really done from the Ivory Tower of the ardent fan and Dirt, and doesn't take into account the bigger picture.