2010-10-31 HARD Haunted Mansion - Los Angeles, CA

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Good post, khouri...UW are a very, very easy group to get people into as they have such an insane amount of quality material, and yet they are not really too well known here...

I too am hoping Barking will do the trick the way BF did in the 90's. I thought OWB was a good album, in the scheme of 2007 it definitely makes my top 10. But for this group, I was just kind of wondering why only a few of the great tracks we were hearing actually made the cut. It looks like Barking is going to be the album that lands them all, and yeah, "Scribble" getting pretty big, from what I can tell the response to it has been huge.

I had to torrent the Tokyo disc too. Ever since EE came out I had been waiting for a great live release like this. I burned a copy for a friend of mine who hadn't really heard much UW and he says he plays those discs all the time. There is so much to applaud UW for but for the most part I have to agree.

[polar_action]

Well said khouri. Well said

[TheBang]

Set times posted:

[negative1]

Originally Posted by khouri

A crucial component of touring is awareness. If Underworld aren't filling venues, it's because people don't know they're still putting new music out, assuming they've even heard of Underworld in the first place. I can tell you that hardly anybody I spoke to at the aborted Hardfest gig last year had any idea who Underworld were.

i think this has pretty much been true ever since they've toured
the US ... they've had a smaller indie following for most of their
history bar the 'trainspotting'/'born slippy' single...

The solutions to that problem are -- and here I go again -- Internet presence and content distribution. All the major electronic acts that have remained or become relevant in the last ten years, from oldies like Daft Punk to the new lot like Fischerspooner or Justice, have done so in part by making their music wildly available and heavily promoted. Underworld willingly opted out of that industry system -- in my opinion, to their peril. With the exception of A Hundred Days Off, Underworld have spent most of the last decade making it nearly impossible for the casual listener to discover and obtain their music:

actually, their music has ALWAYS been hard to find even when they started..
how many copies of m.e/the hump are there? their early 12" singles on JBO,
the skyscraper single, etc. etc... i would say the opposite, its a LOT EASIER
NOW to find their music online / amazon / ebay, etc... you can find all the
main albums, and some selected singles...and of course all the recent stuff
online..

i can't speak for the other bands you mentioned, but relevancy is
mostly subjective i would think... if a band is more productive or has
a bigger media presence, good for them and their fans... we have this
board, and other ways of getting the information..

The early albums' availability is spotty at best; their greatest hits package is, I believe, out-of-print; their RiverRun series of EPs and singles were released in the most bullsh*t fashion imaginable; the 3-disc Live in Tokyo record, arguably the best Underworld release of all time, was practically impossible to obtain; the Sunshine soundtrack was hopelessly delayed;

as i mentioned, its not that hard to find all of their albums.. yeah, sure
the riverrun EP was not a fullblown release for the masses (and wasn't
meant to be), and how much interest in the film soundtrack for a non-hit
movie is there? so how much did that really impact them?

Oblivion With Bells was a proper album with proper avenues of distribution, but the promotion was dreadful: homemade music videos, bizarre single choices in the form of Holding the Moth and Ring Road, assuming you could buy them in the first place (I don't have a record player, so no Ring Road for me). Of course, some of this stuff is available digitally, but what if nobody knows it exists at all?

how many of their singles have been 'obvious'? how many of the mixes
actually sounded like the original back when they started? only 'club
friendly' mixes seem to be more predominant compared to their
experimental ones... if people are fans of the group, they'll find out
how to get the singles, which sites have them, and of course
torrent/download them .... as they do for a lot of other groups..

Finally, the Underworld website is demonstrably lacking, to put it mildly. True, the shop is now equipped with a good chunk of the back catalogue, assuming there are no longer problems buying any of it, but the site itself looks really unprofessional, is difficult to navigate, is home to no useful information beyond the dubious shop and barebones tour dates -- no bio, no gallery, and no free music beyond what's available in that weird pop-up media player despite releasing so god damn much of it over the years.

yeah, well it's always been a work in progress, and who goes to
just one site anyways? there's always been some good fansites
and other places to look up more detailed information ... just because
it's not centrally located really shouldn't deter someone if they
really wanted more indepth information..

I get so frustrated about all this stuff because I think Underworld are the best band in the world. Barking seems poised to be a Beaucoup-level success, so hopefully Underworld will finally emerge from the underground.

hmm..did you really consider 'beaucoup fish' that succesfull?

although i agree with what you said at times,
(and yes, even being booked on a late night
talk show miight point to a different agenda.)
but ask yourself, do they really need or even
want to 'emerge'?

later
-1

[SappysCurry]

Interesting evening tonight. More improv than usual, partly because of Karl's voice. At the start of Scribble, he started to sing, then covered his mouth with some piece of cloth and left the stage while Rick and Darren played sans lyrics at first, and then Rick sang a verse with the vocoder effects until Karl returned.

They also played Nu Train without Karl entirely and Cowgirl pretty much without him until the end (his silhouette was singing on the LED screens, but I think that was pre-recorded. It wasn't live.) They cut Jigsaw out of the setlist and there was no encore.

There was however a blistering version of Nuxx that they were messing with in ways I haven't heard from them in a long time. Weird loops and effects...and you could tell they were just having a ball jamming on it, much like they used to in years gone by. The place went nuts. Hot crowd, and despite Karl's voice and obvious sickness (he even looked a little washed out and exhausted), he was slamming it for pretty much the whole show.

I hate these 18+ kiddie raver events, but I'm glad I sacked up and went. Does anyone know if this was broadcast on that Red Bull Music Academy site?

[TheBang]

The Rez/Cowgirl silhouette was live, but the shadow screen was off stage due to the setup, so it was a video feed of the shadow screen. This is the same way it was at the Cow Palace.

We were supposed to get the shadow screen last night at San Diego. They had found room for it on the left side of the stage, but when showtime came it was gone. I never did find out why it didn't happen. Maybe Karl didn't want to do it because of how he was feeling, or maybe they tested it during soundcheck and it didn't work in the small space, I dunno.

For those that think they just "press play" on the new songs, well, that's definitely not the case. As mentioned, Karl ran off stage after the beginning of Scribble, and so they had to jam the middle part while he made his way back.

We got some nice Monkey Wink during the end jam of Nuxx, so that was fun.

Overall, this show was a lot better than I expected. Especially considering what happened with Hard Summer last year, I was impressed with the organization and security of this event. The crowd was better at this show than the Cow Palace. They seemed interested and engaged, and showed some level of recognition for some of the songs. I'm not sure if it was due to the age difference (18+ vs 16+), the time that UW was on, or if LA is better than SF.

But yeah, I'm glad I went too. I was feeling some Underworld fatigue, and just plain fatigue in general after 3 days of traveling. At some points today I felt, eh, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I didn't see them tonight. But all of that melted away once the show started.

I didn't get bored with the setlist like I thought I might. It's quite a good live set. I know some people have been disappointed, but it's still an Underworld show, and the band and crew put in their all each night and make in entertaining. They're going to continue with this set for the album promotion for the rest of this year. But I hear Rick's itching to get back to improv-y shows, so I think we'll see a return to the Underworld Live we love next year.

[cured]

Karl really gutted that one out last night...INCREDIBLE energy. One of the better Underworld sets I've seen. I absolutely hated the crowd, though...I can't count the number of times I was shoved aside so a train of kids could burrow their way to or away from the front of the stage.

And what the heck was A-Trak doing during the butchering of "Robot Rock"?

[Andrea]

Poor Karl, he was quite ill according to the last post on U/Wlive but I didn´t know he was so bad.
I hope the smell and taste of Essex is healing him by now

Originally Posted by TheBang

But I hear Rick's itching to get back to improv-y shows, so I think we'll see a return to the Underworld Live we love next year.

Very welcomed but not at the sacrifice of Karl´s voice I hope... much love

[pianopisser]

Starting to upload my UW videos from Hard + 4th and b shows, here one from the HHM:

[klingklang]

Very cool. thanks pianopisser!