Rob Crow has a cure for bands who have grown tired of playing their greatest hits in concert dozens upon dozens of times, year after grueling year.
“We’re trying to do a different version of ‘Fortress’ every night,” said Crow, the singer and guitarist for San Diego-based indie rock band . “Sometimes we’ll do one where I don’t play any instruments and I just run around and break-dance on stage. Other times I’ll just play bass, or the guitar part, or a completely different guitar part. We leave it open to change every night.”
Doing that for an entire album, however, seems impractical for Pinback’s current tour, which brings it to the on Sept. 23. The band is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its 2004 Touch and Go release “Summer in Abaddon” by playing the album from front to back.
“Fortress,” an audience favorite and one of Pinback’s most popular songs with more than a million views on YouTube, is just one in a set of many.
Nonetheless, an increasing number of acts have for the past decade been booking tours and festival dates around the idea of performing their most popular, iconic albums from start to finish. That includes multiple acts at this year’s , which finishes its run at Sports Authority Field at Mile High on Sept. 21.
Fans of Weezer’s “Blue Album” (released in 1994), Slayer’s “Reign in Blood” (1986) and NOFX’s “Punk in Drublic” (1994) can of their favorite full-lengths, hearing songs in well-worn sequence and played (presumably) with an ear toward re-creating the tone of the recorded product.
But in the rush to exploit nostalgia, is something lost in the live experience? Where’s the nuance of the artist-curated set list? The unpredictability of audience requests? The spontaneous chemistry that happens between musicians in a live setting?
“It’s the equivalent of rereleasing a perfectly available album on 180 gram, ‘limited edition’ vinyl to me,” said Reddit user TyrannosaurusHives, whose thread drew dozens of comments on that link-sharing site. “(You are) paying more for an experience you could essentially get going to a normal concert.”
Not all “classic album” concerts cost more than the average show, but certainly, money is at the heart of this matter. Recognizing a 10- or 20-year-old release as “classic” is not merely a concern of fans and critics. The music industry is also desperate to squeeze cash out of existing content by repackaging it and adding B-sides, outtakes and live versions of beloved songs. (Pinback’s “Summer in Abaddon” has, indeed, received a ).
There’s money to be made even for cover bands. Tribute acts who ape the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, ABBA and others have crafted successful careers out of note-for-note re-creations of their heroes’ work — including full-length albums. Even concert recordings from the Grateful Dead — the mother of all jam bands, and one that prized improvisation — have been .
But if these albums remain meaningful for many of us, what’s the harm in revisiting them as a whole? We are, after all, not being forced to buy these deluxe reissues and concert tickets.
Furthermore, many artists claim to get as much joy out of revisiting their classic material as their fans.
“Writing something that matters to me in the first place is a good way to make sure of that,” Kim Deal, leader of ’90s indie rock band the Breeders, recently told The Denver Post. “The idea of just reciting some telephone directory is not what’s happening with me on stage.”
The Breeders’ Sept. 18 show at Summit Music Hall in Denver found the band playing songs from its 1993 album . A little less than three months prior, legendary New Wave act Devo played a loose version of its first on the same stage by re-creating early versions of its songs, some of which were 40 years old.
“All Tomorrow’s Parties was at the forefront of this trend,” wrote the , referring to the British music fest that popularized the trend with a 2005 Stooges performance of “Raw Power.” Acts such as Rush, Primal Scream and Lauryn Hill soon followed.
However, we should mark this moment because it’s a trend that’s soon to end, according to the Professor.
“It is unlikely there will be demand to play an album in full when fans didn’t listen to it as a complete work to begin with,” she wrote, referencing our shuffle-minded, singles-driven digital music habits these days.
Gimmick or not, Rob Crow has yet another cure for fans who want to hear more than just Pinback’s “Summer in Abaddon” on the band’s tour: an all-requests option, in which fans write down their favorite songs, fold the requests into paper airplanes, and wing them at the musicians on stage (yes — while they’re still playing).
“It’s not distracting because I prefer people have something to do other than talk or look at their phones,” Crow said. “The more involved everybody can be with each other and the band, the more of a real experience it can be.”
PINBACK’S “SUMMER IN ABADDON” 10TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR. nbSan Diego indie rockers playing their 2004 album from front to back, with requests at the end. 8 p.m. Sept. 23 at the Gothic Theatre, 3263 S. Broadway in Englewood. 303-789-9206 or axs.com.
