Best in Shows

In high school, I never really attended concerts, with the exception of the Warped Tour every June so I could get my punk music fix. I didn’t see much of a difference between seeing a band live and just listening to its album.

Skip forward to April of my first year at UCLA. It was yet another Wednesday night when my fledging social life had failed me, and I had nothing to do. As I sat alone in my dorm room, I happened upon a Facebook event page for the Campus Events Commission’s free concert featuring Slang Chickens and Warpaint. I had never heard of either band, but I threw on my best pair of ripped jeans and headed down to Kerckhoff Grand Salon.

From the second Slang Chickens took that stage and played their quirky mix of banjo-tinged garage rock, I knew I had made a good decision. By the time Warpaint had finished their set of spacey psychedelic rock, I had sworn that I would try to never miss another on-campus concert. I left Kerckhoff that night with both bands’ albums in hand, and I enjoy both to this day.

In fact, a pretty sizable chunk of my music library came from bands I discovered at concerts. I think it’s because concerts are essentially the best sales pitch a band can make. They allow the viewer to hear a band’s music on its terms, without any studio touch-ups or external influences to censor its music.

On campus, the ever-persistent presence of free concerts offers the student body with an opportunity to encounter artists in a live setting with no charge.

“We try to use concerts as an avenue to introduce students to new music, either through relatively unknown opening bands or headliners that are up-and-coming,” said Vanessa Szeto, a third-year communications studies student and the CEC concerts director.

A few weeks after Slang Chickens and Warpaint, I attended the Student Committee for the Arts’ free end-of-the-year concert featuring the uncompromisingly hippie troupe that is Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. I prepared for the concert by looking up a few songs on YouTube, and I liked what I heard, so I was pretty excited.

That concert perfectly illustrated the advantage live performances have over recorded albums. The songs I listened to were nothing compared to actually hearing them live. Recordings can only capture sounds; they cannot capture the atmosphere of a show.

I own Edward Sharpe’s debut album, and though I love it to death, it cannot bring me as much pleasure as the memory of front man Alex Ebert belting out lyrics while dancing around the stage in a manner that I can only describe as some kind of freakish mix between that of a Tyrannosaurus rex and Frankenstein’s monster.

Live performances present the attendees with more than just music: They are an experience in themselves. A concert is the combination of a band’s emotions, the actual sounds they make and the audience’s reaction.

“Concerts are all about the experience,” said Alex Pieros, a second-year communications studies student and DJ for UCLAradio.com, who estimated he has attended upward of 50 concerts and seen more than 100 bands live. “When you go to a concert, you get the full vibe of not only the artist, but everyone who is there.”

The downside of concerts is that they have a larger capacity to disappoint. Some bands just don’t have the ability to perform their music as well as they record.

For instance, when I heard The Cataracs were performing at this year’s Bruin Bash, I looked them up on MySpace and thought they were pretty good. When they took the stage, they were anything but. I suppose you can blame it on their album’s extensive use of studio effects that could not be recreated live, but for whatever reason, their set was just dismal, and I haven’t listened to their music since.

Even if an artist creates good music, a bad stage presence, or a bad crowd, can easily prejudice a concertgoer against the artist.

“In my opinion, electronic musicians are terrible live,” said Christina Seto, a second-year psychobiology student. “Either they sound bad in person or they just look terrible, because they’re just crouched in front of their MacBooks the whole time.”

Since last April, I have made it a point to attend as many concerts as possible, and it has certainly paid off. My iPod is now filled with artists like Young the Giant, Best Coast, Crystal Antlers, No Age, Beach House, Dengue Fever, Fool’s Gold and Dawes, none of whom I would have ever heard had I not attended their performances.

I admit that I glorify concerts. It is entirely possible to attend a concert and come away with absolutely nothing. I’m sure you can legitimately argue that concerts are a relatively inefficient way of finding music; it’s all subjective.

All I’m saying is that on a campus like ours, where a week doesn’t pass by without a free or ridiculously cheap concert, there is a plethora of new artists and their music just waiting to be discovered.

Actually liked Bruin Bash? Enjoy watching electronic artists hide behind their MacBooks? E-mail Somasundaram at [email protected].