Internet Concert Venues

By Steven Rosen

(This article appeared in the Summer, 2009, issue of GRAMMY [a registered trademark] Magazine)

This seems like a good day to attend a concert – at 6 a.m. In fact, it seemed like a good day to spend the whole morning attending concerts...on the Internet. Because of webcasting and archiving of audio and video information, the Internet has become an international concert venue – ongoing 24/7.

So I start by going to Live From Daryl’s House (www.livefromdarylshouse.com), a monthly live-performance program – presented like a homey television show – featuring Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates fame. The newest episode is a retrospective designed to drive traffic to past shows, but it nonetheless features some wonderful new music.

Hall and his four-piece band bridge older segments by performing live some favorite oldies, like Ruby & the Romantics’ ethereal “Our Day Will Come,” Dylan’s intense “You’re a Big Girl Now,” and Paul Butterfield Band’s imploringly bluesy “In My Own Dream.” With the camera so close, it’s like being front row in an intimate folk club…with a superstar singing.

After Hall, it’s time to go to Paris for a short concert on La Blogotheque (www.blogotheque.net), one of a number of international video music blogs in which music enthusiasts in various cities film visiting acts – often indie-rockers – performing short sets in unusual settings.

I choose to watch I’m From Barcelona, a much-praised English-singing Swedish band. The concert features the group’s shaggy Emanuel Lundgren walking down a busy street at night with acoustic guitar, singing the irresistibly tuneful “We’re From Barcelona” as young people follow behind him clapping and chanting. It is so magnifique I go to They Shoot Music, Don’t They (www.theyshootmusic.at) to watch Lundgren do something similar outside a Vienna shopping center.

I move to London’s Black Cab Sessions (www.blackcabsessions.com), with its motto “One Song. One Take. One Cab.” Among its many mini-concerts is a must-see featuring Brian Wilson and four members of his band (including one with a mini-keyboard) jammed into a cab and singing the standard “That Lucky Old Sun” barbershop-style. (It’s the title song from his recent album.) The camerawork is dim and shaky but manages to focus on a relaxed Wilson enjoying himself so much he shifts to “California Girls” before arriving at his destination.

Following that, it’s over to the audio selections at Wolfgang’s Vault’s Concert Vault (www.concerts.wolfgangsvault.com), which has just added a 1987 soundboard-recorded outdoor show by the Jerry Garcia Band from French’s Camp in Piercy, Calif. Among his songs is a plaintively soulful version of the same “That Lucky Old Sun.”

Here in the U.S., National Public Radio (www.npr.org) has enthusiastically embraced the Internet for all sorts of live-music programs, including full concerts recorded on location. I find a brand-new 1½-hour audio-streamed New York club date by veteran New Orleans pianist Allen Toussaint and his four-piece Bright Mississippi Band. He elegantly performs jazz classics from his new album, “The Bright Mississippi,” and even does “Southern Nights,” the hit he wrote for Glen Campbell. (The concert was also broadcast live on New York’s WBGO-FM, a jazz station.)

After that, it’s a quick visit to NPR’s delightful Tiny Desk Concerts site to watch the timelessly sexy Tom Jones promoting his recent “24 Hours” album by doing four songs before a wowed NPR office staff in Washington, D.C.

For one final concert before a break, I find the My Damn Channel network (www.mydamnchannel.com), where the hipster record producer and musician Don Was has his own channel. There, I tune into a Jill Sobule concert shot in black-and-white from a furniture outlet in North Hollywood. (Was produced Sobule’s new album, “California Years.”) This is a pilot for a planned Internet series called Wasmopolitan Dance Party, a spoof on 1960s-era local rock-music shows. Sobule performs four acoustic songs for fans and furniture-shoppers alike. At one point, she sings from a dinette chair that’s part of a seven-piece set retailing for just $650. The whole thing is surreal – doubtlessly what Was had in mind.

Not bad – eight concerts before lunch!