Who Will Entertain in America? Pt 1: Live Streaming

A grossly incomplete survey of musicians responding to the COVID era

Over the last several months, with all of the streaming services, socially distanced sports, books unread, and workout plans to use to kill the new abundance of time that the inessential workers of American now had on their hands, Twitter managed to get flooded with terrible Infinite Jest takes not once but twice. Of course these arguments aren’t ever about the book itself. The book is only a signifier of a composite personality that the poster is trying to position themselves against. But these kinds of phantom conflicts do great numbers, so everyone brings out the old caricatures of their opponents and goes to work like a boxer warming up on the pads.

It’s a shame, because there is plenty to gain from criticizing the contents of Jest instead of regurgitating jokes about its length. Who knows, maybe the book about the addictive power of entertainment and the difficulty of connecting with other people might have some ideas worth chewing on during a period where we’re all locked inside with nothing to do but get drunk and watch TV?

So, in an effort to move the discourse beyond “book good vs book bad” here is a good faith critique of Infinite Jest: 

While David Foster Wallace was very astute in his depiction of why we as Americans seek to be constantly entertained, and how that desire and its consequences mirrors the causes and consequences of drug addiction, his choice of entertainers, experimental filmmakers and tennis prodigies, reveals the limits of his authorial eye. He was so damn good at writing about tennis that his decision to focus on that is forgivable, and filmmaking is crucial to the narrative of the plot, but these are hardly representative samples of who entertains in America.

(Feel free to use this critique the next time you are stuck on a date with a DFW bro. Tell them the Pynchonites send their regards.)

I am fascinated by the questions of who we ask to entertain us and what we ask of our entertainers. There’s a lot of work to be done to answer those questions, so for now I am going to focus on entertainment in the age of social distancing. I will start in this letter by talking about musicians turning to live streaming during lockdown. Then I will use the tools and concepts developed in this letter to address the NBA’s bubble experiment in letter number two. Finally, at least for now, I will return to the subject of music to talk about Code Orange, the metal band that have placed themselves at the forefront of the live streaming era. Now, without further delay, it’s time to get this show on the road.

The last night out I had before all my nights were in was a live concert. Fucked & Bound and Haunted Horses at Saint Vitus. The show was great, in part because the air was crackling with nervous energy. There was a feeling that we were getting in under the wire, last call before a cosmic closing time. Tours were already being cancelled, and anyone still on the road at this point was squeezing what little merch sales they could from shrinking audiences. Not great conditions to be living under, so going ape shit to mosh riffs seemed like as good a response as any before the curtain fell.

But even as the concert industry shuttered to a close, musicians themselves determined that the show would go on. In some high profile cases bands like Underoath filmed re-creations of their live show in empty venues, others hunkered down in their practice spaces. DJs hosted live stream parties and producers traded old tunes and forth to compare resumes for the public. The vast majority however had no such resources and instead, armed with little more than acoustic guitars and a need to receive attention rushed to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitch to perform for America’s new homebound audience.

Since my instrument of choice, drums, makes it virtually impossible to put on an entertaining livestream of my own, I’ve only been able to participate as an observer. So I asked some of my fellow musicians and music fans about their experience on both sides of the livestream camera.

While the limitations of live streaming put up significant barriers for amplified performances, acoustic artists had a much easier time adapting to the new format. Jon Rosenthal, a former coworker of mine at Invisible Oranges told me that he found the new setting better suited to his music

“It feels more intimate, everyone is in their office or living room or bedroom watching me in my office.” While Jon has played live in multiple other projects before, this was the live debut of Footpaths, a project that Jon described as “sad bastard folk music.” The project’s style also informed Jon’s choice of streaming platform. Instead of Twitch, which he associates mostly with memes and gamers, Jon went with Instagram and Facebook.

By contrast, Siddhu Anadalingham of Semaphore (and former Lamniformes Radio guest) chose Twitch for his livestreams because he was familiar with it from watching people play games on the platform. Building off of Semaphore’s Halloween cover of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Miss Machine front to back, Siddhu has streamed live covers of full albums like Doppelgänger by The Fall Of Troy and Highly Refined Pirates by Minus the Bear on Twitch as well as Instagram. 

Part of the excitement of any live show, but especially instrumental exhibitions like this, hinges on the risk of having only one take to get things right. Any live audience knows this, but the mediation of the internet makes it so that artists have to find ways to recreate that excitement from scratch.

“I thought it would be more impressive if I played the albums fully and live [as opposed to pre-recording the performances].” Siddhu told me. “Also, more fun!”

The counterbalance to that excitement however is the risk of unexpected technical issues.

“Latency was the biggest thing, and I’m still working on it. Also getting content ID’d on Instagram during the Doppelgänger set was annoying since I thought they’d suspend my account.”

These technical issues don’t just hamper performers, they can also shape the experience of the audience. 

“I had to stop watching because it was so laggy,” my friend Nicholas Quesada said of a Charli XCX live stream that he paid $5 to view. “I’m a Charli XCX fan and it was streaming from Boiler Room which has streamed some great stuff in the past, but this just fell flat.”

Of all the platforms that you’d expect to have their t’s crossed and i’s dotted when it comes to live streaming, The Boiler Room would have to be at the top of the list. The dance music hub has streamed live sets for years, with packed crowds in attendance that only raise the potential for human error. Yet the imperfections of this new normal have had a democratizing effect, one where name brands and living room shredders are both going to have to jump the same hurdles.

Still, higher production value seems to win out when not impeded by the internet.

Joseph Klomes, singer of Droughts and graphic designer (including the design for my record Sisyphean), expressed skepticism about DIY bands being able to pull off live streams at an adequate technical level. “A DIY band isn’t going to invest and I’m not going to watch a poorly filmed live set with bad audio.” Joseph told me. “I think a band the size of Underoath or Thursday can pull it off because they invest in it.”

You can see why this would put the future of live streaming in a bad place. Without touring income the number of bands capable of investing in the equipment necessary to elevate their streamed shows to the quality of their live ones is quickly dwindling. Anyone who falls outside of that shrinking bubble has to offer their viewers something beyond fidelity to keep them hooked. Artists can go the Footpaths route and focus on creating a unique intimacy and access to their personal space, or they can go the Semaphore route and aim for feats of musical showmanship, to cite the examples we’ve covered thus far.

But no matter which route artists choose, they’ll also face the more pressing question of how to make money from live streams. Big names can charge for exclusive access, but the best most other artists can hope for is a digital tip jar and links to their bandcamp. What a strange reversal of fortune, where the “live” show is now the loss leader for the record instead of the other way around. However, if making a living is off table then artists are free to use performances for other purposes. In Chicago, Varaha filmed performances in empty venues to help promote #SaveOurStages, a bill that now has bipartisan support to help fund independent venues during lockdown. Closer to home, Semaphore used their live streams to raise money for the The Bail Project.

“I’m fortunate enough that since music isn’t my sole source of income, I can donate all proceeds from the streams to charity,” Siddhu told me. “The Bail Project speaks to me because I think we need to move towards abolishing private prisons, dismantling the prison industrial complex, and towards restructuring the way society deals with those who commit crimes - more economic opportunities and mental health care rather than incarceration.”

I am all for artists of any size using their art for causes greater than themselves. I’ve tried to do the same by donating the proceeds of my physical merch to the South Brooklyn Mutual Aid (added bonus, I get to spend money on the USPS for shipping). However, if we’re going to think about this critically, it’s worth noting the inherent conflict between using platforms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon (who own Twitch) for social activism, when these same companies are responsible for aiding the surveillance state, spreading misinformation, and crushing their workers’ attempts to organize at every opportunity, to name only a few of the sins of the FAANG.

(Inherent Vice, 2014. Beware the Golden FAANG, Doc!)

Keep this dissonance between the advocacy of the performer and the interests of the platform in mind for part two of this series. Next up: What year is it…. NBA: The Return.