Post by smosey wales on Jan 8, 2020 12:36:55 GMT -5
Here is a long article from NY Times magazine about hologram concerts, giving a lot of credibility to this ... stagecraft. Featuring quotes from our own Pete Shapiro and some cold doses of reality about the age of our favorites:
www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/learning/hologram-musicians.html
some excerpts
...a hologram of Frank Zappa in the spring, in a show overseen by Zappa’s son Ahmet. The tour kicked off in April at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, N.Y., about an hour north of Manhattan in Westchester County. A few hours before the show, I talked to the owner of the venue, the 47-year-old concert promoter Peter Shapiro. In 2015, he was a producer of the Grateful Dead’s 50th-anniversary “Fare Thee Well” concerts. The five shows grossed more than $50 million, becoming, according to Billboard, “one of the most successful events in live-music history.” We met at the Capitol Theater bar, which is called Garcia’s...
...Shapiro went on. “Look at who’s gone, just in the last couple of years: Bowie, Prince, Petty. Now look who’s still going but who’s not going to be here in 10 years, probably, at least not touring: the Stones, the Who, the Eagles, Aerosmith, Billy Joel, Elton John, McCartney, Springsteen. That is the base not just of classic rock but of the live-music touring business...
...According to the trade publication Pollstar, roughly half of the 20 top-grossing North American touring acts of 2019 were led by artists who were at least 60 years old, among them Cher, Kiss, Fleetwood Mac, Paul McCartney, Dead & Company and Billy Joel; the Rolling Stones, Elton John and Bob Seger took the top three slots. Using technology to blur the line between the quick and the dead tends to be a recipe for dystopian science fiction, but in this case, it could also mean a lucrative new income stream for a music industry in flux...
show?