VH1 Weekend

[Alan McKendree <AI.amck@mcc.com>]

    Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 08:07 CDT
    From: raiders@cc.bellcore.com (higgins,peter h)

    As far as the Giants Stadium show. First, lets get VH1 to realize that
    the CottonBowl was the last show, and that Giants Stadium was the very
    near beginning.. 

They were sort of misleading about that: (paraphrased) "The world's
greatest rock band!  Now...hear their last New York concert!"  I was
left with the strong impression I would be seeing _the last_ '89 show,
(which I knew wasn't the case) and had to listen closely to discover
exactly how it was that they weren't lying to me :-)

    I was at 3 of the 4 shows at Giants stadium, and what
    I heard on VH1 and what I remember are 2 different thngs.

Help me out here.  I was told at the time there would be four
Meadowlands shows, June 29, 30, and July 2, 3.  (I was at the first
two.)  But the setlist spreadsheet I have shows only three shows,
6/29&30 and 7/3.  Anyone know for sure whether July 2 was cancelled or
not?  Anyone actually attend July 2?

.There is somethng
    about the way they record those shows, that there is no reverb, or audience
    clapping, or,I dont know, something is lost inthe translation..

My first (and only) guess is that they had highly directional mikes
onstage, that didn't pick up audience noise.  However it was done
(post-processing or whatever), there certainly was a noticeable lack of
audience on this live recording.

    As far as the Beach Boys comment.. What the hell were they [VH-1]
    supposed to do 
    other than there string of recognizable songs ? 

Right.  As always, these shows aren't produced for thewho-level fans,
and I'm sure VH-1 wanted to give their expected audience the Big Hits.
(I'm still trying to figure out how Sears family-portrait and Glints
commercials fit in with the target-audience demographics, however :-).
As a result, every special or live-show I've ever seen, except pay-per-
views, has been edited to produce something very different from the live
experience.  I don't even know whether to trust VH-1's claim that what
they showed was all taken from the last NY show--as opposed to putting
in some songs from the 6/29 or 6/30 shows--given that the songs were out
of performance order, and edited.

I think there is a huge market out there if only some recording company
would recognize it:  to issue CDs of entire shows, straight off the
soundboard, in essence taking over the boot market.  I am truly stumped
as to why this isn't done.  Have I thought up something entirely new in
the recording industry?  Or what?

Alan