I was talking recently to a rock guitarist about the amount of music an audience hears during a typical concert that is ‘on track’ – in other words, not played live in the moment but instead stored, supplied and sequenced via computer. They suggested that nowadays every artist, from pop starlets to indie rebels, relies on ‘track’ to a greater or lesser extent.
Does it matter? Probably not, at least not much – although it’s one reason why so many acts now play the same songs the same way in the same order every night. Technology increasingly calls the shots. When a band’s set is entirely choreographed around the lighting cues – a scenario not uncommon in arena gigs – it seems a clear case of the tail wagging the dog.
I was mulling over all this last weekend while watching a trio of acclaimed traditional musicians do their thing. The concert felt like the set-up to an old-fashioned joke: heard the one about an Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman walking into a deconsecrated church in Edinburgh? Hailing from Manchester, Glasgow and Dublin respectively, Mike McGoldrick, John McCusker and John Doyle are the cream – and also, perhaps, the Cream – of traditional music: a trio of individual talents joining forces to become something even more potent than the sum of their parts.
McGoldrick plays flute, whistle and uilleann pipes with grace and guile. McCusker is one of the world’s most versatile fiddle players, and also moonlights on whistle and harmonium. John Doyle is an accomplished guitarist and singer-songwriter, and founding member of the group Solas.
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