The Take Away Show videos: It’s good to try hard

Whenever I’m really moved by something I end up ruining it for anyone else by either: a) over-describing in an effort to express why I loved it, or b) using a few words to poorly summarize its effects and ending with a frustrated “you should really check it out”. I found some really great videos yesterday that I wanna share, and I think I’ll aim for the second of those two methods.

Or maybe you’ve already heard about them?

I’m talking about the Take Away Shows from the music blog, Le Blogotheque. It’s a series of videos shot mostly in Paris and NYC on a hand-held camera. The subjects are bands, bands you know, touring bands who have a few hours before or after a gig to play more music. And the videos are live performances in the streets, in apartments, in stores…anywhere unconventional. But I think the power of these videos is how conventional, or rather, natural, music-making actually is.

The results are music videos that are more real than any music video, and yet more contrived than documentary. Resting somewhere in between, or being of something entirely different perhaps, the videos manage to show “the real” in art. Through their characters, they portray music as essential, political, and yes, self-indulgent. But portray is the wrong word.

Music in these videos is not separate from sound, from city and life sounds, and from making sounds, from making and showing our selves through sound. For bands like Animal Collective, the connection is more obvious and it feels like a return to the studio to watch them banging on a shopping cart and singing into glasses. It’s also a link to music theatre, to people dancing and singing in the streets. It’s a set-up, and this is its power. The distance from St. Vincent speaking as she strolls around a Paris apartment to her singing is the same as that from the Hidden Cameras in full song on the banks of the Seine to them resting in an applause-less ending. Music was made. It’s a real distance, but it comes from the same place.

The Take Away Shows are also about cities, shot by a sentimentalist and music lover.

But I’ve probably already said too much.

Watch the Arcade Fire’s Concert a Emporter (Take Away Show)

Here’s the path I took last night when I watched these for the first time:

>> Animal Collective

>> Dirty Projectors

>> Hidden Cameras

>> St. Vincent

>> Final Fantasy

And check out all the bands on the Take Away Shows full menu.

The title of this post is in reference to something a friend said to me the other night at a show her band had played. I went up afterwards to say it sounded great and tell her that she has a beautiful voice. “Thanks, I try,” she replied, a bit nervously, but also deviously. I think these bands and the video crew “try hard”, but in a different way than marketing teams that try really hard to sell music.