No Rock And Roll Fun

BUT HOW WILL WE TOSS BOTTLES OF PISS AT FRED?: Following from the success of Korn's recent experiment at throwing a gig and relaying it via satelitte to various cinemas, Limp Bizkit are planning on copying them. Nothing new with LB copying Korn, of course; and Fred is used to making appearances via a two-way link-up after his day (not) in the Australian court room. But we're not sure this is very much in a way of a great leap forward for the fan. Sure, you could argue that at big gigs now, unless you're prepared to risk having your guts squeezed into pancakes down the front, you'll wind up doing little more than watching the event on a great big screen anyway. But the thing is, of course, a cinema is not a venue, and sitting down thousands of miles away from the band will probably kill stone dead any atmosphere there might have been; meanwhile, at the gig itself, the smaller audience will wind up making what should be an Event into something more like an expensive version of Later With Jools. And while labels might be licking their lips at the prospect of getting their bands seen without any of the expensive panoply of touring - 'we can play Boise, Liverpool and Madrid - at the same time' - taking another step away from live culture, away from that pant-wetting opportunity to actually see your idols in the flesh, is just another step towards killing the interest and excitement and downright dirtyness of rock itself. Why bother with the cinema? Why not just send out a DVD with the gig on?
Fred on the screen [BBC] - at least you won't have Fred laughing at the people trying to rescue you