There was some fuss at the Glastonbury festival over the last few days about a performer called Billy Nomates, who I’d never heard of before, cos her manner of performing is basically her doing live vocals with pre-recorded electronics. The bit I saw sounded good enough, not a bad song, crowd were apparently quite into it from the reports I read, but the performance attracted a lot of pissbabies on the BBC website bitching about it not being “real” or something.
A propos of nothing, here’s “real” rock band Motley Crue apparently miming at a recent festival appearance.
This is not the first time they’ve been accused of this. Lars Ulrich from Metallica charged them in the 90s with having mimed at an awards show, and Mick Mars has also levelled the same charge at them in a lawsuit against the band:
“During much of the band’s recent tenure, Sixx continually ‘gaslighted’ Mars by telling him that he (Mars) had some sort of cognitive dysfunction, and that his guitar playing was sub-par, claiming that Mars forgot chords, and sometimes started playing the wrong songs.
“Astonishingly, Sixx made these claims about Mars‘s playing while he (Sixx) did not play a single note on bass during the entire U.S. tour. Ironically, 100% of Sixx‘s bass parts were nothing but recordings. Sixx was seen fist pumping in the air with his strumming hand, while the bass part was playing. In fact, a significant portion of (Vince) Neil‘s vocals were also pre-recorded. Even some of (Tommy) Lee‘s drum parts were recordings. Some fans actually noticed that Lee was walking toward his drum set as they heard his drum part begin.”
Considering that both Lars and Mars have beef with Motley Crue (the former’s going back to the birth of both bands, the latter’s because they allegedly kicked him out of his), perhaps both could be seen as questionable witnesses here, but the video in the first article is, frankly, kind of damning. It’s an audience-shot clip, but the view is good enough that, yeah, you can indeed hear Vince Neil’s voice continuing past the point where he pulls the mic away from his face. Indeed, during the chorus it sounds like there’s more than one voice singing, like it’s been double-tracked. Unless Tommy Lee’s on backup and you just can’t see him, Vince is the only one singing (I feel somehow that the hot chick writhing at back of stage was doing it even if she did have a microphone in hand). And guest Machine Gun Kelly was visibly not rapping all of his part (though I did rather enjoy the crowd booing as they realised who he was).
So there you go, “real” live music for you. At least Tor Maries from Billy Nomates brought her own voice with her.
