Some sound guy who was hired (by who, it’s not entirely certain) to record a Hole show a few years back has put isolated vocal and guitar parts from Courtney Love playing “Celebrity Skin” up on Youtube.
This video is now being gleefully shared around by mainstream music websites and blogs that invariably describe Courtney’s performance as “terrible” or rhetorically ask if it is “the worst thing ever”.
The answer, to anyone who has the slightest clue about how live music happens, is “no, this really isn’t the worst thing ever”.
Why? Well, firstly, because Courtney actually sounds pretty good here if you like raw vocal parts. But let’s set that aside for a moment.
Live vocal feeds usually sound pretty terrible. There is a lot of processing that happens in a studio, and a reason why slick-sounding albums tend to take days, weeks or even months to record. It’s a very rare singer who can pull off perfect vocals live – particularly if they’re playing rock or punk, which tend to rely on energy rather than technical perfection.
We don’t tend to notice this when we see live bands – because if they’re a decent band, they will have that energy, and the singing will be good enough. This is one reason why you can see a phenomenal live performance at a gig, then watch an imperfect live recording on TV a couple of days later and wonder why it doesn’t seem anywhere near as good.
Similarly, guitar parts tend to undergo a lot of processing even in a live setting. Many professional bands don’t have pedals on-stage, and will rely on a sound technician to process any distortion or tone effects for them. Moreover, amps will be adjusted for the acoustics of a venue. Unless you apply serious production to a live recording, it will tend to sound a lot more tinny and empty than a studio recording.
Finally, it’s worth noting that Courtney isn’t even really playing much guitar in this video in part because she doesn’t need to. “Celebrity Skin” relies largely on one guitar part and the rhythm section (bass and drums) to provide the bulk of the song, with the second guitar throwing in a bit of additional “oomph” now and again. Of course the guitar parts in this video are minimal and imperfect – quite aside from the sound issues, Courtney is pretty much smashing the strings for occasional effect. This would sound a lot better if you were doing this in your room because you’d have the volume, distortion and acoustics that were clearly present in the room at this gig. But it’d sound even better if you had an entire band filling out the rest of the song for you.
Surely, the guitar could have been played a lot better here, but it’s clear from the audience response that no-one actually in the venue cares. Why? Because there’s an entire band filling out the sound, which means that one punk musician’s performance doesn’t have to be perfect. Besides, she’s still pretty tight with the rest of the group.
So why is this even a big deal? I’m sure there are those who will claim that this video is just being shared because it sounds shit, but there are plenty of musicians who would sound shit if you shared isolated guitar + vocal parts around the Internet.
Courtney Love is no angel by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel it’s no coincidence that she is being targeted. She’s one of the very few women to ever maintain a relatively high profile as a rock star for the duration of her career, and that has made her the target for the kind of judgementalism, conspiracy theories and ill-informed criticism that just doesn’t stick with well-known male performers.
And that’s misogyny.
Tags: Courtney Love, feminism, Hole, punk, rock music, sexism
10/09/2014 at 10:29 pm |
Hell to the yes! This is exactly what I was saying earlier. I have seen courtney loads and she always puts on an amazing show. I am sure if they did this with a lot of bands they would get the same thing x
11/09/2014 at 7:03 am |
Additional note: If you wanna criticise Courtney Love, there are plenty of reasons to do so without drawing upon the long history of sexist commentary on her music etc: http://yourfaveisproblematic.tumblr.com/post/45774175248/courtney-love
11/09/2014 at 3:55 pm |
This is a difficult one for me. I’ve defended Courtney a lot, because she does get an awful lot of stick and it’s plain it’s because she’s a woman (yes, she can be kind of an unpleasant character on occasion, but that’s not what’s generally being criticised). For instance, the idea that won’t seem to go away that Kurt wrote material for “Live Through This” – he simply didn’t. If anything Courtney influenced Kurt’s writing than the reverse. It seems like people aren’t willing to credit Courtney for writing it because she’s a woman. Ironically the music *was* mostly written by a man, namely Eric Erlandson; if memory serves, “Doll Parts” is mostly Courtney’s music.
However, in this instance – I’m sorry, this is absolutely *not* a sound quality issue, nor is it anything to do with being pseudo-unaccompanied. I speak as a guitarist myself. Her guitar tone is fine. This is simply very, very bad playing. Whether this is representative of her playing overall I have no idea, but yeah. And I find it extremely hard to believe that if she was male nobody would think her playing here was bad. Hell, spend five minutes reading the comments on men playing guitar on YouTube all you’ll see how absurdly critical people are of men’s playing as well.
11/09/2014 at 4:07 pm |
Actually, I’d like to add something else. Like I say, I have no idea how representative this is. It’s plausible that the sound guy wasn’t particularly good and she just couldn’t hear herself (it’s obvious from the other live recording that her guitar isn’t audible), so she just thought “fuck it” and basically just mimed along rather than asking to be turned up.
Or, she could have asked to be turned down low because she knew she wasn’t very good. It could be either.
There’s a parallel with Richey Edwards from Manic Street Preachers – although nominally a guitarist, all he really contributed was lyrics and he was barely ever recorded on an album (I think he only appeared on record for one song, “No Surface, All Feeling”). When playing live he was turned down very low and pretty much just mimed along.
In an infamous incident, the sound guy at a festival who obviously hadn’t been let in to the open secret that Richey couldn’t play cranked him right up when it got to the solo of “La Tristesse Durera”, apparently under the impression that he was the lead guitarist, and it sounded absolutely awful
11/09/2014 at 4:16 pm |
Well, for me this is basically the issue. There could be all kinds of reasons for why she sounded bad on that night, during that song. Or she could have just been shit *shrugs*
The thing is, we don’t know, and one video certainly isn’t compelling evidence for a wider trend.
At the end of the day, I do think this is about the fact that people are listening some dodgy guitar playing that didn’t matter on the night because Courtney has a band around her for a reason. Even though this particular Hole line-up was pretty much assembled for a Courtney Love solo tour, she’s still playing as part of a band. And the band sounds fine, which is what matters.
I also think it is a gender issue. Yes, you’re right that if she was male, people would still be sharing this around and criticising it. The difference is, I seriously doubt it would get the huge amount of coverage it’s getting for it being Courtney Love. I’ve seen videos where people are having a go at male musicians with a similar profile and they seriously don’t have the traction that this one has.
11/09/2014 at 4:22 pm |
Yeah, I think it’s irrelevant at the end of the day. Even if Courtney couldn’t play guitar *at all*, “Celebrity Skin” is still one of my favourite songs ever and Hole are in my top 3 bands ever.
But yeah, this isn’t a sound quality issue as the writer is making out. At all. The sound is fine.
15/09/2014 at 4:17 pm |
I can appreciate the defense of Courtney and I myself am skeptical of the veracity of the guitar track itself but a lot of the information here about live sound is incorrect. As a guitarist, vocalist and frontman across two studio albums and 7 years on the stage (and also a producer who has been nominated for and won an award), I can tell you first hand that the band is responsible for it’s instrument and tone choices including things like distortion (besides the most manufactured of bands). It is not the use of effects, processing or any wizardry that makes a live guitar sound well played. It is competent playing itself.
Great playing resulting from practice and many rehearsals does. Production does go a long way in making that performance translate well across a crowd not too distant from how it does in the studio but there are many misconceptions about studio and live “magic”. If you did not perform something to a certain standard, no amount of processing will make it sound like you did. I do not wish to be misquoted. I am not a misogynist and I do not support Courtney being lambasted over something that cannot even be verified.
I do not partake in it and have no confirmation bias. I can appreciate she has been through a lot in life. I do respectfully wish for the lengths working musicians live and in the studio have to go to in order to sound as good as we do especially on stage where there are no second chances to not be undermined.