"Performances" on Leno

Every night, I record the last 20 minutes or so of Leno in addition to Conan's show. Conan is awesome and I like to see if Jay has a good musical guest on.

But something I've noticed lately on Leno is pretty disturbing. I'm not naive and have even come to expect some singers to use their canned tracks either as support or as the full on vocal. That's been discussed so I won't go there. What's worse though, is that it seems that in some cases that the ENTIRE BAND isn't playing! The most obvious example is from Hilary Duff from the other night. I'm pretty convinced that they just popped in the CD, pressed play, and everyone on stage faked their way through the song. (never mind the fact that Duff herself did a downright awful job of even pretending to sing)

This isn't a thread about the what's so obviously wrong about this situation, I'm just curious if anyone else has noticed. I know my ears/eyes aren't as good as many on this board, but this has just seemed so blatant to me lately.

Well, what did you expect from Hilary Duff?

I agree though. Live performances should be live.

Yeah, what do you expect from Hilary Duff, but I see the overall point that if the "singer" is going to lip-sync, maybe at least do thatwell.

Recent concert review here for Christina Aguilera pointed out that some songs appeared to be live, but when the dance moves kicked up and they went to Memorex, the actual sound of the voice changed to a lush, fully processed, studio-polished quality. Then when they went back to live singing, the voice got thin again. Sheesh.

Yes, they should have thined out that lush studio sound...

Steve

I sat in the NBC studio for Leno when "Gomez" was on. Saw 'em load in a bit of their stuff and such. If they weren't playing live, it was awfully convincing from the studio audience's perspective.

Besides, both Leno and Conan have had some AWFUL performances on there. I'll cite the Flaming Lips, Ric Ocasek, and yes, even Rod Stewart as being totally abysmal performances. What, did they wake up and say "Oh, someone might catch on that we're lip syncing, we'd better give them a CD with a {censored}ty performance!"

Who's Hilary Duff?

Any relation to Howard Duff? Ida Lupino?

If not... I can't relate.

Most variety shows in the 60's and 70's used canned tracks for the entire band. It was pretty obvious when the song faded out and the band just kinda stopped playing.

don't get me wrong, i don't expect ANYTHING from hilary duff or the other pop tarts that's not really my point though i guess. it's one (unacceptable) thing for the singer to be syncing, but the whole band? yeesh.

and i agree, often times the performances on those shows are pretty bad. i can understand why though. it's basically 'alright, play your hit NOW!' no warmup time or anything like that. it's nothing like going to an actualy concert. some seem to be better than others though. SNL has been terrible in the past at times (worst i can think of is the first time the strokes played there, one of the guitars was essentially not mic'd up at all - you couldn't hear it). but there are some really good ones too. his show isn't so great, but the musical guests on carson daly play live and the sound is very well done.

i saw the gomez performance on Leno and it was quite good. definitely not dubbed in any way (great band incidentally).

speaking of live TV performances, my band played on a local morning show several months ago. they had us play coming in and out of commercial breaks. it was really cool, but it was strange to have to play that way. it was like 'well, we've got a 30 seconds going out to commercial, so we'll start with the second verse, they'll cut in halfway through, we'll finish the verse and get through half the chorus' etc etc. weird for a stagehand to look at you and say 'go!' then they fade you in, mug for the cameras, fade you out, and stagehand 'STOP!' it was fun though!

How do you know they did not just all turn down their volumes simultaneously and had one of those new fangled drum sets with a volume knob?

How do you know they did not just all turn down their volumes simultaneously and had one of those new fangled drum sets with a volume knob?

I used to like watching the drummers miss the pre-recorded cymbal hits.